Quality Over Quantity The New Standard for Link Building

As the Google algorithm constantly improves, the Search Engine Optimization game gets harder. Certain strategies that helped to boost rankings 5 years ago just don't work anymore.

One of these classic SEO strategies was to throw as many incoming links as possible on other websites across the board regardless of the quality of websites.

This is no longer a best practice.


After Google's Penguin 2.1 update, inbound links from "low quality" websites that Google has caught using underhanded search engine practices will hurt your sites page ranking. Additionally there are other link building techniques which should now generally be avoided in order to maintain or improve your current rank. Here below are a few techniques that should be avoided when link building and a few tips to help get your site on the right track.

Incestuous links

Incestuous links are links that occur when sites link their properties together and among a group of sites. They then try to pass the links off as legitimate and from outside sources. An example of this would be if you owned 10 different websites and then linked them all together. Google will now recognize this and "punish" sites who use this practice either by devaluing your site or worse marking it as spam. Your site could then potentially vanish from the index all together.

Reciprocal Links

While not as bad as Incestuous links, reciprocal linking isn't a best practice by any means. It occurs when two websites link to each other. Google sees this and it will limit the value of both links in either directions.

Link Farms

When link building for your site, be sure to stay away from link farms. Link farms are websites which contain hundreds or even thousands of links to websites across the web. Be wary if you receive a request from a site asking for you to link to a different site in exchange for link placement on their site. This is a classic link farm warning sign.

The fact is that quality is highly valued over quantity these days. Google's algorithm can tell if what you put on your site is good content or not. Try writing high quality, truly informative articles and get your work published on other sites. For press releases, instead of just sending out a boring press release every two weeks actually do something newsworthy in your industry and then write about it. Build relationships with other businesses in your industry and create a unified online center for ideas and strategy.