How Gaining Inbound Links Will Still Reign Supreme in 2015
Date: December 19, 2014Category: Author: Jaren Martineau
In the past few years, Google has rolled out several changes in their ranking algorithms. Some of these have been large and drastic changes, while others have been minor adjustments or tweaks to existing algorithm updates. It is important to understand these changes going into 2015 in order to preserve and to improve your websites Google rankings. Some of these changes, most notably the Penguin algorithm update, have focused heavily on links.
As a short review for those who may not be aware, links are an incredibly important determining factor in Google’s ranking algorithm in deciding how high a website will rank in the search engine results pages (SERPS) for individual keyword searches. Unlike paid advertising through Google Adwords, the remaining search results (often referred to as organic search results), are prioritized and ordered according to Google’s perceived value of the website in relation to the search terms and location of the searcher. Google uses its own criteria to determine these rankings. One of the most prominent factors has always been inbound links to a website. The more quality inbound links a website has, the higher its perceived value is to Google. Inbound links are often looked at as a measurement of how valuable a webpage is to the internet. The more websites there are that link to a particular page or website, the more “votes” it has as to how popular the webpage is.
As time went on and it became common knowledge that the number of inbound links was such an important factor in getting a website to rank, people began to take advantage of this knowledge and build large numbers of inbound links in order to game the Google algorithm and increase their SERP rankings. Many SEO firms began very aggressive link building campaigns for their clients. Many of the tactics that were used were artificial in nature and did not really provide any value to end-users. Some of these tactics included spamming blog comments with links back to their clients website, large link exchange programs with other websites including websites whose subject matters were completely unrelated to each other, massive paid link schemes, and many others. While these tactics did build a large link profile to their clients websites, they were very spammy in nature, did not provide value to web searchers, and artificially inflated the value of irrelevant websites in the SERPs.
Google’s Penguin update came along in 2012 and has been adjusted throughout 2013 to specifically address these low value link building programs. This algorithm update penalized websites that had used these low quality methods of improving their websites rankings. Many SEO’s felt as if the update had killed link building and the value of inbound links in their SEO efforts. The truth of the matter is that while the updates did kill those illegitimate ways of gaining inbound links, the value of legitimate inbound links remains. Links are still king! In order for your website to rank highly in the SERPs for competitive searches, you still must have inbound links. The qualifier, however, is that these links must be quality links. If you build links today and going into 2015 in ways that do not provide value to web searchers or that are not natural, not only are you wasting your time in these efforts, but your efforts could very well penalize your website rankings.
With links still so very important in increasing your websites search engine rankings, today and going into 2015 it is very important that any link building efforts are done by someone who is aware of this background history to link building, and is fully aware of the legitimate methods of link building that remain. Whatever you do, don’t hire someone to perform any link building efforts who is not fully aware of what types of links to avoid. The idea is to attract natural inbound links. At Infinity Dental Web, we like to refer to it as link cultivating instead of link building. Attracting links requires high quality content that people are interested in. But not only is having or creating this content important, the content must be promoted so that people find it and link to it. Gaining these high quality inbound links in 2014 is still one of the most significant ranking factors for your website and we predict that this will still be the case in 2015. At Infinity Dental Web, we are actively developing new strategies and services to help our clients to outperform the competition in the SERPs and to improve the performance of their websites. We have worked in conjunction with other key industry experts about link cultivation efforts and are regularly involved in the most current cutting-edge industry information and training.
With Christmas just days away, we would like to wish you all happy holidays, merry Christmas and a happy New Year! 2015 is going to be a great opportunity for your practice and your website! Come share it with us!
If I put a lot Of inbound links from different domains, can this affect my website or can it get me penalized by Google?