Gervais Group - A Review of the New World of Link Building

PRLog (Press Release) - Sep. 24, 2012 - The ever increasing level of sophistication of Google’s ranking algorithm has ushered in a new world of link building strategies where the focus has shifted from the sheer number of inbound links to their overall quality as well as the relevance between the source and the destination site. This evolution has essentially nullified the value of links derived from both content and link farms and severely punished (or “adjusted the rankings” as Google prefers to call it) websites that had benefited from low quality and/or low value backlinks.

The emphasis now is tightly focused on the quality of the site that is the source of the link as well as its relevance to the destination page. Links must now have at least one, but preferably a combination of the following characteristics:  

* Originating from an authority site – Search engines love links coming from news sites such as CNN, MSN, Huffington Post, etc. Links that source from .gov and .edu sites are highly regarded as well.  
* Industry related sites – Links that source from industry related sites are likely to hold relevance and will score points in the search engines’ algorithms.
* Relevant social media pages – Search engines are paying an increasing amount of attention to links that source from social media sites.

In review, the link building game has changed from one where thousands of links could be purchased and deliver results within days to an environment where quality and relevance rule the day. As the search engines continue their quest to deliver the best user experience possible, websites and their SEO’s would be wise to follow the same path.