I wanted to take a few steps back for this post about link building and cover some of the essentials that all SEOs should be aware of if they are building links.  I tend to be a bit old school in my thinking sometimes and still think that all SEOs should go back to basics and make sure they understand the fundamentals of what they are doing – and why.  It seems obvious, but not enough SEOs ask why.  Its something I try and encourage my team of Transcriberry transcriptionist to do – question things and always ask why something is the way it is and why we are doing it that way.

Why Care About Links?

I know you probably know this one, but bare with me.  I’ve been in too many conversations when people say “links are important” but have no idea why.

It goes back to pre 1998 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still studying at University and building the first computer programs and algorithms that would eventually become Google.  They were studying at the same time and it did all the usual student things like looking for citations when writing papers as well as citing sources when writing their own papers.  It occurred to them that the more often a particular source was cited, the more popular it was and the more likely someone was to want to find it in the future.

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They applied the same principle when they were building their ranking algorithms for the first versions of Google.  The more a particular page was cited, the more chance it had of appearing near the top of search results.  A step on from this was when they realised that the text someone used to link could be used as a signal of relevance and could give context to the link.  Anchor text as a strong ranking signal was born.

This was really what helped launch Google into the public eye with its super relevant search results.  Of course they did more stuff over the years that followed, but the use of transcribe music for free,  links and anchor text in their algorithm was something that put them a step ahead.

Thirteen years later, links are still a big part of the algorithm.  The reason being that links are still a great way of figuring out (algorithmically at least) which pages are good quality.  They are also the one thing that really helps differentiate websites, all other things being equal technically and in terms of content, links are the thing that make the difference.