People regularly ask us a certain question: ‘are backlinks good for SEO?’. It is a difficult question to answer. Some backlinks are good, but most are very bad.
The vast majority of backlinks are bad. This is because an SEO Company will actually be outsourcing this overseas, where they will be buying a link building package.
These backlinks are normally from sites that do nothing else but supply links to thousands of others sites around the world. These site have no credibility with Google and receive a negative score. These then become toxic links, which actually harm your performance with Google.
When you think about this, it makes perfect sense. How could an SEO company in Ireland or the UK provide you with an SEO Package that generates say 600 backlinks a month, for maybe as little as €300, if they were doing it in Ireland or the UK?
Each link would take at least 10 minutes to build, so let’s say six links per hour. At that rate, it would take 100 hours per month to deliver. This works out at €3 per hour for the service. As they say – when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
So are backlinks bad for SEO then?
This is where it gets a little confusing because the answer is no, not all backlinks are bad.
Let’s say you are an IT company and you are a Microsoft Partner. A link from the Microsoft website to your website is very beneficial. However, there is no SEO Company in the world that can sell you a backlink from Microsoft.
In the same way, if you are featured in a newspaper and they publish a link from their website to yours, this is also a credible link and will be good for your SEO.
Your link building activity therefore will happen organically, through a combined effort of keeping your website up to date with blogs and interesting news and your offline marketing activities which over time will lead to links being sent to your site from other credible websites that recommend your business.
So what should you do?
If your SEO Company is providing you with a link building strategy, STOP. If you are looking for an SEO Company, only choose one that does not provide backlinks as part of their SEO strategy.
If you need help to get your site to rank better, we’ll perform a full audit of your existing site. We’ll carry out extensive keyword research and market research. We’ll check out your competitors too, to see what we need to do to get your site ahead of theirs.
For more on what we can do for you, use our Contact Us page, or e-mail info@newworlddigital.ie
