Why is hyperlink constructing so controversial?

It is loved. It is hated. It is promoted and criticized. And in my opinion it is misrepresented and misunderstood.

Link building in general is a marketing tactic that is closely related to it with search engine optimization (SEO). The idea is simple. Create links pointing to specific pages on your website and use external domains (and preferably those with high authority). Allow these links to drive traffic to your pages immediately. Over time, take advantage of the increased “domain authority” these links give you and increase your chances of ranking high in search engines.

It’s simple and easy to understand even for a non-expert in SEO.

Why is it so controversial?

A checkered past

You could say that link building has an eventful past. Since its inception, Google’s search engine algorithm has preferred to rank websites that have shown a high level of trustworthiness and use a system known as. is known Side rank. In its early stages, PageRank simply calculated the authority of a website based on the number of links referring to it and the authority levels of the referring sources.

Aggressive practitioners quickly worked to take advantage of this, essentially spamming links to quickly improve their rankings. At that time, it would have been appropriate to call link building a scourge on the web.

Related: The 7 Best SEO Tools to Help You Rank Higher on Google

But since then, Google has taken evasive and protective measures. The search engine is now loaded with algorithm changes and improvements that can detect link quality – and punish anyone who spams links or interferes with the average user’s experience. Nowadays only “good” links are rewarded.

Schemers and the modern black hat ring

Of course, that hasn’t stopped link scholars and other “black hats”, unethical SEO pros, from using bad links to improve rankings. Google outlines a variety of link schemes it constitutes a violation of its terms of use, such as: B. the direct exchange of money for links or the use of automated systems to blindly build links.

It doesn’t take a lot of searching to find companies willing to aggressively and cheaply build links, regardless of content, context, or overall link quality. Because of this, many people misconceive that this is the way all link building companies – and perhaps all SEO professionals – deal with link building.

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This is not the case. Most modern day SEO professionals are extremely careful when it comes to link building and preserving the user experience as best they can. And all link spammers and schemers are eventually caught and punished.

The link-earing vs. link-building debate

There is also controversy over an ongoing debate over link-earing vs. link-building – even with the ethical constraints of white hat SEO as a priority in both camps.

The modern approach to white hat link building is to rely on editorial links and other links that arise as a natural by-product of well-written, user-friendly content. In other words, content writing and user satisfaction are priority one – and links are priority two.

Link-earners feel that these measures are still insufficient and instead prefer to maintain links only through passive earning. Typically, this means writing great content locally, promoting it, and building relationships so people will link to it naturally.

In reality, both approaches are natural, ethical, and effective.

Is the controversy deserved?

So is the controversy justified?

Here is my stance. In some ways, the controversy is not deserved because link building isn’t always a bad strategy. But because there are so many different ways to do link building, and because there is always uncertainty about the ethics of digital marketing, there is certainly room for criticism and debate.

Consider the facts:

• Link building ethics can be ambiguous. For starters, it’s hard to say what is ethical and what is not. If it offers something of value to a user, is it ethical by default? Are ethics determined by what kind of Google Penalty is eligible?
• There is a huge gap between the best and worst link building tactics. All link building tactics fall somewhere on the ethical spectrum. Some deserve a terrible reputation while others should be promoted more. The gap between the dirtiest spam tactics and the best, most passive tactics is bigger than most people think.
• Links are valuable to everyone when created correctly. When done well, link building can be good for everyone involved. Websites get more visibility and traffic. Publishers look better. Users get more information. Everyone wins.
• Links remain a practical necessity in SEO. It’s almost impossible to rank without a solid backlink profile – so, in some ways, link building is inevitable.

As far as I’m concerned, link building is far from a requirement if you want your website to have a chance in modern times to increase its visibility and inbound traffic. And because there are “good” and “bad” ways to approach link building, link building itself shouldn’t be the target of one-sided resentment. When done right, link building has the potential to be sincere and beneficial to everyone involved.