Marketing these days is heavily reliant on social media, networking, and the internet. One of its popular aspects is Search Engine Optimization, which is governed by its own tactics and strategies. One of the most important aspects of SEO is Link Building. For a more details on SEO, visit our Search Engine Optimization article.

• What is Search Engine Optimization?
• What is Backlinking?
• Backlinking and its relevance in 2019.
• The Problem with Backlinking Spams (Tiered Backlinking)
• Footnotes

What is Search Engine Optimization?

The main objective of any website is to drive traffic toward its content. There are two primary ways to inrease web traffic. The first option is advertisement: paying websites with decent traffic to make your content discoverable to their users. But the obvious flaw with this is the fact that the audience attracted is often temporary, and that new startups and small organizations cannot invest a great deal in such advertisement.

The second and more effective way of generating long-term organic audience for your content is Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is the process of customizing your website in a manner that when a user does a generic or specific search, your website with relevant content shows up first. Generally, users click on the first website they see therefore increasing the traffic on your website.

What is Backlinking?

Backlinking is the most effective white hat⁽¹⁾ (though it can be of Black Hat⁽²⁾ nature as well), Off-page⁽³⁾ Search Engine Optimization technique. It basically works by linking (or referencing) one page on the internet to another. SEO preference is given to pages with greater credibility, and if your site has been featured in other websites of relevant content, SEO bots such as Google Crawler⁽³⁾ find their way from that website to yours, ranking your website (with more links) above the rest.

For easier explanation think of it as a web. Google crawler crawls all the way from the edges to the center. The more the edges, the stronger its center will be according to Google Crawler, and it will feature the website in the center (that has been linked to on other relevant sites) higher on search results.

Another factor playing a key role in Backlinking is Keyword Optimization. To rank higher, the web page must feature repetitive (but not spammed) usage of relevant keywords that users are using to find information.

Backlinking and its relevance in 2019.

According to Linkresearchtools.com Google confirmed that link-building or backlinking is still its #1 ranking factor along with quality content. However Google has also been valiant in identifying spam building and can penalize websites for cheating the system by banning its ranking forever.

According to moz.com, a study conducted by Perficient Digital which took in consideration over 26,000 queries (an increase by 9,000 queries in comparison to its previous year’s study) showed a strong increase in correlation between link building and SEO ranking. Under the study, a scale of -1 to 1 was chosen. Digits in negative representing an inverse or opposite correlation, 0 representing no correlation at all, and anything above zero showing a positive relationship.

Keeping in mind that Google claims to use over 100 ranking factors, any score above 0.2 should be considered of heavy value. The study showed a high correlation of 0.293. Read the Moz report for more information here.

Conclusively, according to research and Google reports, link building is still one of the most important, if not the most important, factor involved in search ranking. It is one of the best methods to gain credibility about the content and gaining traffic as well. By increasing the number of reference there is a strong chance of gaining visitors from such links.

The Problem with Backlinking Spams (Tiered Backlinking)

As mentioned above, search engines reserve the right to reduce the ranking, or even completely remove the website listing if they see foulplay. These ranking dynamics are ever evolving and are actively vigilant in finding such spam. One popular variant of this is Tiered Backlinking. Under tiered backlinking a person with multiple websites links them through one another tier wise. For example, suppose you have nine websites (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I) and A is your primary site. In tiered backlinking you would reference website B in D, E and F; and website C in G, H, and I. And then you’d link site A to B and C, which are more credible and relevant to your main site. Google Crawler will eventually find its way from site I to A, assigning it multiple backlinks. And hence greater ranking.

However this does little in building any organic audience for your website, as there is usually limited traffic on secondary sites in the first place..

We Can help!

Search Engine Optimization can be a tricky concept to understand and even trickier to tackle. Symphysis maximizes the number of times you appear in organic search queries. Our SEO team begins by reducing loading time, improving image quality, removing leftover template code, implementing analytics, all while improving keyword ranking. For more information, call or text @ +1 (425) 390-4738.

Footnotes

• White Hat SEO techniques refers to methods such as better UI (User Interface), Keyword Research and Optimization, Speeding up the load time, and attracting backlinks from reputable websites are the main methods of white-hat SEO.

• Black Hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing (Including repetitive chosen keywords in your content), content scraping (Republishing your RSS links to different sites for backlink generation), comment spams (on different comment-enabled websites with links backing to your own website), cloaking (Showing different content to visitors and search engines), etc. Ranking Bots such as Google Crawler do not appreciate such techniques and can identify and punish sites using them.

• Off Page SEO techniques include everything you do online to drive traffic that is not on your website or relating to display of actual content. These include (but are not limited to) Social Media presence, Guestblogging, and Backlinking.

• Google Crawler is Google’s inter-site navigation block that navigates through various backlinks on different sites to a particular site.