Backlinks or inbound links, as we have seen, are useful to get good search engine raking because they indicate that your website is popular. Another website adding a link to your website/page is a vote that you earn for your website. It shows that other websites think your site is worth visiting.
But here is the hard truth: getting quality backlinks is not a cakewalk; nor can it be done overnight. Persistence and patience serve you well when it comes to backlink building.
Some Backlink Building Practices Backfire
The hardest of all truths related to backlink building is that some of the practices prevalent in the web today backfire and damage your ranking results more than they help. One of such practices is called backlink bombing.
Backlink Bombing is defined as the manipulation of backlinks by a webmasters, in which they interlink their websites using the same IP address to get a higher page ranking. Many a time people have more than one website and they might try to interlink these websites heavily even if the websites do not contain related content. As always, search engines cannot be fooled and they might label this practice as manipulative and fishy.
Reciprocal Linking Is Getting Out-Dated
One of the methods used earlier to get backlinks was reciprocal linking. A reciprocal link is the mutual link given by two websites to each other. In theory it should be done to provide readers with quick access of related resources. But this practice is not as popular as it were in the beginning of SEO years. People have overused this practice and linked even to sites with irrelevant and unrelated content only to get high ranking.
Google’s Penguin update targets webmasters who engage in link exchange schemes only for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links. Excessive reciprocal linking, no doubt, will be seen as an unhealthy practice in the days to come.
Say No To Link Farming
By definition, Link Farm is a network of websites, in which all of them link to each other. This is done primarily to build their link popularity. In olden days websites used to link to these link farms to get higher SEO ranking. But with the latest changes in the algorithm, Google has banned these link farms which contributed heavily to unpopularity of the practice of link farming.
Changing Practices And Unchanging Principle
Even a cursory look at the history of backlink building will reveal three facts:
- The practices related to backlink or inbound link building change from time to time.
- Many a practice that gained popularity in olden days has become either redundant or penalized.
- The only unchanging fact about backlink building is that it is the quality not the quantity of your backlinks that gives you high search engine ranking.
To know more about how to get quality backlinks or inbound links read our post on How To Get Quality Backlinks.
