Do links really matter? The answer is YES they matter. How much do links matter? Well if you care anything about site authority and search engine traffic then links are equally if not more important than the content you post. Every link has a different value based on other factors. Therefore the more diverse your link structure the better for overall ranking and long term stable positioning in search engines. So here are some ways to build links the right way.
Links
Random Automated Requests
You have to love these. These hit my inbox several times a day. In fact, here’s an example of one from one of my website’s inbox:
Dear Webmaster,
I just visited your website today and wanted to congratulate you on the excellent content I discovered here. It’s not often I come across a website that offers such positive information.
I am seeking quality links from high quality websites just like yours. As you can see my website (website) is based on a similar theme to yours and in my view, offers added value content for your web site visitors.
As a part of this deal, I would like to have one link featured on your website in the content. Should you agree, please use the following details provided and add the project site to your links page.
Title: – [selected target keywords]
URL: – [website/page]
Description: – [to long to describe here]
Regards, SEO Manager.
Talk about random and obviously automated!
There are several problems here. Notice there is no persons name in the signature? That’s because the person who actually sent this request to my site – apparently from a Boston area local SEO company is probably from India. Yes a local SEO company hired a company half way across the world to send blind emails to unknown websites requesting a link. Why would an SEO company need this? You will notice in the email they don’t mention which website they’d like the link to appear on. The message here is not that reaching out to request a link is a is a bad thing, but rather to be careful in your approach. This is obviously an automated message and in my opinion complete spamm. Many a times I’ve had people send me similar link requests pretending to be sent from SEO companies and not being to bright writing their home addresses as their location. Perhaps they don’t think that people actually use Google maps! Ask for links, sure no problem but make sure to be legit if you are doing so. I think that you will be more successful doing it that way anyway.
Guest Blogging
There is a shade of grey when it comes to guest blogging. Guest blogging itself is great. However Google and other search engines are starting to crack down on this method too because most people are doing it with the purpose again of spamming links. For example if you are invited to write something by a blog because you may be an authority in your niche, a link back to your site works. If you write a plain old article and it’s posted on a site known to ask for guest posts across a variety of unrelated topics then that’s a problem.
To make sure your guest blogging posts are counted make sure to keep them informative and relevant to the blog you are posting on. Generally if you follow these two guidelines you should be able to make the best of this method of building links.
Commenting on Blogs and Forums
This is official and you should know the truth. Creating links in blog comments will not help your site rank better. It seems, a many number of people don’t know this as yet.
Link spamming in comments or forums only becomes annoying to the site owner, and irritates webmasters. Some people love to copy a portion of the blog post itself and place it in the comment, and add their link. If that’s not obvious I don’t know what is. Don’t employ such services that do this, it will save you money in the long run. These methods will damage your domain authority.
Building your links the right way can have your website reaping long term benefits that can only have you climbing up in the serps and building an honest and trustworthy brand that people will love.