One thing to understand about the Best SEO Practices
Something that has been asked of us a number of times this week is the importance of backlinks. Backlinks used to carry a lot of weight with the Google Algorithm. However, this is not so much the case anymore and actually can be very negative. An “old school” Best SEO practice used to be to subscribe to back linking services to gain clout and improve your SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page).
Your site would start with one or two backlinks and with the subscription to these services your site would explode to hundreds if not thousands of unrelated backlinks. This was a very beneficial and inexpensive practice. However, Google and the subsequent search engines decided that this was not a normal nor was it a beneficial SEO practice for their customers. Due to this the importance of backlinks have decreased dramatically. And if you still follow this practice of paying for backlinks you can find your website blacklisted from the search engines and virtually out of business.
So what has been asked of us this week are questions like, “What backlinks, if any, are beneficial?”. And the simple answer is related or industry specific backlinks to your site are beneficial. So are backlinks from local media company’s such as the TV news websites. These can be helpful as if they say that you are an expert in what you do. The search engines will tend to agree. The ones that come in from Facebook and other social media sites are not as beneficial as we would all like them to be. Though Google swears they do not give clout for using related services, they do. So, take this into consideration as you utilize services that Google offers. Please keep sending your questions and I will be happy to answer them next week. Take care and we will continue to help your business get found…