“Google do not want to make your website popular; Google wants to rank popular website”
Google’s aim is to deliver the most relevant information to their searchers and one of the ways they do this is to determine how popular your website is.
Although we can’t be 100% sure of all the factors that Google uses to determine popularity, one of the key factors is how many links a website has, pointing to it.
Eventually the more popular a website is, the higher ranking it gets and unfortunately, links are still at the core of website popularity.
Think of an election. The candidate who wins is perceived to be more popular candidates because the candidates has acquired, arm twisted, begged or obtained greater votes than the other candidates.
And after all links are simply votes/citation. When you link to a particular article or webpage, you are simply expressing how much you think of such an asset.
The more the number of votes the greater the perceived popularity of the webpage.
Therefore if you want to make your website popular, you need to be building links to that website, article, document or whatever it is that catches your fancy.
While link building should not be seen as the ultimate solution to your popularity problem, it is still crucial to the success of your online presence.
Links should be pursued for increased traffic either direct or referrals.
Links should be pursued for building authorities so that we become the go to experts.
And all of these should be done with the sole aim of making the website more popular and therefore gain greater and better exposure for our brand.
Unfortunately Google is not making it simple. From directories, forum posting to guest posting, the list of safe link building techniques diminishes each passing year and leaving fear in the hearts of people.
Google has so much achieved this feat that people are even afraid to link out to others and sometimes link inward to themselves.
It therefore comes down to two options. You can stay in your pity and claim links are dying so it is better to just wait until it is safe to conclude links are really dead (I am not sure this will ever happen. No one till today can safely predict the ranking factors Google uses). While you doing this, your competitions are smiling to the front page of SERP and invariably to the bank or you can prefer to act now and overcome your fear.
Ready to overcome your fear of link building here are the required steps you should start taking now.
1. Understand the concept of link building
There is a definition that I love so well when it comes to Link building. It describes link building as a deliberate attempt at getting links to your website.
Links are the building block of any online existence. Think of links as a footprint. Web page links to each other to become a website. Websites in turn links to one another to become the World Wide Web.
Links therefore is what makes up what we know today as the online world. Links are important to leave prints in the sands of time.
Links can be given, bought, fought over or even stolen.
2. Understand why you want the link
Granted links are chariot horse. It can boost your ranking, get you tons of referral traffic but when links are sought for links sake, it becomes spam.
Knowingly why you want a particular link is not only the key to getting it but also help you draw the line between good links and spam.
Do you want that link because it is:
- Relevant?
- Will help someone locate a particular useful information or discussion?
- Will fix a missing point in the chain of footprint?
Or do you just want the links because you heard you need to build links.
Because there is no longer a safe link building method, you have to know why this particular link will help you achieve your business goal.
You could link to your friends. You could link to point out that there are really no way of knowing the how and why Google ranks web pages.
Knowing why a link is important for you as an individual or for your brand will help you make good choice in your execution.
3. Understand each technique of building links
As at my last count, there are over 25 distinct link building techniques. That is around 2 distinct different strategies you can use to build links every month.
Despite these, not all the link building techniques are equal and application in all situations.
Should you use a press release website for your news or simply host it on your site and let the press find it? These are some of the hard choices you will need to make depending on your strategy and goal.
But what is important is that you need to properly understand what asset you are building links to and which method is best technique for giving that asset the exposure it needs.
4. Act
Finally, get moving. Links are important. Links like every aspect of making your website discoverable is not going away soon.
The sooner you understand that, the easier and faster you can get on the ship before it takes off.
Take the first step by following this set of link builders. Then get your list of link techniques together and start asking yourself.
Which technique can I implement this month?
Now go build that link.
Conclusion:
There is no longer a way to determine how long it will take your website to shoot to the top of the search engine result page. And there are no longer safe link building techniques. Just because people have abused directory doesn’t mean directories are bad.
A client once found my site through a forum link while another called me up after reading a publication I wrote for a local newspaper where there are no links.
Was one client better than the other?
No.
Therefore was it all about acquiring links?
No.
Latest posts by Adegboye Adeniyi (see all)
- Crypto SEO – What You Need To Know About Crypto and BlockChain SEO - January 15, 2022
- SEO For Law Firms – Complete Guide to SEO for Lawyers - March 31, 2021
- Link Prospecting: A Guide to Beginners - March 28, 2021