Guest Blogging Isn’t Dead: 5 Top Link-Building Myths Debunked
Every year, sometimes every quarter, a new list of trends sweeps the SEO world. Entrepreneurs can quickly find themselves inundated with the latest search marketing news touting that traditional techniques are dead, new methods are king or claiming that no matter what you do, you can’t get ahead. These blanket threat headlines are usually little more than themselves clickbait tactics. Google and business owners should have the same goal: to deliver the best possible experience for the user.
The tactics used by savvy, worthwhile SEO services to help get your company in front of Internet users should fall in line with those goals. If proposed tactics, internal or external, run afoul of these common link-building mistakes, consider the possibility that some of these myths might also be derailing your efforts.
#1: Guest Blogging Isn’t Dead
“Stick a fork in it,” Matt Cutts famously said about guest blogging. Since then, a wealth of information has come out to show that spammy guest blogging on unrelated sites just to build backlinks was the focus of the comment, not actual blogging on topics of interest to readers that builds audiences and relationships across websites.
The distinction is important. Google wants sites to be interdependent. It strives to help build worthwhile relationships while identifying spammy tactics. The algorithm is getting smarter at finding irrelevant and unrelated posts, but sharing information with partners in the industry will never fall out of favor.
#2: Neither Are Backlinks
Backlinks are still a measure of some importance to the Google algorithm, but it appears that they are less important than in its earliest days. What may be more important than the link itself is the context surrounding the link and user activity with it. Bounce rates from link, time spent on site after following a link, and similar metrics may mean that a backlink is just the anchor for a whole host of other data that Google’s algorithm can use to determine quality. More isn’t always better in this case, but more links with quality are definitely better than fewer or spammy backlinks.
#3: You Can Fix Negative Backlinks
And what about negative backlinks? If your company made the mistake of going to a cheap, spammy source that said $99 (off the usual $199 price, of course) would get you 99 high-quality backlinks and suddenly your site dropped 10 to 20 pages in Google … you know that feel. The myth claims that you can never really recover. Rebuild with a new domain, the same type of black-hatter nonsense sputters, offering you a discount on site-building services.
Forget it. You won’t fool Google with a new domain name. Reclaim your authority with the Back Link Disavow tool and best practices from Google. Then get a fresh start with white-hat SEO from a trusted authority.
#4: DA Isn’t the Core Link-Building Metric
Or maybe it’s Trust Flow. Citation Flow? Organic search numbers? The fact is that the major SEM companies out there don’t know exactly what Google is after, and regular algorithm updates mean that the specifics change all the time. We do know that Google wants what is right by the customer. According to Page One Power, “A trusted SEO company will analyze your website against the competition, looking for opportunities to improve your website’s rankings in search engines by updating your site to better meet user needs.”
SEO services should take all of these figures into account, along with site loading speed and other onsite metrics, and build for a better user experience. Such changes, along with building a backlink portfolio that connects you with related, relevant sites, is likely to deliver improvements to rankings regardless of which third-party system you choose to monitor.
#5: Unlinked and Nofollowed Citations or Links Aren’t Worthless
The best SEO services will likely suggest you track down unlinked mentions of your brand, and with good reason. These are ready-to-go organic link-building opportunities. Even if they aren’t linked at all, they provide a chance for Google to recognize your brand and relate it to the topics mentioned on the page where they’re found. Nofollowed links don’t have to be followed for Google to consider them relevant to the page that they are on, even if you choose not to be associated with where they may go.
This means that both types aren’t worthless, but they might not be supplying value to the link’s target, or allowing the potential value to flow back to your site. Organic, followed links are almost always best, unless you’re linking to somewhere spammy or a site that violates Google’s terms of service. Even then, simply linking elsewhere may be better than a nofollow when it comes to building your own site’s rankings.
Avoiding these five myths (and those who purport to follow them) can give you a leg up in the search-engine optimization and marketing game. Moving at the speed of business, no one ever starts on equal footing. Choosing the right path and keeping your customers (and end users) in mind ensures that you’ll end up exactly where you deserve to be.
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