Is Link Building outdated?

Recently, link building has been in the heart of debates around the SEO sphere. Is it outdated? Should I keep on building my inbound links ? What should I do? The epicenter of this phenomenon is Matt Cutts, Google's head of Webspam. Many things have been said and the apparent policy of Google is to lower the importance of links, which should profit to content creation. But does it mean necessarily the end of link building and that all the work you have put into link building is now worthless? Absolutely not.

Google seems persistent in creating videos dealing with the subject of Link Building. The trend that started last year seems to keep on going in 2014. First of all it was a question of old websites versus new websites. How come that some new websites are ranking better than websites established for years (meaning that the old strategies are obsolete compared to "new" trends). Then in a second intervention, the article directories were under the lights, and basically their efficiency was contested. Then finally a last video dealt with link building, but this time regarding the grammar and its influence on rankings. The idea behind this link building "crusade" is to reduce the amount of spam on the internet, which is a good idea. They already stroke hard last month with their article and video regarding guest blogging, which is according to Matt Cutts' blog " it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company."

It is understandable that Google wants a cleaner and sharper internet, where all content is a sharp and precise answer to a search engine request. The idea is amazing, but these messages are creating confusion. So what should we do to improve our ranking and still use link building? The answer is very simple: quality. Link building is not necessarely obsolete as long as you are not categorized as spam. The best way to avoid to be "spammy" would be to be relevant in the links that you create or post, and link to sharp content. A mix between old and new would be the solution . Link building is not against the law (yet?) and doing it the right way is the key.

Link building should be used as a component to increase your brand awareness, the same rule that applies to content creation and social media marketing. The idea is to avoid to be categorized as spam, because once reported as spam by Google, your SEO results will plummet, and your ranking will follow them.  To summarize, quality is one more time the cornerstone of this subject. You don't have to give up all your links , they still work for your rankings. Get rid of the bad ones, focus on good links related to good content and your ranking should keep their heads up. Be real, create quality content and links, and take it EZ.