Inbound Marketing Agency: Will Link Building Hurt My Website Rankings?

Inbound Marketing Agency Link Building Tips

Few things are more important to online businesses today than the dynamic character of Google?s search engine ranking factors. The metrics that govern Google?s algorithm have changed consistently over the past decade, and while many sites have benefited from these changes, any inbound marketing agency can tell you that more have bit the bucket as a result. What, then, can you do to ensure that your website remains in Google?s good graces? How should you go about building links?

Content is King

First off, you should make sure you?ve embraced the single technique that will never change, and that is the primary initial function of any inbound marketing agency worth the title. Your site?s content must fulfill the need desired by your intended audience, so that when the traffic finally arrives, it is compelled to stay.

Additionally, good content is an automatic form of link-building, because one of the more important factors of the Search algorithm is time-on-page. If people are actually spending enough time to read your landing page, then this signals the search engines that your site contributes instead of detracts ? and it can be pushed up the rankings closer to the golden first page.

The General Problem with Link Building

The main problem with link building is that people often approach it too vigorously. Recently, a Google engineer was quoted as saying that link building might not be advisable. It can be easy to get mixed messages from such a statement, because link building is the single most important aspect of organic search.

The problem is vigorous link building, where you build links with abandon to shoddy websites, content farms, or poor directories and engage in article spinning. These techniques, which worked in the past, will likely only serve as a red flag these days and hurt your site. Consider the following short roadmap to understanding how to go about building backlinks.

Pros

• craft meaningful content; this will garner backlinks naturally ? albeit at a slow rate
• actively reach out to webmasters in your niche; offer them content in exchange for a link to your website
• leave in-depth comments on highly-valued websites ? this will cause some traffic to trickle to your website out of interest

Cons

• don?t spin articles and submit them to large numbers of directories; not only does this duplicate content have no value, but it can harm your site as Google devalues it as a result of the spam
• avoid link building companies that comment on hordes of unrelated sites with your URL – most of these companies comment on sites with hundreds and thousands of spammy comments already on them

The Way Forward with SEO Today

Link building definitely still works; but the overwhelming majority of webmasters do it wrong. An inbound marketing agency that understands the effect your content has on your viewers is often the best way forward, because they understand all the relevant metrics and how to interpret the Analytics that describe how your content resonates. As the first step to search engine gold, you need to understand where your site stands ? before launching a link building campaign that works. Take the following free Inbound Marketing Assessment to take the guesswork out of ranking in these tough times.