Established SEO National In 2007, we helped NBA teams, INC, and Shark Tank’s featured websites rank higher in search engines without paying for advertising.
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We all know that Google likes backlinks (if another website contains a hyperlink to your website). Ask 10 search engine optimization experts what is the best way to skyrocket your Google rankings and most of them will probably say “backlinks”.
I mean, backlinks are the best ever, right? Crazy if he doesn’t make them the main focus of his SEO strategy, right?
If backlinks were the Holy Grail, many websites with little or no backlinks would not be top search engine results.
Can backlinks improve search rankings? Yes.
Is that all you need? No.
Let’s put the SEO myths to rest. Let’s start with the basics of backlinks.
History of backlinks
In 1996, Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed the idea for PageRank. This is a hierarchical algorithm created to determine a website’s authority based on the number of other his websites linking to it. The link served as a vote in favor of his website in a search engine popularity contest. Websites with a high number of links were considered to be reputable and increased in search engine rankings.
PageRank was one of the key factors that helped Google achieve better results, giving it an edge over other search engines despite being the new kid on the block at the time. The PageRank algorithm rated websites on a scale of 0 to 10, called the PR score. But his unscrupulous SEO firm began exploiting this opportunity, automating spammy links to improve rankings, prompting the search giant to change its algorithm. This led to the wild west era of SEO collapsing in 2012 when Google confronted aggressive link builders by releasing an update to his Penguin algorithm.
Impact of Google’s Penguin Algorithm
With Penguin, Google Shifted Focus from Backlinks amount To qualityThus, the SEO game has changed for everyone. Sites with low-quality links lost a lot of traffic, while sites with reliable links, even if they were in low volume, saw a significant boost in search engine visibility.
But backlinks aren’t everything
Backlinks can have a positive impact, but they are not the only answer. After all, what’s the use of backlinks unless they point to legitimate content? Google updates its search engine algorithms regularly, so website owners and online businesses You need to publish intent-focused content—content that actually solves searcher problems and isn’t just SEO.
Backlinks aren’t very useful if you don’t have a strong foundation to begin with. Quality content that meets the needs of searchers can have as much or more of an impact on search engine rankings than backlink per backlink.
Apart from content, Google also looks at the relevance of backlinks. This means you won’t get any benefit from having a pet food website link to your financial website. So how do you know if you “need” a lot of backlinks? Look at the average number of links your competitors have.
Suppose you are in a competitive industry like technology or real estate and most of your competitors’ websites have thousands of backlinks. That’s a big gap to close. To appear in meaningful places in Google search results, you need a significant number of high-quality links. But if your target market is in a localized niche, you probably don’t need many backlinks.
Either way, you don’t need to overwhelm your competitors to overtake them in link count. You can offset some of the links by creating a faster-loading, more intuitive website full of great, unique content.
Backlinks are like paying taxes. Everyone wants a bigger tax refund. You may have some extra cash in your pocket by being aggressive with your taxes. Being aggressive can win you in the short term.But if you that too If you are aggressive, you can be punished with red flags — both in taxes and backlinks.
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