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
-
Reasonable Cost for Link Building Service
We need about 5-10 high quality links to our website created every month. We need the link targets researched and outreach done to these sites. The sites most be legitimate and high quality; decent domain authority, real sites, not phony low quality sites. Sites that would show traffic in similarweb.com with decent metrics. We absolutely want to avoid any link building schemes that could get us penalized. I have been told that such a project would take a qualified SEO about 8-10 hours per months (more during the additional month of research, less afterward). As such, what is a reasonable cost for these 5-10 links per month? $300, $500, $700, more? I only want to work with a highly experienced SEO, native english speaker with extensive experience. What is fair? I don't want to overpay or to under pay. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Should we optimise our internal links?
Hi again, We recently had a technical search audit done by a specialist agency and they discovered a number of internal links that caused redirects to happen. The agency has recommended we update all of these links to link directly to the destination so we don't lose out on link equity. We'd just like to know if you think this would be a worthwhile use of our time. Our web team seem to think that returning a 301 to a crawler means that the crawler will stop indexing the original URL and instead index the redirected destination? Thanks all. Clair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iescape2 -
Spammy sites that link to a site
Hello, What is the best and quickest way to identify spammy sites that link to a website, and then remove them ( google disavow?) Thank you dear Moz, community - I appreciate your help 🙂 Sincerely, Vijay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vijayvasu0 -
Advice on Link Building?
I know webmasters shouldn't focus on link building but unfortunately there are some types of content that doesn't get shared as much as other. And for content to go viral, it ain't that easy and it's almost impossible in some smaller niches where you don't have the volume to go "viral". That said I know about the common link building techniques. I know I can submit guest posts but when you're competing with websites that have over 10,000 backlinks, there is no way I'm going to get close to this with guest posting and commenting on other blogs. One way I found for getting backlinks is to publish interviews. Most of the time, people/businesses you interview like to link to this type of content. Publishing value-added content about other businesses' products or services may get some backlinks in return but not that often. So other than that, can some of you share some "out-of-the-box" link building strategies? Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
How do I get the best from our Blog and build quality links and drive traffic to our site?
We have recently setup a Wordpress focused blog (blog.towelsrus.co.uk) which is very much work in progress. Because of financial constraints we had to host this on a separate sub domain. I need to get to grips with blogs is new to me (only been doing SEO this for 3 months now) and have have read may posts on the forums here that this is one of the best ways to build links and engage the audience. How do I go about getting people to read my blog, and should I use this to pull in traffic on keywords we cannot through the main site or should i use this to re-enforce and build traction on those keywords we are trying to rank for on the main site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
How much do infographics cost?
How much do good quality infographics cost? And where can I get them made?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | harrygardiner0 -
I do a lot of on page SEO... I was wondering some basic tactics / strategies for link building? Please provide only WHITE HAT suggestions! Thank You ;)
Please keep in mind google's announcement on links recently.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | entourage2120 -
Are Facebook links really helpful?
If they are no follow, how can I benefit? If Google isn't using this data, than why would we bother to LIKE anyone or anybody?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEObleu.com0