It has been said by professionals that links don’t always help a website in terms of SEO. In fact, it can make everything look less organized and actually hurt your chances. In past times, links used to play a huge part in terms of SEO and rankings but they just don’t have the same results that they used to. With that being said, there are at least 3 ways in which links relate to your website. Keep in mind, if you aren’t using them this way, then they probably aren’t doing much good.
The first way is that they help validate your website as one that isn’t bad or a scam. They let people know that it’s the real deal and legit. By using these links, websites are mainly put into two groups. These groups are: legitimate websites and websites that are nothing but spam. If your website does get flagged as spam because of the links you use, it’s extremely hard to get back off the spam list. You have to make sure you use links from legitimate sites in order to be ranked in the search engine.
The second way is to help a website actually get a ranking. Some links will help a website get ranked, some will help a website get validated, and some don’t do anything at all. Not only do you want to make sure you’re using high-quality links, but you also want to continue checking rankings. If you’re website doesn’t have the ranking you want, you might need to change up the links until it gets the ranking you’re looking for.
Finally, the third way thing you should keep in mind is that links don’t always play a part in the rankings. For instance, say your website is about dolphins. Just because you have great links, doesn’t mean you’re going to come up in the rankings. Search engines will first pull up things like news articles or things to do with the sports team. This means that you won’t necessarily be in the search engine ranking even if you’re doing everything you need to.
With that being said, it might be time to look at building links differently. The way things used to be done isn’t how it’s done now. For instance, listed below is the timeline of how rankings and links have worked over time.
- Ranking started by depending on websites having the highest number of links.
- Ranking then depended on high number of links and the most related keywords.
- Ranking depended on having the most links without the links being random and unnatural
- Ranking depended on the most related links and keywords
- Text didn’t matter as much
- Content was the most important thing
As you can see, it has changed quite a bit over time and it will continue changing so you need to make sure you’re always improving and learning what it takes to be highly ranked. Links do matter, but they don’t matter anywhere near as much as they used to. You’re going to have better results having some links than not having any at all. You want to make sure that every link you put on your website is relevant and the keywords pertain to it. Make everything as natural as you can and reduce the randomness.
Antoine's Blog 