Rising to the top of search engines is a multi-tiered effort, and links are a vastly misunderstood part of this process. Some organizations think they will show up first if hundreds of websites link to their site. But, it hasn’t been that simple for a long time. When the Internet was young, in the early 2000s, Google and other search engines valued a website with lots of backlinks. The logic here was simple: if lots of people link to you, that must mean you are important.
However, Google and everyone else using the Internet quickly realized something—a link is only as good as its source website. The explosive growth of the Internet meant that anyone could link to anyone else. So, a website in China could instantly build out thousands of links to websites around the world, and get paid for it. But, why would people using Google care if their local dentist was linked to by a website in China?
In 2011, Google rolled out its Panda update. Since then, for seven years, websites using foreign or spammy links have been “blacklisted” by Google and sunk to the bottom of search results. A trustworthy link comes from a website that has some of the following characteristics:
- Global popularity – How many people are visiting this website? The more, the merrier.
- Quality content – Are things easy to read, without pop-ups, and is the information relevant?
- Link network – Do spam websites link to this website? Then it’s probably not trusted by Google as a link to your site.
A commonly trusted link to your site is a social media channel. Google knows these accounts aren’t malicious, since millions of people use them. Outside of this, the SEO team at BeeSeen Solutions will set up backlinks with more than 200 online directories to build your business’ online reputation. If you find a marketing company that’s linking to more than 500 websites, that’s a major red flag.
Ultimately, backlinks to a website can only go so far. No matter how trusted its links, a website is ultimately valued by Google and other search engines by its content. For more SEO information, feel free to contact the qualified team at BeeSeen Solutions.