Is Link Building Pretty Much Irrelevant Now?
-
When I ask this, I am not under the illusion that links do nothing. I am more curious if from an SEO strategy perspective is executing a link building campaign a really unwise use of time and resources? Currently my company literally has every single one of our SEO clients ranked on page 1 rank 1 for their most high value keyword and in the top 5 results for another 5 to 10 high value keywords. we have almost done no link building for these clients. I mean we have established a handful of really good links, but thats it. I look at some competitors link profiles and they have hundreds yet our clients sites are outranking them.
I am almost at the point of not implementing link building initiatives. I mean we will still establish high quality links as they naturally present themselves, but as far as investing time and resources building links i am leaning towards not even doing that anymore or atleast for a while to see what the effect will be.
We seem to find better results when we spend our time building great additional pages and following all web best practices.
Just curious as to what other think?
Thanks SEOmoz Community!
-
Build links to your blog post, not to your home page. Also, I use Hootsuite to put the same blog post one rotation, ie I tweet,fb, g+ the same post multiple times.
I guess maybe I have an unfair advantage in that I market a site that already has authority. There are many subjects in the webinar on this. The webinars are included in your SEOMOZ subscription: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars
-
The responses to this question have been great. While I have written some very good content, I have learned that "if you build it, they will come" doesn't necessarily apply to writing content.
My question is, once the content is written, what are the best ways of getting it "out there?"
-
it's not one that I would recommend to a client or present as a link building strategy
I agree, I would not recommend it to most clients because most clients are not able to produce best-on-the-web content. If they are producing pedestrian content this approach is not going to work.
SEO is about accelerating and amplifying that process for maximum results.
I agree here too. I could make more money by promoting the articles, but I would rather spend my time producing content.
Once you have hundreds or even thousands of high quality pages on your site then you have a level of momentum that would be hard to reproduce with linkbuilders - especially after they have been working for a few years and picked all of the low-hanging links.
-
I have a hard time selling the "pay me to make friends in your industry" bit, so I hardly do it for clients anymore either. Making content for clients is a tangible asset that is
A. Easier to sell
B. A great long-term strategy on its own
-
I'm sure that's a strategy that can work over time, but it's not one that I would recommend to a client or present as a link building strategy.
Great content attracts links and improve in rankings over time. That's the way the web works. SEO is about accelerating and amplifying that process for maximum results.
-
LOL! I haven't done link building in over 1 year. Once in a while I'll write a guest blog post with a link pointing back, but about once per month.
I weathered all Panda and Penguin updates. I still get links from other companies, but I don't make much effort building links.
What you are saying happens exactly to me.
-
I've not done any linkbuilding for five or six years.
I publish content that is usually one of the best pages on the web for its topic. Those pages rank deep in the SERPs at first but slowly climb and in a year I check and they are often at or near the top of the SERPs.
Each one of those pages pulls in more daily traffic and as you get more pages up, more people see your stuff and that gets you exposure for likes, links, tweets, stumbles, etc.
It is really really slow to get that started but once you do it builds its own momentum.
-
WEBBY! Nice topic. Let me share something. My clients have great rankings too. Yes there is always room for improvement, but how much? Get a REAL Google Analytics report to uncover opportunity.
In addition, look at your incoming traffic. I told my clients that I have to stop being so dependent on Google because a change in their algorithm can cause a dip in traffic. I started changing focus from link building to relationship building. Some call it community building, some build their Fabebook/Twitter account. I help individuals and try getting them to grow so I can get my clients repeat business. That's the key on my end, repeat business.
-
It depends on what you mean by "link building".
If you're talking about going out and submitting your site to directories, commenting on blogs & forums, getting profile links, or otherwise manually "building" links in any shape or form, that is probably not the best use of your time (although some of those tactics can still work in moderation).
But there are still plenty of high value link building tactics. Having good content is great, but it won't do anything for your if people don't know about it. Putting that content in front of key bloggers & influencers in order to drive traffic and links is link building, and very much relevant. Forming partnerships with other top sites in your niche and linking to each other is good link building. Guest posting on high authority sites is good link building. Sending targeted press releases to journalists to get news mentions is good link building.
You're right that quality beats quantity when it comes to links, but you still need some kind of strategy to go about acquiring those high value links that goes beyond "building additional great pages". That's link building.
-
Hi Webby,
Interesting observation there. I've been doing very little link building and my clients also rank well. I am relatively new to the industry so I cant really offer much input. However, your post makes me feel better as I was noticing the very same thing. I'd like to hear what others have to say.
Thanks for posting this question.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are These Links Junk?
I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below. I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months. When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors. The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low. Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites. The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about". Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link. Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth". If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed? <colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
| |0 -
What link would be better?
Hi Guys, Just wondering what would be better in this instance: finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article or creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Finding an old post (with good authority) and getting a link from that old article Creating a brand new article and adding the link to that. Both naturally link out to the page you want a link too. To me, number 1 as the page already has authority but then again number 2 since Google might place some weight to recency. Any thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts140 -
Should I remove all vendor links (link farm concerns)?
I have a web site that has been around for a long time. The industry we serve includes many, many small vendors and - back in the day - we decided to allow those vendors to submit their details, including a link to their own web site, for inclusion on our pages. These vendor listings were presented in location (state) pages as well as more granular pages within our industry (we called them "topics). I don't think it's important any more but 100% of the vendors listed were submitted by the vendors themselves, rather than us "hunting down" links for inclusion or automating this in any way. Some of the vendors (I'd guess maybe 10-15%) link back to us but many of these sites are mom-and-pop sites and would have extremely low authority. Today the list of vendors is in the thousands (US only). But the database is old and not maintained in any meaningful way. We have many broken links and I believe, rightly or wrongly, we are considered a link farm by the search engines. The pages on which these vendors are listed use dynamic URLs of the form: \vendors<state>-<topic>. The combination of states and topics means we have hundreds of these pages and they thus form a significant percentage of our pages. And they are garbage 🙂 So, not good.</topic></state> We understand that this model is broken. Our plan is to simply remove these pages (with the list of vendors) from our site. That's a simple fix but I want to be sure we're not doing anything wring here, from an SEO perspective. Is this as simple as that - just removing these page? How much effort should I put into redirecting (301) these removed URLs? For example, I could spend effort making sure that \vendors\California- <topic>(and for all states) goes to a general "topic" page (which still has relevance, but won't have any vendors listed)</topic> I know there is no distinct answer to this, but what expectation should I have about the impact of removing these pages? Would the removal of a large percentage of garbage pages (leaving much better content) be expected to be a major factor in SEO? Anyway, before I go down this path I thought I'd check here in case I miss something. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Do links from twitter count in SEOMoz's Toolbar link count?
I am using the Chrome extension and looking at a SERP, when a page is said to have 2000 incoming links, does that include tweets with a link back to this page? What about retweets. Are those counted separately or as one? And what about independent tweets that have exactly the same content (tweet text + link)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davhad0 -
What is value in a back-link from article with multiple links pointing to various other sites?
In a standard article with 400-500 words my site got a back-link. However, within the article there are 4 other links pointing to other external content as well (so total 5 links within articles all pointing to external sites, and 1 of the links is to my site). All links are to relevant external content that is. Question: wouldn't it be much more valuable for my site if only my site got a back-link from the article, as less link juice is now passed to my site, since there are 4 other links pointing to various sites from this same article? Or, is the case that given the other links are pointing to quality material it actually makes the link to my site look more credible and at the end of the day have more value. Conclusion: is it that on one hand less links in same article is better from a link juice perspective, however, from a credibility perspective it looks more convincing there are other links pointing to quality content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Are disavowed links removed from the GWMT?
Hi, I am disavowing some links. Does anyone know if Google removes them from the WMT?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
This is interesting for followup purposes. Thanks0 -
Stellar Content - Calls to Action - Link Building
Hello, How do you place calls to actions, links back to your products/pages, and praise for your products in articles about your main products without looking bad to people who might give you a backlink. We want these things but we want our articles to be perfect for backlinks, natural and through a backlink campaign.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
How to handle link building to product pages that change regularly?
How do I handle building links to an eCommerce site where the product pages change regularly because product is only available for a certain time frame? Should I focus on building links to the category pages instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750