Link build­ing helps make your site vis­i­ble to con­sumers who use search engines to find what­ev­er prod­uct you offer. This means more traf­fic (if done cor­rect­ly). And more traf­fic means you will hit your con­ver­sion goal (what­ev­er that might be) hard­er and bet­ter than your com­peti­tors that aren’t doing link build­ing, or aren’t doing it well.

You may have read a few arti­cles or heard about the “evils” or “dan­gers” of link build­ing. Even this week, a Google rep­re­sen­ta­tive came for­ward and warned peo­ple against link build­ing, say­ing it could “cause more prob­lems … than it actu­al­ly helps.”

But is this real­ly true? Let’s look at what link build­ing means now, and why it’s impor­tant.

1. What is Link Building Now?

Link build­ing is the art of cre­at­ing links to a site that appear to be nat­ur­al, but are not.

Natural Links

A nat­ur­al link is one that is earned sim­ply by pub­lish­ing con­tent. For exam­ple, your brand pub­lish­es an arti­cle. Peo­ple see it, like it, and link to it from their own web­site. This link says to the dig­i­tal world, “Hey, this is some­thing you need to know about!”

Over time, as more and more web­sites link to your brand’s web­site, Google takes notice and decides it is a pop­u­lar, author­i­ta­tive, or infor­ma­tive site. If you gar­ner enough of these links, your site will receive more vis­i­bil­i­ty in Google’s search results and earn more traf­fic, and because you rank well, more peo­ple will find you and link to you, fur­ther strength­en­ing your web­site’s vis­i­bil­i­ty.

For new­er or small­er brands, the prob­lem is you like­ly won’t earn enough prop­er links nat­u­ral­ly posi­tion for much of any­thing – espe­cial­ly not real­ly impor­tant traf­fic-dri­ving, site-con­vert­ing, mon­ey-pro­duc­ing search terms (key­words).

Types of Link Building

First let’s talk about what link build­ing is not. Link build­ing is not hir­ing a com­pa­ny, agency, or con­sul­tant to buy links to your site with secret meth­ods they won’t tell you about.

Google loud­ly dis­cour­ages link buy­ing. Though some can do it well, few get it right. When link buy­ing goes wrong, your site can suf­fer extreme penal­ties that bury you so deep in the search results that peo­ple won’t be able to find you when they’re search­ing for you. Peo­ple lose jobs.

Link cre­ation typ­i­cal­ly falls into the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories:

• Edi­to­r­i­al Links (nat­ur­al): Cre­ate great con­tent and peo­ple link to you. These are most­ly nat­ur­al and acquired through con­tent devel­op­ment, mar­ket­ing, and pro­mo­tion.
• Man­u­al Links (link build­ing): These are added by reach­ing out to oth­er web­sites, edi­tors, or rela­tion­ships your SEO has with oth­er con­tent providers. You pro­vide val­ue to them, though you don’t do a link exchange. Think viral mar­ket­ing, con­tent cre­ation on oth­er sites in top­ic nich­es, and influ­encer mar­ket­ing.
• Self-Cre­at­ed (spam­my link cre­ation or link buy­ing): This is the cat­e­go­ry you must be extreme­ly care­ful about. In the past, you could use this method to cre­ate pro­files in blogs with links to your site, add to direc­to­ries, sub­mit to arti­cle sites, or add a paid blog post on some­one else’s domain. Buy­er beware: these tac­tics aren’t 100 per­cent dead. When not done well, these links will hurt your site.

2. How Does Link Building Work Now?

Search engine algo­rithms, and the role links play in those algo­rithms, are quite com­plex. Think of it this way:

You go to a net­work­ing event. When you arrive, you see a large group of peo­ple sur­round­ing a man in the mid­dle of the room. The peo­ple are hang­ing on his every word.

Mean­while, at the far end of the room you see a man alone. Qui­et. Nobody seems to know who he is.

Which per­son are you most like­ly to want to talk to?

From a pure­ly busi­ness per­spec­tive, you want to find out why every­one is so enam­ored with the man sur­round­ed by so many inter­est­ed peo­ple.

That is the essence of how a search engine sees links to your site. Web­sites link to your site because they like your brand, what you have to say, or what your site offers. It is a sort of pop­u­lar­i­ty vote, so Google sees this and says that must be a qual­i­ty site.

Now, what if you go over to the mid­dle of the room and start ask­ing peo­ple why they are so engaged with this indi­vid­ual. The first per­son tells you, “Oh, I don’t actu­al­ly care. He just want­ed peo­ple to think he was impor­tant, so he paid me.”

What is your per­cep­tion of that individual’s val­ue now? It’s prob­a­bly low­er now, right? Then you ask more and more peo­ple and you find out every­one there is paid. So now you real­ize this per­son does­n’t have the busi­ness val­ue you thought he did and you will like­ly seek out oth­er, more trust­wor­thy peo­ple.

The search engines, espe­cial­ly Google, are the same way. If you’re nat­u­ral­ly pop­u­lar, they see you as hav­ing val­ue. If they found out you bought your friends (links) then they are like­ly to ques­tion your val­ue or even pun­ish you for fak­ing it.

3. Link Building – Why Content Isn’t Enough

You may have heard or been told that all you need is great con­tent. This is a myth. Yes, you need great con­tent, but you can’t rely com­plete­ly on great con­tent to reach con­sumers.

Great, link­able, sharable con­tent is nec­es­sary. But with­out the links to sup­port your site’s vis­i­bil­i­ty, you’ll be alone in a dark cor­ner of a par­ty, and no one will say hel­lo because they can’t see you.

For Google to see your con­tent as valu­able, oth­ers have to “tell” Google that it is valu­able. One of the most impor­tant ways Google under­stands val­ue is by look­ing at and eval­u­at­ing links.

Now, con­sid­er that 90 per­cent of the peo­ple who use Google search nev­er go past Page 1 when look­ing for some­thing online, who will know you are there? And if no one can see you because Google has not seen peo­ple link to you, then how will you get peo­ple to link to you?

If a tree falls in the for­est and no one is there, does it make a sound? Google is a mighty big for­est.

4. Link Builders: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

One of the most impor­tant aspects of link build­ing is mak­ing sure you hire some­one who knows all the ins and outs of acquir­ing links that appear to be nat­ur­al. This is not just in terms of link type, but how fast you acquire the links, the anchor text, and the quan­ti­ty. Don’t over­step in any of those areas because Google aggres­sive­ly penal­izes those that break their rules.

There are some quick ways to fig­ure out what your link per­son has in the works for you. Note: None of these are 100 per­cent true, but they can help you sep­a­rate a skilled, pro­fes­sion­al link builder from snake oil ped­dlers.

The Good

A link builder who is edu­cat­ed on how to prop­er­ly acquire links to your site won’t be cheap. This is one of the most impor­tant lessons for any­one pur­chas­ing these ser­vices to learn. Expen­sive does­n’t always mean good, but cheap will almost always mean bad.

Why? If you are prop­er­ly link build­ing, it means you have estab­lished rela­tion­ships, sought out sites where you can place a link and not trig­ger the Google algo­rithm or a man­u­al penal­ty. It means you don’t use blog net­works, arti­cle direc­to­ries, and guest post­ing (unless that guest post is on a qual­i­ty site, such as The Huff­in­g­ton Post or Time).

While there are excep­tions to every rule, if some­one tells you their plan is only to place links in mul­ti­ple paid direc­to­ries, forum post­ings, and pur­chased guest posts – run. These tac­tics may have worked two years ago, they are only suit­ed for sites where the goal is to make mon­ey for as long as they can. It is nev­er appro­pri­ate for your brand domain.

The Bad

Here’s a sam­ple list of some tech­niques to stay away from.

• Forum post­ings.
• Arti­cle direc­to­ries.
• PR sites (PR is OK, but using their site for links is not).
• Paid guest blog posts.
• Place­ment on sites that are not rel­e­vant to your industry/topic(s).
• Direc­to­ries in gen­er­al (unless they are reviewed and hand edit­ed).

The Ugly

The ugly side of link acqui­si­tion is the spam­my link buy. These links are often cheap, maybe even a few hun­dred dol­lars.

You prob­a­bly won’t notice any issues at first. All the new links will prob­a­bly give you a nice boost to start. But once Google fig­ures out that you bought bad links, your organ­ic traf­fic will most like­ly fall off a cliff.

Recov­ery is always expen­sive and there are some who nev­er recov­er. Nev­er pur­chase quan­ti­ty over qual­i­ty. Google knows about every wide­ly-used short­cut. Don’t be pen­ny wise and pound-fool­ish.

5. What Link Building Can’t Do For Your Brand

As pow­er­ful as link build­ing is, it can’t be your entire SEO plan. A full SEO strat­e­gy also must address tech­ni­cal SEO as well as on-page and off-page opti­miza­tion.

Even a site that has more nat­ur­al links than you could hope for won’t be eas­i­ly found in Google search if, for exam­ple, the site is slow, the meta tags aren’t opti­mized, or their page design keeps Google from index­ing them prop­er­ly.

Even if your link strat­e­gy is per­fect, there are many rea­sons you site won’t achieve its full poten­tial, so do not over­look this. How­ev­er, one thing is sure: no mat­ter how good those oth­er com­po­nents are han­dled, if you don’t have links, it’s like­ly that you’ll be nowhere to be found at those crit­i­cal moments when peo­ple are look­ing for you.