Tons of SEO professionals and webmasters nearly collapsed on their keyboards in the wake of Google’s Penguin and Panda updates. SEO professionals believed that “link building was dead…” and this was a major concern, to put it mildly. However, as time passed and both webmasters and SEO professionals adapted to the change, the fear dissipated regarding link building for search engine optimization (SEO). In fact, the initial reaction was a bit over the top.

Link building continues and should/should continue as it is an essential aspect of search engine optimization. All search engines are driven by links.

With that said, we’ll move on with more information on link building, which you may find exceptionally helpful and informative.

Link Building Misconceptions That Should Be Dismissed Immediately

– Don’t create links and make sure your content is awesome. This is far from the truth… In fact, even Google’s Matt Cutts said that “linking is still the best way we’ve found to find out how relevant or important someone is…”

This statement came from the head of Google’s web spam team. For starters, the guy who released the Penguin and Panda updates. So maybe now we can all just relax and try to breathe again? Maybe…

You see, while backlinks are still a vital aspect of SEO and it’s also one of the best methods search engines use to rank and index content – ​​the old way of linking is a thing of the past. Those days are gone!

Google is now targeting particular types of link building methods/strategies. These particular strategies are the ones webmasters and SEO professionals should avoid or risk algorithm and manual penalties, which Google has the power to uphold at any given time.

Things to avoid when building backlinks

Google’s goals and hopes with the implementation of Penguin and Panda were to get rid of spam and suspicious link building scams. Bottom line, stay away and don’t use “quick fix” link building tricks. For a long time, website owners and webmasters spent a lot of time and money exchanging links with other websites to increase page rankings.

However, these link building methods offered nothing of value to users. Its mere existence was to develop as many links as humanly possible and trick search engine algorithms to advance a website’s page ranking. These are the types of link building methods that Google discourages, and now with Penguin’s implementation, if someone uses these unethical link building strategies, they will be heavily penalized for such practices.

Do not use the following link building tactics:

1. Cross Linking or Exchanging links with other web pages for the sole purpose of creating a link tree to increase the rank of the page… This is the type of tactic that must be subjected to a lethal injection. DO NOT DO THIS!

2. It is not recommended to place links to a website in low value directories, since most of these online directories are not good. You will be able to tell the difference between the low value online directories and the really good ones. Make sure they are applicable and relevant to your business, industry, and/or niche.

3. Guest Blogging or Guest Posting for the sole purpose of inserting keywords, stuffed links within the body of the content is also a big NO, NO! As mentioned above, you will know which blogs are high value based on domain authority or social shares.

Here are some invaluable link building tips…

4 Tips on Safe and Effective Link Building Strategies

Now that we’ve established unethical link building tactics and that Google is, in fact, attacking them, we’re ready to move on to what we should all really focus on, which are four basic building principles that will make your link building efforts! construction are invaluable and their SEO campaigns are a complete success!

Stellar, quality content. It’s been said many times, but once again it won’t hurt one bit… Creating high-quality content is vital! High-quality content provides value to online users. So you will naturally/organically get quality, Google friendly and approved links. In addition, this will also develop “Link Gain”. If you stick with engaging, high-quality content, eventually, your website will be recognized and your link building will go into autopilot mode.

Keep the links applicable/relevant. Google counts on your inbound and outbound links to stay relevant. For example, the links must be connected to other web pages that have a direct and organic connection to your business, industry and/or niche in your business. Example: If you have a website that offers professional cleaning services and you link to a website with professional cleaning crews, this would make a lot of sense to Google instead of linking to a medical equipment company that flies at night.

Less is more. With the new ways of building links, less is definitely more! Using just a few links from a small number of high-quality websites is much more valuable than using a large number of links from low-quality, spam and suspicious websites. Quality over quantity will win out in the link building process. Focus on deep links when searching for high-quality websites.

Investment in social networks. Social media networks and/or platforms are more important than ever. Although Facebook shares or likes are not perceived as links, they nevertheless provide a great avenue to spread your message. Also, you will increase your brand visibility and drive users to your website. The content, which is shared across social media platforms, will organically boost and improve the visibility of a website. It is recommended that you use tools, such as – HootSuite or Buffer, so that you can schedule social media posts in advance.

As you know, the world of SEO is constantly changing and although it can become overwhelming at times, it is up to SEO professionals to adapt to these changes, so that your website stays up to date and becomes even more successful and fruitful. So when you hear people say that link building is dead, know that this is a total misconception and that link building is still a valuable aspect of SEO practices.