How link Building Strategies Have Evolved Over The Years?
Search engine optimization or SEO is nowadays used as a highly dynamic method of digital marketing. Among the various strategies and tactics that are used for SEO, the one that stands out the most is definitely link building. The discipline of link building has evolved the most over the years and it is one thing that has taken the world of SEO by storm. There was once a time when the whole scope of link building was interspersed with spun content, link pyramids, automated spam posts as well as numerous other gimmicks. However, over last 10 years, link building has changed drastically, making link building more quality-driven and refined. A lot of such developments were driven directly by the search engines. The Penguin algorithm updates presented by Google really helped in getting rid of spammy links.
While the best SEO agency in Bangalore nowadays makes use of clean and efficient link building methods to improve a website’s online ranking, this wasn’t always the case. Here are some of the ways in which link building methods have changed over the years.
- First and foremost, the penalties associated with crappy links are way harsher these days than they were in the past. There was a time when link schemes were considered bad but the sites were not penalized for that. However, during recent years, Google has come forward to aggressively penalize the sites having faulty backlink profiles. So if you choose to engage in some kind of spammy link scheme these days, you have a greater chance of suffering from a manual penalty which can involve dropping your site from the SERPs. Although recovery is certainly possible, such link schemes can eventually set you back for months and even years.
- Even a decade ago, links were simply links and you could have easily managed to post non-contextual link directing back to some forum, article on some article directory or spammy blog comment or in a free community blog. However, poor quality and crappy links do not even work these days. The strict measures taken by Google help to make sure that methods are not even tolerated these days. Even site editor is aware of the fact that unless they keep their sites clean of spammy links, they are going to be penalized by Google. If Google eventually catches a site having spammy links, it is going to neutralize the value of such links, thereby leaving the site without any authoritative gains. In cases where Google finds out a definite pattern of illegal links, the site can get marked for algorithmic or manual penalties.
- Nowadays guest posts are considered to be main standard when it comes to building off-site links. Guest posting is the process of creating articles and then getting them published by some external publication. The main focus here is to come up with high quality content which can then be used for reaching out to a new audience. Therefore such content has greater value than simply meeting SEO needs. With guest posts, there is practically no penalty risk and creating content is not all that intensive or complicated which might take too much time and effort. While guest posts were considered to be a good strategy even before, nowadays it has evolved into the best method of generating healthy links.
- The links that are generated from diverse domains ensure greater value than the additional links obtained from same domain. It is due to the fact that the links function as 3rd party indicators of reliability and credibility. On the other hand, links generated from same domain presents with doubtful authority.