Links Still Work for SEO

To those of us who have been in the industry for long enough and have enough clients through which to see results, we’ve known all along that inbound links are still an important component of the Google search algorithm. News about the death of links have been proven once again to be greatly exaggerated.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Google has only mildly alluded to a future without using links in their algorithm. Those who say that the Penguin update of 2012 effectively killed links were either misinformed or were using blackhat techniques for their link building. The reality is this: Google cannot rely on the content of a website to know for sure if what it’s saying is relevant or authoritative. It has to rely on the opinions of others in the form of links, social signals, and interactions from visitors to determine if the content is real or if it’s spam.

Onsite SEO is still relevant and likely always will be. However, nearly every recent study by trusted SEO companies has shown that links are not only still effective. Their effectiveness is actually increasing.

In some of the most competitive industries, this has always been known. Other competitive industries like automotive are still trying to make up their mind about links. The confusion comes into play when one looks at the techniques. The old school “link-building” techniques are, for the most part, dead. The only way to get links is to do the hard work that Google wants to see: produce exceptional content and get it out to the people for them to share.

It’s all about authority. If your website and web pages have the proper amount of authority, you’re in much better shape than if you have very little. Authority must be determined by offsite measures. Anyone can say that their website content is the best on a subject. Google knows this. That’s why it’s so important for them to gauge the real authority of content and its source by looking to outside signals.

If you’re still relying on old school link-building techniques, then links are probably already dead for you. If you’ve modernized and taken on the more challenging task of link-earning, you’re probably heading in the right direction.

via Soshable http://ift.tt/1JZwIJb