Why should you avoid creating backlinks for better SEO?

Link building or backlink creation is something most webmasters or website owners rely on for good SEO and to be in the top 10 search results.

So, most webmasters end up paying a good amount of money to some SEO companies or individuals for getting a backlink to their site in the hope that it will make their website URL more appealing to Google search bots.

In the early 2000s, when Google has been developed, the PageRank algorithm was their secret ingredient in the search engine market.

Due to this PageRank algorithm, Google search has overtaken all other major search engines from that time and remains at the top spot forever.

The key factor behind this PageRank algorithm was the number of links is pointing to that single URL. The more pointing link it has, the more reputation it will get from Google search and going to show up in the top spot of the search result.

But the time has changed, we are not in the 19th century anymore, we are now far more advanced than we are in the 1990s.

This is why most SEO Experts (just by the name, not by the knowledge) and few blogs/websites tell people to build as many backlinks as possible for your site from a high page ranked website so that it can flow a part of their PageRank or Google juice into your site and give your better SEO.

But today I’m going to share 5 reasons why you should AVOID this SEO strategy for your website as it will not help you to get better SEO beside will help you get penalized by Google search and will throw your site out of the search result.

1. PageRank is dead

Yes, it’s true. Those of you always stay updated with the latest SEO news, might already know it, but those who are not, please note that Google has officially declared PageRank as dead for the general public, and a more advanced version of the PageRank algorithm is going to be used for search rankings. Still, it won’t be the same as the old PageRank algorithm.

It is a more evolved and matured version of PageRank, and it is only going to be used as a Google internal metrics and will never going to release to the public as PageRank did.

Though if you have a toolbar in your browser to show up PageRank of a website, it is showing the last updated PageRank for that particular page, which is irrelevant now.

Google took this harsh step due to various reasons and mostly to fight blackhat or inorganic SEO techniques and to provide a better search experience to all of its users.

Earlier, PageRank used to consider the number of backlinks into your site for calculation purposes, but not the new one. It is far more advanced and strict about inorganic backlinks or backlinks that are not generated with the proper linking intention.

2. Google algorithm is getting more sophisticated every day

Wish the new and improved domain authority algorithm used by Google internally as a replacement of Google PageRank, backlink quality a relevance is given the highest priority instead of the number of backlinks.

To make that into perspective, let’s say you are a food blogger or runs a restaurant website, now as you are very new, one of your primary concerns would be to improve your SEO so that people can find you easily on search results.

Now, most SEO experts or related tutorial blogs will tell you to generate more and more backlinks, by posting guest articles or comments or even smartly spamming forums who do not add rel=”nofollow” into their backlinks so that you can get the Google juice from them.

Many of you will even spend a good amount of money on other webmasters who have high PageRank website so that they give a dofollow backlink to you. Happy right?

Well, not really, the old PageRank algorithm of Google could be helpful for this kind of trick, but not the new authority algorithm.

The new PageRank or domain authority algorithm that Google uses internally check all the backlinks pointing to a specific page or post or a website homepage and then check the quality relevancy and organic behavior or it.

Now, as I said that if you are a food blogger and you have 560 backlinks pointing to your website homepage, the new crawl bot algorithm will first check the niche of this website who are pointing to you.

As your website is related to food, naturally, other food bloggers or restaurants might link to you, but not some car seller or insurance salesman or some site related to tech news, coding, or the stock market. But if you start creating an enormous backlink to your site, you don’t get the chance to choose the proper niche website.

After checking the relevancy, Google also monitors how the links have been added, like whether it’s just a link inserted into the footer or a link into the sidebar under the Sites I like or backlinks been created from a post.

If the backlinks are created from a blog post, Google deliberately checks the quality of the blog post to ensure whether the post has been written to stuff keywords and links or the links have been added organically and makes complete sense.

If Google or other search engines ever figure out that the backlinks have been created to trick the search result, they will ensure that your stuff never is seen of their site again.

3. Site quality matters the most

In the new updated Google algorithm to make a spam-free internet, the essential thing is an organic natural flow, quality or content, and the authority of the back linker.

Now with the new, improved algorithm, Google doesn’t give much weightage to that page and posts, which are organically backlinked by similar low authority websites, besides they give more preference to the authority of the backlink.

To make that into perspective, let’s assume that you are a tech blogger who writes an article about the latest android phones.

Now, if you have 600 backlinks generated by other similar authoritative blogs on a similar niche and your friend also has a tech blog who writes about apple products has only 25 backlinks. Still, from those 25 backlinks – one backlink has come from life hacker, one from mashable and rest are from the same quality backlink you have.

But when Googlebot calculates the domain quality/authority or yours and your friend’s domain, your friend’s website will score way higher just because of those two backlinks as they are from a viral and reputed website.

So as I said earlier, in this new SEO game, only quality matters, not the quantity.

4. Concentrate on quality content

Google made all these changes to ensure that the web always is full of great content and not just junk stuff, which is showing just because they have a tricked Google algorithm. With the release of new algorithms like Panda, Penguin, Pirate, Google is making sure of the good stuff only.

Besides, if you write good content, you don’t have to knock each door to create a backlink to your site, people will do it usually as a natural reflex. This is precisely what Google wants to achieve, to make sure that backlinks generated organically, not by some influence.

So, besides spending a ton of money with lousy SEO agencies who claim themselves the best of the best, try creating some awesome and unique content that people will like and backlink to you usually.

5. Don’t be evil

“One of the easiest ways to get a lot of backlinks is to post a comment or guest posts or articles on various websites.” — Most SEO Blog

Don’t be the guy whom everyone hates. Nowadays, a lot of databases keep track of flagged comments or posts or guest articles. So every time you try to add your website link into some comment or post where it’s completely irrelevant, many webmaster flag those comments as spam and the list of all these flagged links also been crawled by Google, so they know that which domains are spamming the web and they get rid of them.

Even guest post is now used for link building and SEO purpose, which is not anywhere near the reason why guest posting exists. Matt Cutts from Google has confirmed that they will take necessary action against the website, which allows guest articles that are being used for SEO and link building purposes. Instead, the guest post feature must be used for the actual reason for its creation so that many authors can post into a single website, like a newspaper.

Conclusion

If you are an SEO Enthusiast / SEO Specialist / Blogger / Webmaster who is fighting hard to get good SEO for your website, concentrate more on your quality of content, post title, description, etc. and don’t try to create backlinks forcefully to gain more SEO score.

Let the backlinks be generated automatically by the readers when they like your content. For my website, I’ve followed each of these tips to gain more exposure in terms of SEO quality, and it helped me a lot, I’m pretty sure it will help you too.

If you have any questions or if you feel that I’ve missed some points or if you want to share your own experience with the SEO war, feel free to share them in the comment section below. I’ll be happy to hear them 🙂

If you are looking for SEO Consultation or SEO Services, please feel free to contact me