Links still count. PageRank, the link-based system Google launched with, is still part of its core ranking systems, and links are how Google finds pages and learns what they’re about. What decides a link’s worth is where it comes from: one link from a site that ranks and has readers in your subject does more for your website than a hundred from sites nobody visits, and the hundred are what most link packages sell.
Three questions before you chase a link
- Does the linking site have readers? Any SEO tool’s traffic estimate will tell you. A site nobody finds through search passes little to the sites it links.
- Is it about your subject, with the link in the text? A link in a sentence about what you sell, where a reader would click it, says more than one in a footer or a sidebar list.
- Would the link be there if nobody had paid for it? If not, Google counts it as link spam unless it’s marked
rel="sponsored"orrel="nofollow".
Link building strategies that pass
Six white hat link building techniques do most of the work for a store or a service business.
Your suppliers and partners. Brands you stock often publish a list of stockists, and trade suppliers and partners list the businesses they work with. Ask to be on it, with the link going to the page that sells their products.
Mentions without a link. Search for your business’s name. A page that already mentions you is the easiest link you’ll get: the writer has already chosen you, and adding the link is one email.
Pages that cite a weaker source. Find pages that already make the claim your page proves: a guide quoting an out-of-date price list, a list of local repairers that still links a business that has closed. Offer your page as the better source, in the words the page already uses.
Journalists’ requests. Reporters ask for expert comment on services such as Qwoted and Featured. An answer that runs can bring a mention and a link from a publication your customers read.
Trade bodies and local organisations. Associations, chambers of commerce and local news cover their members and the businesses in their area. If you sponsor something, the link should be marked sponsored; the readers are what you’re paying for.
A page worth citing. Original data, a calculator, a price comparison nobody else publishes. Build one when your buyers’ questions need it, and it can keep earning links without any outreach.
Each of these passes the test in white hat vs black hat SEO: it keeps working when Google sees exactly what it is.
The link deals to refuse
Everything below is on Google’s link spam list, which older guides call link schemes. Google built its Penguin system against link spam in 2012 and made it part of its core ranking systems in 2016, so no version of these deals is penguin-proof: each works only until Google recognizes the pattern.
- Link packages: so many links a month, on sites the seller picks.
- Links bought to pass ranking credit, or traded for goods or services. That includes a product sent to a blogger in exchange for a review with a link, unless the link is marked sponsored.
- Guest posts and press releases built around your keywords as the words of the link.
- Excessive link swaps, and partner pages that exist only to cross-link.
- Low-quality directories and bookmark sites.
- Links placed in the footers, templates or widgets of many sites at once.
- Low-value content created mainly to carry links.
Grey hat link building is usually one of these deals with a better story attached.
Point each link at the page that needs it
A link does most for the page it points to. Links aimed at your homepage do little for a collection page stuck on page two, so ask for the link to the page that matches the linking page’s topic. Then link that page from your own pages as well: internal links cost nothing, and they tell Google which pages matter. A site that covers its subject one page per question gives other sites more to cite, which is what topical authority comes down to.
Most sites need their pages fixed first
Links can’t help a page Google doesn’t index, or one that never says the search it should rank for. On most stores and service sites those are the bigger problems, and they’re where Rerank’s ethical SEO services start: the pages that sell, fixed on your own site, so every link you earn has a page worth pointing at.