Backlinking is Undead!

One thing is for sure, back-linking is perhaps one of the more misunderstood and Mal-advised tools in the SEO arsenal.
Over the past few weeks I have seen many articles giving less than accurate advice with regard to back-linking, and many people are under the assumption that back-linking is dead from a beneficial standpoint.

While it is not dead, many people use back-linking incorrectly and this may account for the incorrect perception.

For example: using spamming techniques and purchasing links will get you either penalized or banned from search engines. To many, this is how they understand back-linking, and that methodology would negate any possible benefit.

In most cases, it can be a recipe for disaster.

Consider what would happen if instead of that, you effectively used a social media build, replete with back links, utilized a news feed and possibly submitted articles carefully written with an eye on beneficial keywording, to a number of new oriented websites?

You could see your efforts rewarded beyond your expectations.

Keep in mind as well, that all SEO methods use link building to establish a website’s authority.
Relevance in key-wording and back-linking is not only instrumental, it is mandatory.

Aside from the obvious traffic increase is also the potential increase in realized sales. The down side is that backlink quantity will not guarantee results; your efforts must be done with skill to make them appear organic.

Broken and irrelevant linking will be taken into account by the search engine when calculating your rank. Using link-exchanges is one way to legitimately build your back-links but this must be done very carefully. Most purchased link programs are either fraudulent or work counter to to your goals.

These can be, and usually are replete with dead links.

Also, the habit of  posting to every site you come across, will not accomplish your ends. This will usually result in the opposite result, and using anchor text that does not match your keywords, andis another common mistake that erases any possible benefit.

Many people may have their back-linking figured out from an implementation standpoint, but they never monitor nor maintain them after that; suddenly all benefit is either negated or is possibly helping someone else out.  Broken links, improper or no use of 301 redirects, using websites with page rankings of only 0,1 or 2 will adversely impact your efforts as well.

After that, is it any wonder that someone who has hundreds of back-links going nowhere, sees the guy with only three back-links to high page ranked sites and correctly configured 301s, getting all the traffic and incorrectly makes the assumption that back-links are meaningless.

He is thinking; “How can he have all that traffic with 3 links and I have hundreds and my ranking is going nowhere?”

Consider that at the end of the day, after all of the correct tweaking and back-linking, the greatest single benefit is regular, quality content that matches your linking efforts. Great content combined with great back-links, will show you the single greatest return for your efforts.

Usually, the problem is that the very people doing it wrong, can have blogs like this and may be prolific writers. Their writings maybe incorrect, their advice convoluted, but they could have a decent sized reader base with someone else linking to this content with a correct back-linking campaign. This is how the incorrect perception spreads, even becoming viral.

At Metamend, we have industry professionals to assist you with your own back-linking and content, to get the traffic looking for you to your site.