Does link building actually work, or is it a complete waste of time? If you own a website, and you’re wondering whether link building will create traffic and increase your rankings, or if Google even likes it anymore, this article will be a great help to you.
In this article I will discuss real case studies, facts, and figures around link building. I will explore whether it actually works, or if you should stop wasting your time on link building and focus on content instead.
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The Truth About Backlinks Revealed
Does link building really work? The short answer is yes, it does. Google has come out and confirmed that link building is in their top three search ranking factors.
It was revealed a couple of years ago that links are in the top two of ranking factors on Google. So, if you want to increase your website’s traffic, if you want to grow your rankings, link building does work.
Ahrefs Case Study
Just to back that up, Ahrefs did a case study where they looked at a billion websites and they found that 90.63% of websites don’t get any traffic. Why was that? The number one reason was that the page didn’t have any backlinks. Around 55% of pages on the internet have zero backlinks.
This is great for you, because if you start building high-quality links now, you’re going to outrank most of your competitors. The majority of your competitors don’t have links and backlinks can help your website rank higher on Google. Keep reading and I will show you some case studies and examples.
Actual Case Studies
One example of a website where link building works relates to a previous client of mine, cardinaldigitalmarketing.com. This website is in the marketing space, which is pretty competitive, and I started building links for them around October 2018.
Since I built those links, their organic search has only gone up. It has increased by quite a dramatic rate.
Another example of a website I’ve built links for, is logodesign.net. I started building links for them around September 2018. They were only on DR25 back then. But since then, their referring domains have increased significantly.
When you look at the starting point of building links for them in September, their organic search has just increased dramatically. And it’s just going up and up.
When we started building links in September 2018, they were only getting around 305 organic search results per month. But now, within less than a year they’re on 78,000. It is a pretty dramatic increase and that just shows you the power of backlinks.
Avoid Blackhat Links
It is important to remember that backlinks don’t always work. Sometimes they can even harm your website, especially if you’re building low-quality backlinks from forums, PBNs, and spammy blog comments. These are the sort of links you need to avoid.
Keyword Search
Another thing is that you need to focus on keyword research. I’m going to show you an example where backlinks don’t work. For example, with this website; withandrewjohnson.com. They’ve got over 1800 backlinks, 340 referring domains, and they even have decent and respectable domain rating of 55.
But when you look at their organic search, it’s trending downwards. They only get 520 organic search results per month, which is low. They also have a very low traffic value score too.
Know What Your Target Links Are
Why are the backlinks not working for this website? When you get a look at their organic keywords, they’re not targeting high volume, low competition keywords. All of the search terms they’re going after, are low volume.
If you have a decent number of backlinks, you should be targeting high volume, low competition keywords, and producing tons of content around that. Because that’s where you’re going to see the results. You have to make the content work for you. You can get the backlinks, but you need the content too. It is about getting a balance of both.
Produce the Right Content
So, let’s recap, does link building work? Yes it does. Google has announced that link building is in their top three ranking factors. Another important thing is the case studies. With the clients I build links for, I have seen a huge increase in their traffic from the links I built previously.
You also have to make sure that you’re producing content around high volume and low competition keywords if you want those backlinks to work for you. Because if you have the website’s authority, you also need the content to back it up too.
The other thing that you need is patience. Backlinks aren’t going to work overnight. It takes three to six months to see results from link building. And it’s going to be a gradual process, not something that happens straight away.
