Is link building all its cracked up to be?

Link Building is by far the most talked about aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  There are several question about link building and what to do with it on your website. Is it effective? What Kind of impact can it have? Are all links the same? and many more where these came from.  I intend to answer a few of these questions today!

Is link building efective?

The simple answer is yes.  What sets Serp’s website ranking from a page rank perspective seems to be the amount of (quality) back links.  While the page rank’s value in SEO has been the topic of debat for some time it must have some inherent value.  I have seen websites with low to no page rank get great results so page rank in some cases has no real meaning.  I believe that in competitive keywords is where we see the page rank really have an impact.

Link building is effective simply because it tells the search engines how many other websites approve of your content.  Approval goes along way online with the search engines.  When you visit a website if you see that it has tons of comments and lots of fans on its facebook you are more likely to stick around and read or come back over and over again.  Websites would not link to you unless thye believed in you.

There is a difference in links.  Quality over quantity is the key.  Ask your self, would you rather have 100 back links from similar websites  or 10,000 back links from websites that have nothing in common.  Remember it is about trust and the search engines can count on links from similar websites much more than from non similar websites.  Just as we do in the real world.

What kind of impact can link building have?

Out of all the SEO tools link building seems to be the catalyst that move a ranking higher faster.  You can take a website that has been alive less than 2 months and do nothing but link building and get top search results.  Link building has power that is for sure. That does not mean anything if you have poor on site SEO.

With the major changes to the article websites and devaluing the link juice, quality links mean more than ever.  Again quality is what Google is looking for.  A few good quality links can help you out rank your competition.  Going after good links can not be stressed enough.  They are the building blocks of good SEO.

Are all links the same?

The easy answer is no.  All links do provide some value, contrary to popular belief.  Every link has a different value asociated with it.  Consider a link form a page rank 2 website about legal service and a page rank 2 website about pet supplies.  Even if the value of the link from a link juice perspective were exactly the same they can help in a diferent way.  If both of these links point back to a website on lawyers then you could quickly argue that the legal service link will carry more weight with the search engines.

So the real answer is no, every link has different factors that effect its link power, including how many other websites it links to.  Quality websites may want to pass on a link to you, and after the fact you will find it may not be as valuable as once thought.  If the link does not pass on much juice it may not have an impact on the seo.

Spend the time needed to collect quality links from similar websites.  It will ensure that you will not see to many drops in results as the search engines change the algorithms in the future.

My advice!

Take every link that has some value to it.  Stay away from links that have no juice to them that do not have any similarity to your website.  You dont need any links working against you.  Watch out for the companies that e-mail you free links if you link to them.  Chances are they are not good to have around.  Remember the rule if it is free chances are it is not really free.  You might get some negative link juice based on the quality of the incoming link.  No one wants to go backwards with SEO.