5 Link Building Tactics that are Dead in 2019

5 Link Building Tactics that are Dead in 2019
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If you build links or provide link building services and keep up with the latest trends, you’ll start to see a pattern.

It’s quite obvious really, and everyone’s accepted it. What we haven’t really realized, though, is the longevity of it.

The pattern I’m talking about is tactic X being labeled as spammy and no longer “an approved strategy by Google”. It’s been around since practically the beginning of SEO, and over time the discussion heats up more & more.

But as we check off link building strategies as “no longer worth pursuing”, we haven’t realized the list of “approved” tactics is growing smaller & smaller.

So let’s go through each tactic that is supposed to be no longer “white hat” or “Google approved”. Hopefully, you’ll see a pattern to this as well.

Here is a list of link building tactics that are dead:

This was probably the first link building tactic ever being deemed as manipulative. Strangely enough, though, people are still deeming it as something that can be used to have a positive effect, but only if it’s a natural, relevant opportunity with user intent playing a big part.

After hundreds and thousands of directories were created solely for link placement purposes, Google started to crack down. Directory links make most link purists shudder at the thought.

Yet, most still believe authoritative & relevant directories are still great places to get links.

There was a time when Directory submission was relevant, but those days are long gone.

Blog comments

If you run a blog, you see the comment spam that comes through each day. It didn’t take long for CMS platforms to nofollow comment links and Google to disavow this form of spam.

Yet, comments still prove to be a popular inbound tactic for those trying to grow their audience, and the links can’t hurt if they’re genuinely written on relevant, authoritative blogs.

(Just seems natural, right?)

Forum postings

Like blog comments, this was notorious for spam as people could hit a button in a piece of software and watch the role of the link by the thousands. Of course, Google sees this as a big no-no.

Yet, relevant, quality posts in forums that provide helpful answers & information will get you good links, and it might even drive revenue.

Article submission

This only recently died with the birth of Panda and then the knockout punch of Penguin.

Even though this is, in fact, a tactic that I cannot see any value add, the idea behind it is extremely similar to guest posting service, which we’ll get into in a second.

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Main Takeaways

I’m going to get right to some extremely important takeaways here.

Almost all “spammy tactics” can produce quality, natural links. There’s a quality factor that can be implemented for any of the above, and even though what most are using the above for can be deemed as manipulative, the tactic as a whole isn’t because it can be done in a non-manipulative manner.

By the definition of most link critics, we’d be just about out of ways for an average website to build links. Yep, believe it or not, not every small business can afford that big content marketing budget, and looking at the current state of rankings (a lot of sites continue to rank with the above tactics to at least some extent), one isn’t needed in every situation.

At one point, none of those tactics were manipulative. Why? Because they didn’t have the link in mind. Start thinking about how you can get quality links in the above ways as a byproduct of what you do, and not your main intention.

Algorithms detect footprints, so don’t leave one. The reason most of these tactics were deemed spammy was that link builders left footprints that could be detected by future algorithmic updates. Even if you didn’t have great intentions besides the link, you could get links from the above tactics without any repercussions. I.e. change up the author bio for every guest post, cycling in different anchors in your infographic embed codes, etc.

Conclusion

Don’t write something off because everyone wants to publicly stay in Google’s good graces. Analyze the initial reasons behind what the tactic is outside of the link, and do it with those intentions.

https://www.egochi.com/link-building/relevant-vs-irrelevant-link-building/


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Posted on January 13, 2019 in Search Engine Optimization

Meet The Author

Jobin John
Jobin is a digital marketing professional with over 10 years of experience in the industry. He has a passion for driving business growth in the online realm. With an extensive background spanning SEO, web design, PPC campaigns, and social media marketing, Jobin masterfully crafts strategies that resonate with target audiences and achieve measurable outcomes.
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