What’s this about?
I think John Mueller was stirring the pot a little bit with this quip.
Undoubtedly many sites will rank without links for some bizarro terms, but… try ranking for non-brand, competitive commercial terms without them. Go on, I dare you.
Of course he could have meant most sites don’t need to go on a sustained link *building* adventure.
Thoughts?
Read more in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 24th November 2017.
#SEO #SEONews #LinkBuilding #Google
Google: Most Sites Rank Without Link Building
Key Issues Summary:
- Cat meet pigeon. Pigeon meet cat. That’s exactly what John Mueller did answering on Twitter that most websites rank without link building.
- Unsurprisingly, this sent the pro-linkers into a frenzy of defensive posting, and the anti-linkers into a frenzy of smug tittering.
- John’s line is undoubtedly true, but it is also a little disingenuous.
Key Actions To Take:
- In order to rank well you need links.
- You can create links organically through great content.
- Or semi-organically through relationships, where people link to you because they like you.
- It’s not advised to go on a spam-fest to build rubbish backlinks.
- Click here to contact me to discuss how to go about link building in a sustainable way.
Insights & Discussion:
The argument John is probably making is two-fold. Firstly, lots of websites are the only real answer for their query – eg a recognisable and individual brand name, or the only page on the internet about lesser-spotted red-tailed widgets. Therefore, there is little need, once Google knows about these sites, for them to go out and actively build links.
The second fold of the argument, is that many site do not actively *build* links. They don’t actively set out to do something which will generate an equity passing link which gives them an bump in the search results. However, you can bet that some of them look to acquire links, or they have such great content that they acquire links completely naturally.
Do you think Wikipedia, Facebook, or Google even sent an email saying “Dear Webmaster, I love you blog. Please can I guest-post on it with two links to my homepage”? I doubt it.
In the meantime, this was the second time in as many weeks that SEO webmasters got to wave their pitchforks around in a most agitated manner. I think they got trolled.
More Information:
- John Mueller on Link Building
- Basic External Linking & Mentions
- Links as important as ever for Google Rankings
The State of SEO Mid-2017 Released
TL;DR
- John Mueller says you do need to build links to rank and the internet breaks.
- Well, not quite, but it certainly got some webmasters agitated.
- I wonder if Gary Illyes had taken over his account, while John went and had coffee.
- You do need links, you may not need to build them per se.
- Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
- Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
- Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.
