Home » Game Plan » Link Building » How to know if a link is helpful, or not
Not all links will help your SEO efforts: some can only bring traffic, and others might hurt you.
Link building can be a frustrating part of any SEO campaign. It can be hard to get good links. The difficulty is why so many people try to cut corners in the link-building process. It’s also why many people spend a lot of time building links that don’t help their SEO efforts. If you understand what makes a good link good and a bad link bad, it can make sure you spend your time building links that will help you.
Sometimes links that violate Google’s link scheme guidelines can hurt your site.
Some links can build your site’s authority in the eyes of Google. If you get more of these links from respected sources, you will see your search traffic (and presumably your leads) grow as you “rank” better.
Other links don’t help your SEO effort because they don’t build your credibility in Google’s eyes. These links are only as good as the traffic they send to your site. Some of these links can send traffic to your website even they don’t help your SEO. For example, links from social media sites can send traffic, but they don’t count in Google’s algorithm.
However, one link will never generate as much traffic as an improvement in ranking on Google can. This authority is why building links that generate authority are so important.
I do into more depth about link building on the introduction to Link Building page.
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