Digital marketing industry is surrounded with myriad of backlinks myths and misconceptions. Out of which, many believe in these myths and a few don’t.
Here, in this article, we will expose some of the popular and common myths related to backlinks.
Backlink refers to a link that one site gets from another site. Backlinks have a great impact on a site’s reputation in search engine results. This is the reason they are viewed as very helpful for enhancing a site’s SEO ranking. Link building is really helpful in SEO but most of the people who are still surrounded with SEO Myths and Misconceptions thinks Link Building means Black Hat SEO.
Backlinks should be natural, this means a site must not use Black Hat SEO approaches to make backlinks for their own websites. The quality of links is significantly more imperative than the quantity.
Importance of Backlinks in SEO
Backlinks are important to your websites because-
- It enhances Organic Ranking by getting natural links from different sites, that content will naturally rank higher with search engines.
- It helps in getting referral traffic, which is targeted and has a low bounce rate.
- It is essential to get backlinks to your new site as they help in the faster indexing of your site.
Myths and Misconceptions of Backlinks that one must know;
#Myth 1: No-follow links do not help
No follow link tells Google not to crawl this link and pass link juice to that particular page. They don’t help as stand alone pieces. It means that if we start a site and pump it brimming with great PR “nofollow” links, we wouldn’t see a major bump in traffic, rankings, and so on.
Fact: There are a few main areas where we have seen “nofollow” links have a better than average effect and give a lift in rankings and overall website domain authority.
No-follow Backlinks can still bring traffic to your website, which is really what you’re after. Also, comments as well as posts can be no-follow, which can create buzz and social activity around you. So, it is really important to have better understanding of Nofollow & Dofollow Tag.
#Myth 2- The Quantity Doesn’t Matter at all
Till 2014, quantity was in demand and people use to focus on quantity rather than quality. In the old days of SEO, one needs to get thousands of backlinks to their website, which actually made your website rank high for relevant terms. This is no longer the case, and executing this approach will only trigger a Google penalty and now people are focusing more on quality links and leaving behind the need of quantity.
Fact: Still in SEO, quantity of articles matters.
For example, there are two websites- one had DA 90 with 25 links, and another had DA 60 with 100 links. Then, which will rank high? Of course, the second one. No matter the DA is less, but because of the quantity of links, it ranks higher. This is a complete myth.
#Myth 3- High-Quality Links are more focused
One of the highly considered myths is that one should only create high-quality links for their websites. And, they should be made on high domain website. This one is normally considered by people reading the Quality over Quantity.
Fact: Creating good and high-quality links for your websites takes time. In fact, you can’t assemble a quality backlink profile in just 10-20 good quality links. And, creating high-quality links might result in repudiating the links excessively if the links weren’t of good quality.
So do focus on quality backlinks by keeping in mind the quantity of the links as good quantity of backlinks can help in improving the domain authority of your website.
#Myth 4- Old Sites and their Links Do Not Help
If a site has a “bad” design, OR the site or the link is too old, that means Google will not count them. Google cares about the look and design of a website and high quality links. So, if somebody has a terrible looking site or the content is old, then Google won’t value it or value it less.
Fact: No matter the website is old or new, links are a great source of information where you need to focus. And, the content should be user-friendly to attract more traffic on it. Google actually doesn’t care about how your site looks, it just thinks about how it performs in its search engine.
#Myth 5- Bio Links Do Not Help
Another myth is that bio links doesn’t help at all. There was a time when links in your content matter a lot. But, if the link is mentioned in your bio, then it was of no worth.
Fact: Bio Links are a cornerstone for awesome content creation and promotion using another site’s viewer base. Biography links in guest posts or editorial submissions are simply like some other link. It still helps as you are including more links and getting more link velocity.
#Myth 6- Blog Comments Are Spam Links
Another myth is that blog commenting have a truly negative reputation and considered as dead. Some time ago, SEO was not in favor of these things and considered it as spam. People for the sake of getting a do-follow link started blog commenting in excessive, which is considered as spam.
Fact: When it comes to making your blog interactive, blog comments are considered as one of the easiest ways. It helps in getting the relevant backlinks to your website and drive maximum traffic on your blog.
You can also read: Top SEO Trends that will Dominate the Upcoming Months of 2017
#Myth 7- Mentions Without a Link Count
The last misconception people have is that if an article mentions your name but doesn’t link to you, still Google counts it. The idea behind this thought is that if you are mentioned through the Internet, Google will count that positively. Google can use this as a ranking factor.
Fact: But, the fact is it happens in rare cases that mentions without a link gets counted. There are a few high ranking forum sites, where you can mention the sites or talk about your blog without any hyperlinks. And, Google actually Consider them. But, most of the cases, mentions are ignored.
Conclusion
Therefore, these are the common myths & misconceptions of a backlink that people have, and they actually need to change their perception. Nobody truly realizes what Google uses, but we can make great presumptions.
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