Throughout the years, big and small businesses have used link building to rank on Google and other search engines. Although some believe that it is no longer effective, many experts believe that this SEO strategy should still be an integral part of your overall marketing campaign. To assure you that link building is still relevant and useful, Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin debunks some weird and crazy myths about this SEO strategy:
Myth No 1: Never get links from sites with a lower domain authority
On the contrary, you shouldn’t be afraid to get links from sites that have lower domain authority or DA than your own. Even if their DA is low, you shouldn’t worry about linking to them provided that they are high-quality sites that give out links editorially and they link to other good sites.
Fishkin said DA is basically just a sorting tool. It tells you how well a particular site would perform against other sites in Google’s rankings for a random keyword. It doesn’t suggest in any way if a site is of great quality or is capable of giving good editorial links.
Myth No 2: Never get links from any directories
Although Google has penalised a number of directories in the past, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all resource lists, link lists, and directories are considered bad places to get links from. Believe it or not, there are still a number of them that are of great quality.
According to Fishkin, the key here is to use your good judgment. Before you get links from directories, ensure that they are not of the paid variety. Always go for good, authentic sites because they are considered a great resource.
Myth No 3: Google penalises those that get links too fast
Google really doesn’t care whether you are fast or slow with link building. What it is mostly concerned about is where your links are coming from. Whether you’re doing it quickly or slowly, you’d naturally get penalised if you’re doing something sketchy or you’re using black hat link building strategies. But if you’re using approved strategies, then there’s nothing you need to worry about.
Myth No 4: Don’t link out to other sites because you’ll lose link equity or Page Rank
There might be some truth to this myth before, but not anymore. Fishkin pointed out that you shouldn’t be afraid to link out because Page Rank is not the only ranking algorithm that Google uses in their system. Also, linking out is said to contribute to better higher rankings. There have been a number of studies and research suggesting that when followed links were added to pages, these pages outrank their non-link carrying pages.
