Google SEO has bid goodbye to the old mechanism and evolved with new ways to identify the nature of links. Link building used to be about either ‘no-follow links’ or do-follow links,’ which is not the case anymore.
Link building is a tactic for navigating visitors from one website to another. You improve the odds of users (and Google) finding your web page if you have links on other websites that swing back to yours. Launching a link-building campaign to secure a top Google ranking for your business is a smart way to go about it.
Are you building links accurately? Or do you still follow antiquated practices?
Links are how search engine bots recognize website relationships. They use dofollow links to get from one page to the next, sidestepping nofollow links.
Everything you need to know about link attributes:
All the link attributes—sponsored, ugc, and nofollow—are treated as hints to determine which links to accept or ignore within Search. “We’ll use these hints—along with other signals—as a way to better understand how to analyze and use links within our systems appropriately.”- says Google.
What are nofollow links?
Nofollow links aren’t a novel concept. They’ve been in existence for 14 years. Google created this attribute to support the fight against spam comments. Although the rel=” nofollow” is one of the most basic HTML tags around, it’s crucial to understand if you’re doing SEO.
- rel=”nofollow”: Use this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.
What are dofollow links?
The default state of a backlink is dofollow. These links do not have an HTML tag assigned to them. When you create a new link on your website, such as in a recent blog post, it will usually be dofollow by default. A link from another website to yours can have a significant impact on your search engine rankings.
Search engine bots crawl the web through dofollow links, registering who is linking to who. These relationships pass a type of authority that SEO pros call “link juice” from one site to another.
What are ugc links?
UGC stands for user-generated links and often the ones that Google does not wish to consider. Though this isn’t necessarily the case, these types of links are often from low-quality sources. Because you create these links and self endorse, Google isn’t looking for such a format when figuring out which websites to rank.
They’ve been helpful for certain SEOs working on particular sites in the past, but you should tread very carefully now. Your ongoing link profile should determine the kinds of links you follow in your approach, but you must avoid links that aren’t editorially given in general.
- HTML tag: rel=”ugc”: This attribute value is recommended for links within user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts.
What are sponsored links?
If you make money for a link or are purchasing one, Google now requires you to mark it as sponsored. Not only in the site’s text but also in the link attribute:
- rel=” sponsored”: Use the sponsored attribute to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships, or other compensation agreements.
Except for sponsored links, there is no such thing as a wrong attribute. If you mark a user-generated link or a non-ad link as sponsored, Google will notice, but the impact—if any—will be limited to not counting the link as a credit on another page. It’s similar to the current state of several UGC and non-ad connections, which are already labeled as nofollow.
Ahrefs studied 44,589 SERPs to see if there was any correlation between Google rankings and various backlink attributes—one of which was the number of followed backlinks.
Here’s what they found:
SEO is an essential piece of the significant marketing puzzle. It’s a consistent practice that, when done effectively, can have an incredible impact on your business. Link building services can boost your website’s overall SEO performance with the professionals’ high-quality link building.
A breakdown of Google’s new guidelines for link building
Changes should not be feared but rather seen as another way to improve the site’s ranking.
The quality of Google’s search results determines whether it survives or dies. It is therefore important for them to rate websites based on what their customers want to see.
The most important thing, regardless of algorithm changes, is to build a user-friendly interface on your website. Provide excellent support, create original material, and set yourself apart from the competition. Someday, you could just be at the top of the search engine rankings.
So, what’s the bottom line here? Google’s new link strategy will assist SEO experts in creating more sophisticated hyperlinks, which, if used correctly, could help the company’s website achieve better online rankings. However, since the day SEO experts learned how strong links are, they’ve been busy exploiting them.
Even though some digital criminals can get away with these tricks, the chances are that it’s going to get you into a lot of trouble with Google someday. What happens if you end up breaking one of Google’s many rules?
Using the dark arts to improve your rankings could succeed in the short term, but the long-term repercussions may be disastrous.
It will need a great deal of effort. The laws of the internet are somewhat similar to the rules that govern everyday society. As a result, there should be no lying, cheating, or stealing to increase traffic!
Hence, what we can do is continue the ethical SEO pattern of creating fantastic customer experiences, structuring prodigious products/services, creating customer-oriented content, and everything else your competitors aren’t doing.
What are your thoughts about the new link-building guidelines? Having a hard time keeping up with Google’s rules for building links? You’re not the only one who feels this way. This guide may have hopefully made Google’s latest link-building rules a little clearer.