What’s this about?
Well I never. It turns out that Google still values links.
Or at least that’s what the swishy maths in this swishy report shows.
Read this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates w/e 15 Sept 2017 and find out what to make of this report.
#SEO #SEONews #LinkBuilding #BackLinkProfile #SERP
Links are as important as ever for Google Rankings.
Summary:
- Stone Temple Consulting have just released a rather swishy report showing links are as important as ever for Google rankings.
- This may have been what their study set out to show.
- They used Quadratic Mean Spearman Correlation Scores and everything.
- Even though Google would love everybody to stop building links, I think we all know they still work.
Actions to take:
- Review the findings of the Stone Temple Report.
- Come to your own conclusion if it is earth-shattering, or not.
- Continue to work on acquiring good quality relevant links.
- Click here to contact me to discuss how Google uses links in its ranking algorithms.
Discussion:
This is a decent enough study, but it is filled with holes large enough to drive a small bus through. At the top level, there is still a degree of correlation between links and rankings. But remember correlation does not always mean causation.
My issues with this report are as follows: the quadratic mean scores all sound good, but I’m not convinced they add an awful lot of value beyond sounding fancy. I’m not enough of a mathematician to argue the finer points of one type of score versus another. We’re not shown the raw data unfortunately, so it is hard to judge.
As a mathematic calculation, it only takes account of the number of links. Those links it should be noted were found in an external toolset, not Google. Building links by numbers is generally a bad idea. The report also doesn’t mention quality of links (pure authority, or topic authority sites), link placement (higher = better), relevancy of links (relevant page, or relevant anchor text) and finally forgets to look at RONLA (rate of new link acquisition).
Most or all of these factors go into Google’s computations, so a bare number leaves one feeling slightly empty, if I’m honest. Nice equations though.
More info:
Mobile First is NOT Mobile Friendly
TL;DR
- Links still matter. You should mutter that repeatedly.
- Google may not like it, but links still matter.
- Did I mention that links still matter?
- 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.
