Golder Days for SEOs   When I started my SEO career back in 2010, making backlinks from web directories, forum profiles, blog comments, etc., could easily improve website ranking. Back then, On-site SEO was a kind of luxury. Still, those who fantasized about doing on-page SEO just used to create unique metadata and image alt text. That’s all. The more link you build, the higher you climb the ladder of search ranking! But the scenario started changing soon. Google gradually introduced various algorithmic updates like the panda, penguin, etc. Each update rolled out to target some types of SEO practices (read spammy practices), and so-called SEO professionals started yelling, “SEO is dead,” “SEO no longer works.”   Google Started Fighting Back   As a search engine, Google aims to deliver the highest quality result to its users against the search queries and make money from advertisements. If people stop using their search engines because of irrelevant, low quality, and manipulated results, their income from ads will also stop. Therefore, Google had no choice but to crack down on millions of SEO spammers trying to game the Google algorithm every day. So they started devaluing links coming from spammy sites like web directories, social bookmarking, forums, etc. Now you can create 1k of such links; still, they will not impact your ranking; rather, you will make your website a target to get penalized for spamming the internet.  

Google Recommendations

Google made it clear that an SEO’s job isn’t to game with Google algorithms but to improve the website’s quality for a better user experience, so that good quality links come naturally. It implies that google doesn’t like you to build backlinks only for the sake of backlinks. If you have a user-friendly website and useful content on it, many webmasters, bloggers, journalists will link to your content to help their readers. Google puts the highest value to those natural backlinks.   SEO Strategies That Work   SEO strategies that focus on the on-page factors achieve their goals easily. Thus, the top 3 ranking factors are the following:

1. High-quality contents
2. User-friendliness
3. Relevant and authoritative backlinks

Let us discuss each of the topics in further detail. High-quality content is originally researched and relevant to the user’s search intents. They are also grammatically, contextually, and factually correct. Website content could be anything from plain text to images, videos, infographics, etc. If your readers find your content useful, they may willingly recommend it to their friends, family, and followers. As a result, they are more likely to surf other resources on your website and potentially become clients or subscribers. Remember, Google also keeps an eye on your website’s click-through rate, conversion rate, and bounce rate. Contact an experienced marketing agency that offers personalized SEO services and can optimize your website according to Google’s best practice guidelines. The user-friendliness of your website consists of factors like page speed, site architecture, mobile optimization, etc. On top of that, some other factors indirectly enhance user experience like website security, metadata, image alt tags, schema, internal linking, external outgoing links, etc. A user-friendly website makes the visitors happy, share, and return to the website whenever needed. Google tracks every single action your visitors perform on your website and feed the ranking signal. Relevant and authoritative backlinks are still one of the top 3 ranking factors. Do you remember that old day saying, “A link is equal to a vote”? That golden phrase still holds. The only difference is that all votes aren’t equal. This is contrary to the election system in a democracy, yet it prevents internet spam. If you do something only for achieving a backlink, you are somewhat involved in spamming, and Google will sooner or later detect and devalue it. So, how can you get those golden deer called “relevant and authoritative backlinks”? Well, that’s a million-dollar question, but the answer is out there in almost every SEO blog or tutorial. Create quality content, offer value, think about the users, not the search engines. Authority websites need you as much as you need them. When you publish something unique and originally researched, those golden deer will come to you on their own. You don’t have to chase them.   Final Thoughts    Undoubtedly, SEO isn’t dead. The definition of SEO has slightly changed, and you need to cope with the new reality. Just shift your focus from creating too many low-value backlinks to your website’s high-quality content and user-friendliness. Remember, one high-quality link from a relevant and authoritative website can weigh more than 5k spammy backlinks.