Links are far from a simple issue. There once was a time when SEO experts and webmasters envisioned link building strategies as an A + B = C process, and Google sort of did as well. Get links, establish your popularity, and rank well. That time has long since passed. Link building now achieves a whole swathe of things for your site, not least acting as an indicator that internet users are truly engaging with your content.
Google moved on from a simple interpretation of links fairly early on in the process, but it took time for the search engine optimisation industry to catch up. We’ve managed to grasp the fact that Google assesses the quality of links in a complex way, but many site owners don’t realise exactly how much their high quality link building plan affects their site’s progress. Links establish, among other things:
*Your professional reputation. One of the foremost things high quality link building establishes is your standing in comparison to your competitors. If no-one wants to link to you, chances are you’re not particularly important in your field.
*Your trustworthiness. Links also establish that other site owners trust the information your site holds. One way to ruin this is to have obviously paid-for links in your profile. You can talk to our experts at SEO Consult about the effects of paid links, and your options for link building in the UK.
*User engagement. Something that has been highlighted recently is the fact that Google uses links to gauge the depth to which users engage with your site. Users who only lightly touch on your site aren’t likely to link to you, but those who really engage do. User engagement seems to be becoming more important to Google as time goes by, so it’s worth thinking about linkbait for users as part of your SEO plan.