There’s an unending talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in the digital industry like, is SEO relevant? How much importance does Google give to SEO? Is organic optimization dead or was it grown?

Today, the world is witnessing a new digital era; people are now expecting the results in real time, not the results of years that Google had practiced years before. SEO’s main importance has come to the user interface and content .

Nevertheless, many people have mixed feelings about SEO and the argument never ends. Of course, content needs visibility and SEO did it, but things have changed drastically to what used to work, to what doesn’t work anymore.

During this decade, as we talk about SEO, one of the most charged subjects is always ‘ backlinks .’ Often people have their own views based on their experience and how their website has improved awareness and reputation.

SEO agencies and marketing companies continuously drive backlinks to the concept. Truth is more than it catches your eyes. There’s no shortage of established SEO experts who claim to have an idea of avoiding it.

Now when you have two sides, you are literally confused, because you don’t want to do anything wrong to hurt your website or to delay your website’s performance in the search engine results. How to build links naturally or unnaturally, a Big Question?

backlink

Several of the key reasons for creating a website is generating real-time traffic to improve business ROI and setting up your online system so someone can demand your spot and hack your entire audience.

Since we all have our own viewpoints based on our experiences, here are the 2 cents on the debate to help you uncover the layers that prevented Google search results from rating your website .

LET’S START WITH, “ARE BACKLINKING RELEVANT FOR YOUR WEBSITE”?

Okay, the answer is kind of distorted. But the conclusion is straight; they used to. Since this decade’s huge upgrade to Penguin, Google rated your websites according to the consistency of your links. We knew then how SEO was a thing, and how it changed with a couple of updates from Google.

Many SEO experts lost their job because they were unable to comply with the new regulations, and were unable to adjust to the new SEO era. It happens when you aren’t prepared.

google-penguin-for-seo

A few years ago, Google assumed, if your website has many IBL from a very authority website, or on the popular website, then your website is also popular. Not every website having inbound links on popular websites is good for the readers or for the online users.

WHAT???

Yes, if you’re in the industry it means you’re aware of the existence of some companies working as a middleman and purchasing IBL for a cheap sum from the top-rated websites. Sometimes, they also write an article to send you the promised backlink.

In the SEO industry , it happens a lot and businesses also cheat on Google by doing so. Yet now the price has skyrocketed to buy ties because there’s so much pressure on the market.

The demand has surpassed the supply and an overwhelming amount is raising the prices. It played with the accuracy of the SERP results from Google before Google revised Penguin algorithms, penalizing several websites doing this technique for the web ranking.

If you’re doing a little research, you’ll find how Google wiped out multiple companies from its search engine ranking that were focused solely on backlinks.

Therefore, it is easy to understand the volatile nature of the website, even if the foundation is built on the quicksand, everything can happen. Okay, how long do you expect a building to hang on it? Not sure any more.

If it starts to break, all of your empire’s building blocks start hitting the ground and you leave at the end with nothing but to start at the bottom.

There were several advertisers, on the contrary, who enjoyed the Penguin update , reported a strong increase in their website ranking , and improved ranking in search engine queries.

When the Penguin update was rolled out in September 23, 2016 (was a real time update – now part of core algorithm), websites that didn’t rely on inbound links ‘alone’ performed way better.

SO AGAIN THE QUESTION IS, HOW IMPORTANT ARE THE INBOUND LINKS? DO YOU REALLY NEED THEM?

Well, if you ask SEO experts or self-proclaimed marketing pundits, you might probably find the answer in ‘Yes’. However, if you ask marketers who worked days and nights to contribute equally to each area of their website, they say ‘NO’.

SHOCKING?!?

Don’t stay in shock. They said, “Don’t rely ‘only’ on backlinks”.

Let’s imagine you built a website, had some contacts and found a funder who was willing to invest in your idea. You bought too many IBL (inbound) links from the best website ‘ABC’ in your domain and your website’s ranking skyrocketed. Probably, an overnight success, yes?

However, the website giving you links violated certain rules and policies while publishing news on some people/companies. The case run in the court and the website ‘ABC’ lost it and the owners were ordered to shut it down, ASAP.

Now all your external links were gone in a snap. Whee!!! And your ranking? It dropped at much faster rate than it climbed to the success. Things fall at more velocity than it goes high. Simple science!

We have seen such kind of case in 2016 . One of the most reputed and authority based websites ‘ Gawker ’ lost a case and was ordered to stop all its operations within a given deadline by the court. While the website is still up, all the activities on it have been stopped. No new article is published on it after the court’s hearing.

To earn back-links is a good deal. Yes, you need to spend some time. However, if you don’t spend time on building those, and instead, you work on the user experience and working on an addictive form of content, you are doing the right thing.

Google is now working on the external inbound links game and if you listen to some marketers’ peers, you will understand and even see the signs of Google giving less value to incoming links. Gone are the days when creating bad links was the main aim. After the 2014 update, marketers, as well as SEO agencies, have learned their lesson the hard way.

When the back links can be easily manipulated, how can Google not work on those and hope to provide the best search results to the users? If Google wants to display the real information in search engines, then website must comply with certain rules, including quality content to appear in the search results.

I have talked previously and will again say if your website doesn’t have a revolutionary product, till then, your chances to see the overnight ranking is hard.

WHAT HAS IT TO DO WITH BACKLINKS?

Well, if you keep generating incoming links, but have low quality content or useless material, then your website’s ranking will not be maintained for longer. The user interface can submit signals in the search results to Google to consider the positions.

What if the website which gave you many inbound links starts spamming and loses all its credibility? At that time what is your contingency plan? The possibilities’ are endless.

The main thing is to discuss here is, why relying on links alone and calling it the most powerful thing for a website, can actually derail all your campaign and drain all your efforts into a damp.

Buying links easily promotes grey-hat SEO, as businesses are excellent at finding algorithm loopholes for their own profits.

Organizations forget that other websites would only offer them the inbound link if they have quality content. This way, ties are perfect for them, as they have content in the digital world and nothing beats content.

NATURAL BACKLINKS is still a big Ranking Factor

Natural backlinks

Ask yourself, when you publish an article and have to give an outbound link to throw more light on the topic, don’t you give it to the best article? Isn’t it the content that has real value for your readers to which you direct your visitors for more knowledge?

Similarly, link building earned without content or having poor content on your website doesn’t count. Moreover, Google doesn’t regard you for it at all.

Gone are the days when competitors used to do mass inbound linking to your website from poor authority website. The negative SEO doesn’t work anymore because Google is becoming smarter and bringing better results to the sites having better content.

Why do you search an article on the web? Isn’t it to consume information? What if the top rated website doesn’t have any content, how would you feel? Confused and a bit annoyed to land on a useless page.

So forget building links on spam websites for the sake of building links. Google penguin will bite you so hard that it may be nearly impossible to recover or it will take a good amount of time to come out from it.

SO, WHAT MATTERS IN SEO?

So, if you aren’t going to build inbound links, or simply not going to spend a lot of energy on it, what you should be doing? Below are listed some pain points to consider, instead of worrying about inbound search engine optimization.

  1. Content Quality

Undeniably, you have heard ‘ content is the king ’ statement. The reality is its true, if you know how to create. Content should be the core of your SEO, and without it, no effort can sustain your website ranking for long in the search results.

The best thing is to analyze news/media portals. If a news portal, the best one, doesn’t publish articles for a week, you will see the tremendous loss of ranking in the website’s keywords.

Quality Content

Google is constantly looking for content. Every algorithms update is to bring better content to the users. This how Google is doing the business and its business model is pretty clear based on content.

Try to lower the standards of your content. Write cheap content and you will see your place at the father pages of Google search results.

2. Targeting keywords

No matter how good content you have written, it’s always based on keyword intent. A topic is basically a keyword to bring visibility to the article. Try to place at least one keyword in a title, permalink and within 160 characters of our article. Learn to write naturally.

Don’t force keyword in your articles. Write ‘Naturally’ and don’t worry about the number of times keyword is coming within your article. It tells Google on which thing you are emphasizing more. As long as you write naturally and informative content, you are doing fine.

Note: Always say ‘no’ to keyword stuffing.

Keywords Targeting

3. LSI within your content

LSI a.k.a. Latent Semantic Index is one of the most prominent features of your content that plays a huge value in the overall score of your content. For instance; ‘ story ’ also means ‘ scoop ’ and if you write naturally and use different words in your writing, ranking will come for sure. The only fundamental principle to bring ranking is ‘ Natural Writing ‘.

Using-LSI-Keywords

4. Engagement/Comments

Dialogues or people’s views in your post’s comment section indicate popularity of your write-up.

There are many ways to use the comment section. Some websites use emotion feature alone to understand the views of the readers, while some use emotion features as well as comment section to know the reason for choosing certain feeling for the content.

Engagement

5. User Experience

Google mainly focuses on user experience before deciding website’s rank and domain authority. Loading speed and responsiveness come into play during the deciding factor round of Google.

In addition, content length and its structuring all are counted for providing better user experience. This whole concept known as “ PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION ” i.e. Fixing technical issues . Page speed is now become a big mobile ranking factor .

It is must now to fix all errors like js, css blocked resources, webmaster issues etc. as now every single website is enabling with Mobile First Index since March which activated in 26, 2018 .

performance optimization

For example, if you’re writing a science paper for the readers, you’re supposed to write a long detailed material, explaining every detail for readers in depth. Your science readers enjoy long content and give them the perfect writing-up, you boost your chances over the rivals who don’t deliver the same experience.

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