Why Backlinking Is Bad For SEO

For all those who may not know, backlinking is when new website owners will try to get established websites to link their new site. People use this method to showcase to Google that they are in fact, a reliable site. This is now an outdated technique, but most people think that it is the most efficient and effective way in which you can get backlinks for your site. Yes, Google does see your site as more reliable, and authoritative if other sites are linking to your site, but forced link building is not the best way to rank with Google anymore.

Backlinking is bad because search engines are smarter than they ever were before, and when they realise that you are using white hat techniques to get backlinks, they will penalise your site accordingly. Thus using this ancient technique can and will hurt your website SEO. When SEO is the only thing that most website owners are worried about, then read this post on why it is bad and what you can do instead.

You read correctly, and there are other ways in which you can get backlinks to your website without asking for favours at the cost of a great deal of time and effort. Link building is an excellent thing for your website if it occurs naturally.

Is link building bad for SEO

Simply put, no! Link building from reputable and authoritative websites is great for SEO. Google’s guidelines state that the websites that link to your website play a big part in signalling the quality of your website. So if a big website puts links in their posts to your site, this means your site must be good.

Well why is backlinking really bad for SEO

1. When you have multiple backlinks to a new site, Google will eventually identify this as something artificial, and they can and will drop you lower on search results. Whereas if you just write content that meets their guidelines, then your site can grow and go higher in search rankings. A thing to remember is that your site will rank lower for insufficient content, and it will get penalised for artificial link building.

2. Another thing to consider is when you do backlinking the old fashioned way you have to write a post that is helpful and original for someone else’s website. Then you will have to hope they like your work and are willing to publish it on their site in hopes of them putting a link to your site. It is a bad tactic because your site is new, and like a child, it needs your attention full-time.

If you write only nine posts for your website, and then you write another nine posts for other authoritative sites, for backlinks, your site will suffer for this. The reason is simple; you have little content on your site. The reason “content is king” is because the more content you have on your site, the more viewers you will get. It is like saving money, the more you save, the more you will have at the end of the year.

3. Webmasters use link building to get immediate traffic to their website, but Google spends about a year testing your website on search results and after that, if your site is not rank worthy for page #1 then a hundred backlinks cannot get you to page #1.

So it is infinitely better to concentrate on your content quality, content length and long-tail keywords that other people are not writing about. Because if your post content is not answering someone’s question fully, they will leave and go somewhere else for a better answer. If this happens repeatedly, the algorithm will push your article down in search results, so that someone else’s post that had zero link building strategies but excellent content will be at the top of search results.

How to get backlinks the right way

1. It is incredibly easy, and the answer is statistics will do all the link building you can imagine. Write to the experts in your niche and ask them about statistics on topics you write about. Furthermore, make your statistical sheets for your blog post by doing the research yourself. Think of it like this. Bloggers know that for SEO (search engine optimisation) and E-A-T (expertise authoritativeness trustworthiness), no one wants to link to random websites. The only time people link to another website is for a quote or stat sheet.

Make a phone call or write an email asking for numbers on certain things. Most companies will respond in kind because they want the advertisement. In this way, you will be doing organic link building.

2. Another great way to build backlinks is by making a YouTube channel, interviewing other bloggers and perhaps making a podcast. With this method, you can create a brand out of your blog. People always want to talk to the person behind the proverbial voice, and this will drive link building to your site because the algorithm will see the links from YouTube as another great signal for your website.

Beware of backlink scare scams all over the web

Some people say that you have to get backlinks to your site for ranking and organic traffic, but if organic traffic is served up anyway why do you want to spend time, your written work and money on a backlink to your site.

Google will test your site for a year for all kinds of statistics. The most important and relevant factor for your ranking is the quality of your content. Ask yourself this, are you writing something new and helpful, or is it better than what everybody else is writing on the topic?

If yes was your answer to both the questions then after a year, you will rank organically. Why spend valuable time and money on things that will not get you anywhere, especially when you have one of the biggest companies in the world to contend with, and their army of humans rating websites.

I have seen people lose their minds all over YouTube with “the latest Google update” that everyone should be afraid of, but one thing about Google that will never change and that is the user experience. As a website owner, all you should concentrate on is a great user experience.

Final thoughts

It may seem like a long shot in the dark right now when you are new to website building, and organic traffic is low, but you can build links the right way by just focusing on your content. Many people feel underqualified for building a brand, but nowadays, by using free tools online like YouTube, you can create a brand, it is simpler than you imagine.