Links Are Not Dead

With the world becoming more and more technology dependent, the internet has become a staple of everyday life. It is rare that a person goes through an entire day without searching for something on the web or checking their email. Links are the backbone of these web searches. In fact just about half of all Google searches have local intent. According to a study by MOZ, link signals account for 28 percent of Google ranking factors. This percentage is greater than any other factor, demonstrating that links are vital in determining which results appear first on Google.

Links may be crucial to internet searching, but what makes a good link? Google’s quality guidelines were put in place to interdict links that are misleading or not useful. This includes doorway links and hidden links that attempt to plant many links on a page to rank highly on Google’s result page, but instead lead a user to different websites. There are many factors taken into account when realizing the quality of a link. URL factors determine the amount of times a user is redirected after clicking on a link. A high number of redirects will most likely render the link useless.

The keys to building a successful link profile are trust, diversity, and relevance. Additionally, it is important to write SEO friendly content. It is vital to include links with high page authority but from varied domains and IP addresses. However, it is the keywords and anchor text that also decide the relevance of the article link and whether or not it will rank highly on Google’s search results. Links are the most important factor in associating a webpage with the rest of the internet. The right, or wrong, link can make or break a website in the very competitive online search industry. As Barry Schwartz, founder and editor of Search Engine Roundtable, simply put it, links are not dead.

A full list of elements that may affect link quality can be found in the visual deep dive below: