Since the coalition government took up an office there have been some significant cutbacks made to all areas to ensure that the national debt is minimized. No sector has gone unscathed with education, the NHS, and benefits all being affected. The costs to the government of online facilities have also come under the spotlight and over time 600 government-funded websites will be shut down to help cut spiraling costs by £1 million annually. To maintain these sites alone it takes £32 million of taxpayers’ money alone, and the Business Link website cost £35 million to run in 2009.
What is the impact of SEO and link building?
The shutdown of so many authority websites will have implications for national search results. Many of the websites that are being closed attract large amounts of visitors. They are seen as trusted and authoritative websites and are ranked well by Google and its counterparts. For websites that depend on high-quality link building to these sites, there could be a severe drop in website rankings.
However, there is a positive side to this gloomy state of affairs as all this change is also creating opportunities. The vacuum created by the loss of these government sites will need to be filled in some markets and this leaves the road open to other websites to step into the frame and reach the key positions on the Google SERPs. In the past, this would never have been realized as government sites command so much authority they posed too much competition for their rivals. It is also possible that the replacement site could scrape some of the content from the redundant sites which will support their own SEO and attract new users. At www.linkbuilding.com we offer SEO link-building services to our clients to support their business and their website optimization efforts.