There are still many people who wonder every day linkbuilding does work. Unfortunately, in practice, link building does not receive the attention it deserves. Fortunately, this is becoming more popular worldwide and with this blog we try to provide you with some clarity, because link building is quite important. Why is this the case & why is little attention paid to it by most SEO Companies?
Why are backlinks important in 2018? Because Google itself says so!
Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, was asked the following question:
“We heard that RankBrain is the third-most-important signal contributing to results now. Would it be beneficial to us to know what the first two are?”
Yes. Absolutely. I can tell you what they are. It's content and left-wing going into your site.
Google has also stated in the past (2014) that backlinks are a very important part of the ranking algorithm.
Question: “Is there a version of Google that excludes backlinks as a ranking factor?”
We don't have a version like that, that is exposed to the public, but we have run experiments like that internally, and the quality looks much worse. It turns out that backlinks, even though there's some noise and certainly a lot of spam, for the most part are still a really big win in terms of quality of search results. So we've played around with the idea of turning off backlink relevance and, at least for now, backlink relevance still really helps in terms of making sure that we return the best, most relevant, most topical search results.
If you also look at the operation of search engines such as Google, it is also logical that backlinks play an important role within the complex algorithms used to rank search results. (Google Algorithm is the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). )
Why?
- The internet is made up of content, links & Social Signals. This can also be divided into various options
- Search engines use these parts for it crawling and indexing the web and finding out which website pages there are.
- Placing a backlink takes effort and time, much more than sharing content via Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or Instagram, for example.
- Websites with a high authority are 'generally' aware of the value and therefore moderately link to external content or websites that are of low quality and not relevant to their theme.
- According to research by MOZ, among others, 60% of the determination of the keyword ranking still depends on the backlink profile.
- Daily sold We provide backlinks to many major SEO companies and that is not without reason.
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are important because research shows it worldwide and Google simply indicates it itself. Below I discuss two studies that have been done to prove this.
Study 1: Are Links Still a Powerful Ranking Factor? (New Study) – Stone Temple Consulting
Stone Temple Consulting conducted a study on the correlation between the number of backlinks and the ranking of a specific page based on the MOZ API. The research is based on previous research results from both MOZ and Search Metrics, both authoritative within the SEO industry. The correlation shown by these last two studies and the correlation of the Stone Temple Consulting study differ from each other because a different methodology was used to calculate the correlation.
The results of Stone Temple Consulting are divided into blocks, as shown in the overview below, and normalized totals have also been used.
Stone Temple Consulting's explanation is as follows:
I continued to use the normalized totals of the links, but grouped them in ranking groups of 10. Ie, I summed the normalized link totals for the top 10, did the same for ranking positions 11 to 20, 21 to 30, and so forth . I then calculated the correlations to see how they looked in terms of what it would take to rank in each 10 position block.
The correlations that these methods subsequently produce are much closer to the actual value that should be attributed to external backlinks within Google's ranking algorithm.
Study 2: How to Rank Number One in Google: A Study of 1 Million Pages – Matthew Barby
Matthew Barby has conducted research into the value of external backlinks, anchor text and a number of other on-page elements. For the sake of relevance and similarity of this article, I will only discuss the backlink related findings from this study, but you can read the full research that was done here. The research results below used data from Accuranker and Ahrefs.
The most important link-related results according to research:
On average, 23% of all links on the first page of Google point to the first result.
The number 1 result has on average more than 186 external backlinks, coming from unique domains, than the number 5 position.
The number 1 result has an average of 5,42% external backlinks, with an anchor text that matches the target keyword of the page in question.
Why is little attention paid to link building?
There are several reasons why link building does not receive the attention it deserves in practice and why you should be actively involved in it.
1. Link building has a history that is still important to many
Link building has gone through several ups and downs since the early years of Google and other search engines. There was once a time when link networks, comment spam, low-quality homepages and other large-scale manipulation techniques were the rule rather than the exception.
Even for low-quality websites without content, it was possible to rank within Google's top 5 search results for highly competitive search terms such as 'borrowing' and 'cheap borrowing' using international blog networks and link farms.
Google has always tried to prevent this and with the arrival of the Penguin algorithm and some other Google penalties, they have certainly succeeded to a certain extent. In addition to the actual effect, these updates have also had a strong psychological effect that makes people unsure whether it works.
2. Link building also takes a lot of time and effort
For many website owners, online marketing teams or people who work as marketers at a large company, it is a difficult and time-consuming task. And this often makes it not the most fun SEO part to work on.
It is also a difficult product for online marketing agencies like us. A client always wants to see results, better today than tomorrow. And while as an SEO consultant you largely have control over the results for technical and content-related (on-page) adjustments, you are highly dependent on third parties for link building. This makes it much more complex to estimate the impact in advance. We also often notice that our customers expect to be on page 3 after 4 to 1 weeks. while we clearly indicate that this requires much more time during the 1st conversation.
3. Content marketing is also something that is seen by many as the solution, but is it?
Content marketing has taken over a large part of the link building work from the link builders. In itself a good development, but in practice the emphasis is often more on social reach and exposure in general than on link building and improving authority and rankings of a page. Because there are still plenty of websites that rank well without any form of content on them.
Not just the focus on SEO techniques and content for 2018
The above studies and statements from Google show that link building has been very important in recent years and will remain very important in 2018 to rank well within the search engines. Therefore, make sure that link building receives sufficient attention within your company in 2017, and make sure that the focus is not only on SEO technology and content, because then you will completely miss the point.
Also take a look around our website.
Images are from the websites whose studies we shared.
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