Is Link Building Dead?

• Jan. 25, 2006

I’ve been thinking about links a lot lately.  Wondering how important they are.

 

After all, we’ve been preaching link building to clients for quite a few years now.  And every so often someone will come along and say “yes but with the recent <Insert Google Update Name Here> update, I heard that links weren’t as important as they once were.”

 

While this is partly true, there is more to it than that.

 

Remember, Google was built on links.  Back when it was a Stanford project running out of a dorm room and called Backrub it was and still is based around the concept of links.

 

Granted Google has changed and morphed over the years but its foundation still is links.  It was back in 2002 when I first wrote about the importance of link building  and what I wrote there still holds true today - the best links are those that are quality links.  In other words related an relevant to your site.

 

But link building can be more than a task that you MUST do.  It can be a task you want to do.

 

Last week I introduced you to a tactic called Link Baiting in which you create content to lure people into linking to your site.  But this is just one aspect of link building.  There are many others.

 

While baiting may be relatively easy - at least easier than trudging through thousands of URLs trying to find a gem of a link it does illustrate something interesting:

 

The value of links isn’t just in their quality - it’s also in their quantity.

 

You see, we have articles on this site which have been linked to by various different sources- not just other SEM firms but other businesses as well.  We’ve gotten links from affiliate companies and even real estate agents.

 

And it is the value of these links - the value in the number of links - which also helps promote this site.

 

Because while I could spend hours and hours trying to search out new linking opportunities for this site, I find it easier to write an article a week on something topical and watch the links grow from there.

 

If I hit the right topic at the right time, links grow more quickly.  For example, our review of the Florida update of a couple years ago garnered many links to the article.

 

Not only that, but other portions of our site get linked to on a regular basis because of the articles.  The archives page, for example, has almost 100 links mostly due to the articles.

 

And, even though they aren’t all “relevant” links they still count as links to the site.

 

This is where volume can help.  Because I can tell you that hundreds of PR3 or PR4 links are worth as much or more than 1 or 2 PR7 or PR7 links.  And it’s much easier to find those hundred PR3 or PR4 links than those with higher PageRank values.

 

Finally, to help you decide if link building is dead, I provide you with more evidence.

 

It’s not just Google that looks at links.  In fact because of its success in looking at those links all the other engines use links in some form as well.

 

Google is pickier about the links it considers important but Yahoo! and MSN aren’t as choosy.  So when you are doing your link building or link baiting or whatever you are doing to build those links remember that you aren’t only doing this for Google.  Google only accounts for about 37% of the web referrals.  By only focusing on Google you could be alienating 2/3 of your market.

 

So before you go disqualifying a link because it has a low PageRank consider the value it has in other engines.

 

And also consider the value of quantity versus quality.  As I mentioned above:  It’s much easier to build 100 PageRank 3 or 4 links than a few PageRank 6 or 7 links.

 

Rob Sullivan

Head Organic Search Strategist

Search Engine Positioning by Searchengineposition

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