When you’re accustomed to working with SEO there may come a time when you see a website with only a few backlinks beat one that has many. You may even see a site that curates content beat a site like this. This may leave you pondering their importance. Is getting all your links from one site seen as spam? After all, there are a lot of great companies who do this.
Are Thousands of Links From one Site Spam?
Whether or not this is spam truly depends on the situation and the circumstances. The main determining factor has to do with whether the links are seen as natural vs. something that you’ve paid for or obtained through another deliberate attempt.
There are several types of natural links including:
- As a company, you may link to your other brands in your footer or main navigation so it’s easy for your visitors to switch between them
- If your website is seen as authoritative and you’re listed in another blogger’s resources
- When you produce a lot of photographed material and a website uses it in numerous posts
- If you’ve done something newsworthy and it’s mentioned, sourced, or featured
There are also several types of unnatural links. These can be simply defined as those you haven’t earned by merit. They include:
- Having one site that links to multiple sites on which you sell various items
- Creating a store with either “sponsored” or “nofollow” link attributes
- Banner ads because they’re considered paid placements
- Widgets, feeds, and badges that are stuffed with keyword-rich backlinks or that are nothing more than a marketing ploy
- Any blog that’s part of a PBN (paid blog network)
- Leaving comments on community websites, other blogs, or in forums
- Keyword-rich links that lead to category pages for products that you don’t manufacture
Are Backlinks Important to SEO?
Yes, these links are a vital part of your SEO strategy. However, it’s also important to understand that this isn’t a numbers game.
Some small sites can rank better than a national brand without having many backlinks. These sites may even rank better than their industry’s governing body for their branded keyword terms. This isn’t only due to the quality of links they’ve acquired but also the structure, content’s quality, site’s structure, and how the page renders.
All of this to say that these links are only one of the determining factors in SEO. Remember, search engines’ main purpose is to showcase the most relevant response to a search. This is done as quickly as possible, with relevance and accessibility being of utmost importance. It can be in the form of text, a video, images, or even mixed media.
Why Sites with Fewer Backlinks Outrank Sites with More
The answer to this question lies in your understanding of what a link is. Initially, backlinks were used as a way of determining how trustworthy a website’s page was, especially when it came to PageRank with Google. Now that things have changed there are other ways to build a website’s trust and merit so that it can compete with other credible sites in the niche. These include:
- Having someone licensed or credible in your niche sign off on your content
- Using links and schema to source the content to the author and other relevant sources
- Creating a solid internal linking structure that explains the resources you’ve mentioned in your content
- Making sure that you have a secure website
- Providing a better understanding of your content
- Formulating an easier way to make a purchase
- Having better formatting that’s easier for your visitors to digest
For help building your website’s trust and SEO contact the Affordable SEO Company Tampa in Tampa, FL today.