Is Link Building Important?

Is link building important in search engine optimisation. There is a very simple answer to this - click the video!


Just in case you'd prefer to read a more detailed answer rather than watch the simplified answer, I'll also scribe one here.
So, is link building important? Yes is the simple answer. It is very important.

The google algorithm is constantly under review and development, and has and will continue to changing with time. Things that once were considered quite important like defining your keywords in the Meta data – are now considered to be worth less than the time it takes to do them. Helping the search engines index your site is always worth doing – but the methods with which to do them will change over time. That brings us to link building as one of the methods.

Link building looks like one of the elements that will remain effective for years to come. As the search engine’s way of examining and processing sites becomes more dynamic and complex some of the things we do now become defunct and out of date. Most good SEO’s agree that links are here to stay for the coming future. Inbound links are one of the things that remain trusted by the engines. Why?

It’s about what linking ‘says’ about a site. For another website to link to you they have to trust you in some respect or capacity. In some cases you may have paid for the link – but since you can be judged by the people you link out to you still have to draw lines as to who you link to. For example, a respected clothes manufacturer will probably not link out to an adult content site no matter how much they offer to pay. However, they would be more than happy to link out to an appropriate affiliate – perhaps a cloth supplier. A directory of pet insurance sites will of course link out to insurance companies, a pet blog might link out, but childrens toy manufacturer probably wouldn't.

Sites can be judged by the search engines on the people they link out to – so you have to link appropriately or risk having your own site penalised. This is the first of my top three reasons.

Many of most trusted sites cannot be bought off, so if you have inbound links from them it is probably because you deserve to have those links coming in. A government site (.gov) will link out to appropriate sites – sites that they find useful and to be trust worthy. These links cannot be bought – and this is unlikely to change in the near future, another strong reason that link building will stand the test of (relative) time.

The final is that there is nothing else for the search engines to use that can be trusted in a similar way. Giving someone a link is like a positive editorial review, as of yet there is nothing else on offer that can be used to judge this.

So the long and short,

BUILD LINKS to your site

(as they say in the hair adverts) because your worth it!