Inbound Marketing Strategy Advertising Business Branding Concept Why Simply Building Links Doesn't Work Anymore Even people who know next to nothing about SEO, content quality, or engagement know one thing: links are supposed to help you get noticed online. Advertising Continue reading below In some ways, that's true. In others, it couldn't be more off-base. Yes, high quality links can help Google determine a page's authority and relevance. They can also provide context for your readers and help you build valuable SEO links between pages on your site. However, poor quality links can hurt your SEO more than they help it. And that's by design rather than accident. Here's why: Years ago, black-hat SEOs made their fortunes manipulating search results.
They did this by buying links or fax list working dozens of them into spammy pages in an attempt to manipulate Google's search results. Google, unsurprisingly, didn't like it. As such, the search engine has developed an algorithm update to address this. The change was called the Penguin Update, and it went into effect in April 2012. Designed to punish sites that use spammy backlink strategies, the Penguin Update sought to ensure that sites focusing on links did so for quality and relevance rather than perceived SEO gains. Advertising Continue reading below Today, sites that use spammy backlink strategies pay for it in the form of penalties from Google and less respect in the online environment. Additionally, cheap, link-heavy sites are out of fashion with content creators around the world, and many teams and individuals simply refuse to create content that doesn't provide value beyond its backlinks. But the craziest thing is that the marketer who thinks crappy content will work still exists.
Here's the proof: an example of my copywriting agency speaking to an inbound prospect with this mindset just in October. Are marketers still creating content for links? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. In mid-October, my team received a request from a marketer to create “just for backlinks” content. The project consisted of web pages for local dentists. We don't create content like that. So when we sent him a quote for as well as Google, and not just created secondary to a link, here's what he said. I am not joking. (Names removed for confidentiality reasons.) happy mill customer 1 The reason we refer people like this elsewhere is that 1) first, at the rates they charge, it's impossible to retain competent writers, and 2) writing this content would mean we would have to lower all standards we have for our other clients who receive attractive copy.
