Is link building a dead art or is it still a valuable tool in search engine ranking?

Link building and SEO

Link building is essential for SEO since, through this strategy, the domain/website validates its authority or reputation in the given field.

Each domain has an invisible rating with search engines.  This rating represents the authority of the site. Using links sends a clear message to search engines about the trustworthiness of your website. Therefore, the more authoritative links you have, the more trustworthy the website will be.  But be careful.  Don’t abuse or over use links because it can have the opposite of the desired affect.

The abuse of link building and its penalties

Under the premise that an abundance of links assign authority to the domain, many strategists opted to buy links to increase their ranking. It seemed an innovative and effective strategy since search engines rank websites better if they have more authority.

However, Google became aware of this abusive SEO practice and enacted rules to prevent it.

You have to understand that Google’s primary purpose is a focus on the user having a positive browsing experience.

Google soon realized that many of the links had no relation to the published content (known as link stuffing) or were referrals from sites not very well respected.

“If a link is a way of accrediting the quality of a site, and you are the one who creates most of these accreditations for your site, does this give the best impression of your website? Our best advice regarding link building is to focus on improving your site’s content, and everything else – including links – will follow, ” concludes Google.

Anything that gives us a better understand of the website content is key to working the SEO of a website.

So, should you work on the link building of your website if Google is cracking down on link building?

Yes, but it must be carried out with genuine work and clean SEO strategies, that is, no crazy link stuffing with purchased links. The idea of ​​publishing quality content is that users find what they are looking for on your website and trust the references you give them. Doing this will not only make your users loyal but you will also be rewarded with good positioning in the search engines which, as we all know, will lead to much greater traffic, giving you an edge over your competition.

A good SEO strategy includes many factors, but the main one is creating original, quality content.