You may be wondering how important link building is for SEO, as Google’s algorithm gets more and more intelligent. Does link building still make sense?
Well. In fact, good link building is more important than ever to achieve success with search engine optimization.
Note: good link building. Because Google has indeed become too intelligent to be fooled by buying large amounts of low-quality links. That’s right.
At the end of 2018, Google launched an update that shook many industries: the E.A.T. update. This update makes Google’s intentions and preferences crystal clear and has made it more important than ever to build a strong backlink profile.
Quality content and getting strong backlinks to your website – along with the technology of your website – have always been the most important factors of SEO
What is the E.A.T. update?
The E.A.T. update was a late 2018 Google algorithm update, also known as the “medic update”. The update owes its name to the fact that it mainly focused on sites in the medical sector and other YMYL industries.
E.A.T. stands for:
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness (reliabilityIn other words, this update demonstrates Google’s commitment – even more than it already did – to websites that can be seen as an expert and authority in the field they are writing about and whose articles provide reliable information.
This applies in particular to so-called YMYL websites. And we have felt that.
Do you remember where you were when E.A.T. the world changed?
I say “we” because I can say firsthand that E.A.T. has had a significant impact on many websites.
I remember well. The late summer of 2018. At that time, I was still working as a content manager for a real estate startup. To develop myself in SEO, I tinkered with my websites in my spare time to discover what led to good listings and free traffic.
One was the website for my mother’s practice. In one year we had grown from 0 to about 1000 visitors per day. Not bad, for a website we could both spend a few hours a week on at most.
And then E.A.TThat afternoon I opened Google Analytics. I don’t even remember exactly why I did that back then, probably to enjoy the good grades again.
Only, those good numbers almost halved overnight.
I did some research and soon came across this update. In the days that followed, I saw the number of visitors decrease even further, until we finally had about half left over from before the update.
That was purely because we had fallen a few positions overnight with a number of important keywords.
As painful as this anecdote is, I share it anyway because it shows very well how important it is these days to build the authority behind your website. The website I’m talking about contained excellent quality articles (it was not for nothing that we got so high in the first place).
My mother has all the necessary degrees to write about what she writes. Still, in this industry, it was not enough to beat established names such as Holland & Barrett, who sell the same products like them.
Incidentally, we managed to reclaim some of those lost seekers by targeting the aspects of E.A.T. to get started. If you want to hear more about it, send me an email ([email protected]) and I can devote an article to it.
The logic behind E.A.T.
In chapter 3, we already briefly talked about YMYL. As you may remember, it stands for “your money or your life.” This concerns searches where an incorrect or incompetent answer can be bad for someone’s health or financial situation, for example.
Earlier, I used the example of someone looking up the symptoms of a heart attack, where you want to avoid finding an article that advises taking two aspirin and waiting for it to pass. But E.A.T. This also applies to, for example, someone who is looking for financial advice for an investment or taking out a loan. Wrong advice can cause considerable financial damage here.
Anyone can write an article about that and try to rank it in Google, but not everyone knows what they are talking about. This is sometimes not immediately apparent from the website or the article, not even for Google.
That is why Google always gives priority to sources whose quality and authority in this area are extra guaranteed when searching for these types of fields.
ef and less qualitative. When you offer your product or service via the internet, you want your content to be found with buy permanent backlinks.
The importance of good links to your content is therefore great. Without good (manual) link building, your content will be difficult or even impossible to find.
With good links you build your brand awareness and people find your product or service better in the search engines. With good links, better SEO.
Why invest in good links?
There are several reasons why you should invest in good links. Below are a few reasons:
Already mentioned before and the most important reason: you want your content to be seen as the content that should be shown to users. Good links show Google that your content is relevant and should be shown high in the search results.
Good links contribute 40% to your place in the search engines.
Good links ensure more traffic to and from your website.
With good links, you build your brand, your brand awareness.
You collect links by collaborating with other companies, so you build a network with other companies.Provide quality backlinks
It is, therefore, important that many companies link to your website with their website. If they do, Google will see that as a recommendation and include your website in its search platform. The backlinks you collect must be qualitative.
By qualitative, Google means that the links are from real companies and are relevant to your business. If you collect backlinks from spam websites or directories, Google will notice this immediately, and you may even receive a penalty. To build a natural link structure, which contributes to better SEO.
If those companies still have a lot of authority, then you share in that. Google also looks at the reputation of the web page where the link is on the backlink. When you receive a backlink from a page on a website that does not have a strong reputation at all, it will have little impact on your SEO.
Google also wants to know exactly what a link to another website represents. That is why qualitative backlinks consist of a piece of relevant text, and it is not useful to link with, for example, words such as “click here.”
Also make sure that the anchor text of the different links is different. Avoid over-optimization of the anchor text. Google Penguin penalizes this and that in turn makes your findability more difficult.
Also important is the title of the link, the alt attribute. This title contains text that matches the information of the associated page. The title contributes to your findability for that combination of words.
You now know what qualitative backlinks look like and are created, but now you still have to collect them…
This is how you collect backlinks
Collecting backlinks, link building, takes time. It is a continuous process that requires a reasoned approach. You can collect good backlinks in several ways:
To collect backlinks, it is interesting to become a guest blogger on other websites. Every website can use inspiring texts. You will not only receive good backlinks through someone else’s website, but you will also reach a new target group and build your brand awareness.
Of course it is advisable to publish articles on related websites of companies that are relevant to your product or service. Such companies are often very happy with your content: a win-win situation.
If you want to know which blog sites are available within your field or market, you can use Google Blog search. You can often also quickly find platforms for entrepreneurs and companies by consulting the search engines; D.
When you register your company on a homepage, ensure that the homepage is relevant to your business. Start pages with many links are often not very valuable; they only give a limited amount of authority to the link. Examples of start pages are startpagina.nl, startgids.nl and Snelstarten.nl.
Another way to get backlinks is article marketing. You publish articles with valuable content about your business in all kinds of places on the internet. Of course, you link to your website from there. This not only ensures excellent backlinks you also generate more traffic to your website. Make sure that the websites on which you publish articles are relevant and valuable.
With press releases, you not only provide publicity but also obtain backlinks. You can easily include some backlinks in that press release. The trick is to find the right balance; you don’t want readers to experience your press release as spam.
