Fundamental SEO Strategy: Building Backlinks VS. Earning Them

The driving force fueling any SEO strategy should be the goal of getting your website noticed. One essential aspect of most SEO strategies involves the development and maintenance of backlinks to your website. Backlinks are the links that appear on other websites that direct visitors towards your site, or the product page. These are the links that inform search engines that your website has good information that actually offers something to the millions of browsers accessing the internet. As a result, many search engines use this information as a way of determining just how relevant, and worthwhile a website actually is.

Why is Link Building used in SEO Strategy?

Since the very first people began figuring out how to manipulate search engines so that their websites could generate more traffic, link building has existed. Link building has been an essential part of Google’s algorithm for some time now because backlinks are regarded as an indication of authority and expertise. Google is one of the locations that internet users flock to when they are searching for fast, informative and relevant information. Therefore, it is within Google’s best interests to supply content that is beneficial to the user.

In basic terms, it makes sense that backlinks would indicate authority. If you consider back-linking as social interaction, it would be similar to telling your friend about an article that you read because you thought it was enjoyable or helpful in some way. However, problems arose when people attempted to manipulate back-linking for a quick-win procedure. Instead of back-linking because the quality was good, people gathered dozens of poor quality back-links to boost their ratings. This is the difference between having an article recommended to you by a friend, and having numerous strangers scream information about the article at you in the street.

Today, Google has brought an end to the chaos, and low-quality links are now incredibly risky to use. What Google wants instead is evidence that you have earned the backlinks that you generate. The secret to a long-lasting and sustainable strategy for your business in link building is going for quality over quantity. Earn them, don’t build them.

Earning Honest Backlinks

It may seem like a tedious and complicated process – and it is, but creating backlinks the right way is essential if you really want to make your mark on the great stretching plain that is the World Wide Web. Today, benefitting from backlinks is more about earning them than building them, and the first step to earning great links is developing content that people feel deserves being linked to. If you offer up information, guidance, knowledge or entertainment that people cannot find anywhere else, then you’re automatically improving your chances of better backlinks from quality websites. Give your readers consistently good content and you will start to build a reputation for yourself.

Once you have begun to establish your company as an authority within its industry, it will be time to engage with your target audience. Engaging means more than simply sending out emails and updates, you need to integrate yourself into that community. Post your own questions and opinions through social media websites, and use your online medium to share more information from other websites that your user could be interested in.

Building backlinks without context or regard to content are easy, but earning them is a lot harder. The truly advantageous backlinks will require hard work and patience on your behalf, but it’s the only way that you can take the first steps into a much more valuable community.