Question Is link building relevant now?

[wowtgp]

Google is more inclined towards fresh content than anything else lately. You can see a lot of fresh content being ranked highly for a particular keyword without any backlinks whatsoever. Is it still relevant?

 

[rohit21]

Google loves fresh content but link building is also relevant and important for a site to get in high rankings.

 

[vividlion]

I think it's still important. Fresh content is the foundation but to add that extra boost backlinks is loved by google to prove your site is popular in the eyes of google!

 

[penny101]

I was wondering the same thing, if you look at how long link building has been used on the internet AND the numerous posts stating that link building is not really effective any more it gets you thinking. Also remember Google js constantly messing around with there systems and do you actually know whether your link building works?

 

[thevirtualtraveler]

Yes links are still a vital part of SEO along with valuable and unique content. Spammy backlinking tactics no longer work but if you do it right they play an important role in rankings. (Info is from Matt Callens SEO course)

 

[wowtgp]

Google loves fresh content but link building is also relevant and important for a site to get in high rankings.

I have started a new blog and both of my articles are ranking no 5 and 2 respectively for particular keywords.

 

[NicheGuy]

I think Google, in particular, is now looking at link building as a scheme much like keyword stuffing was. It appears link building is going out of favor and link earning is the way to go and build relevance in this area.

The old-school, super old-school link building tactic was leaving links on guestbooks, forums, open comments, do follow blogs, do follow links, all that kind of stuff. Obviously, you can see the results of that today, which are not good. I think the new version of that is participating in communities like these that are active and authentic and have real participation and real membership, in such a way that members of those networks, of those communities will notice you and then link to you organically. They'll find your stuff.

But you better be authentically participating, or they'll think you're spam, and you better have that great content to back it up or you're not going to be earning those links.

Google is trying to end the practice of link building and renew the practice of link earning. I think that's why you see so many SEOs embracing content marketing, and I think this shift is going to happen even more heavily over the next 6 to 12 months. So if you get ahead of the curve now, you're going to be in a good place next year and well into the future.

 

[wowtgp]

Yes links are still a vital part of SEO along with valuable and unique content. Spammy backlinking tactics no longer work but if you do it right they play an important role in rankings. (Info is from Matt Callens SEO course)

Yep, spammy backlinks tantamount to downranking and heavy battering from Google.

 

[bauss]

Yes it is. I rely a lot on link building to climb the rankings for my keywords, and whenever I stop building links my rankings usually drop a bit.

 

[ashishkashyap25]

It depends on your strategy and approach to build back links. Are you buying it? Are you looking to build it naturally?

These are the few question that need to be addressed before answering the question.

Its pretty apparent that google is more inclined towards fresher and natural back links rather than the traditional way of doing it.

 

[mallikarjuna]

Off course content is the major part that google consider at present. But link building is also important. Rankings are not possible without link building. So both link building and content are required

 

[MikeUK]

Google, nowadays, is a library of knowledge. People are looking for information and use the long sentence ( you can call kw-tail) for example how can I register a company pure informative kw. Any article which provides with a better recommendation for this searcher will be ranked higher independently on the number of links pointed on this article. To ranking website we create a mini library. Noted, if you write a good article and leave it or you can do max w2.0 or any social signalsm you will see it on top Google in 2-3 months. You do need to trust me, just check yourself

 

[Aleeza William]

Both content & links are equally important!!

 

[Happy Koala]

backlinks are super relevant - my bad content will outrank your great content because i have more links and better quality links than you have.

content is still important though as Google reads your content, but if you know how to SEO you can get bad content to outrank good content because you have included all the right keywords in the right place. Google is a maths machine so it sees keywords in the right places and sees that it is the same as other websites and gives it value for having the right words on the page.

obviously as you do rank good content will stick easier because people will stay on your site longer and engage with it more which are all signals Google uses to rank websites.

in the end you need both good content and good backlinks, if your competition are ranking with good content but few backlinks then your job is simple - create content just as good if not better and then get more backlinks then they do from quality websites.

 

[Paro]

Google has set a number of ranking factors in determining how to rank respective web pages and one of them is link popularity. Backlinks play an important role inbuilding a site's reputation, boosting visibility, increasing traffic and ultimately revenue. Overall, backlinks are important for three particular reasons

 

[sofacleaningdublin]

Hi

I think link building is more relevant than ever. Over the past few years i spent my time doing content based SEO and article posting. It was providing amazing results. Over the past years few local competitors have developed a very strange strategy. Blog postings and commenting on other people articles.

I thought that it cant just be a strategy commenting on other people postings. But i was wrong. Their websites have very little content & they have 50k links. They pushed me down from the first position. I did a quick spy work with Semrush and all their links are coming from other people postings.

While i am breaking my back posting relevant articles about my business, other people seem to be cutting the corner. I am planning to start creating thousands of comments on other people post as well if this is the new SEO

 

[bestseopartner]

I see that people have mixed reactions to Link Building but what I feel is something different. Link Building is obviously important it is just like filling gas into your car so that you can drive more. Better the car better is your mileage, so if your content is better your ranking will be better than others. But you should also know that you cannot put bad links or low quality links which will eventually harm the content and will not help to rank as it should. So Good Content with Good Links is the key to success.

 

[Robh1972]

Google is more inclined towards fresh content than anything else lately. You can see a lot of fresh content being ranked highly for a particular keyword without any backlinks whatsoever. Is it still relevant?

Both are equally important. Google considers Links to be a vote for Good Content. The more Links a page has the more relevant the content is considered by Google and hence you get Ranking improvement. Conversely, if a good piece of content gets Links and then the amount of links being obtained slows down the article is considered to be less fresh and the Rankings will fall.