{"id":1048,"date":"2013-06-24T14:00:37","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2021-06-29T08:50:58","modified_gmt":"2021-06-29T05:50:58","slug":"how-to-grow-your-website-traffic-without-building-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/how-to-grow-your-website-traffic-without-building-links\/","title":{"rendered":"How to grow your website traffic without building links"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can increase your website traffic without doing link building and without violating any Google webmaster guidelines by concentrating on less risky and more efficient ways that will also lay the foundation for long term success.<\/p>\n

If you are one of my regular readers you should know by now that I am against building links as a way to promote a blog or website. \u00a0Link building used to work in the past but today things have changed and link building of any kind may create the exact opposite results.<\/p>\n

Last week I was pleasantly surprised when Google has finally decided to change their ranking article by removing any references to link building and replacing the text with a wording more suitable to what is applicable now especially after the release of Panda and Penguin (You can see the exact changes in more details below). This also gave me the idea to write this article and explain how to grow your website traffic without building links.<\/p>\n

Things have changed \u2013 Forget about link building all together<\/h2>\n

A bit of history for beginners<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the biggest flaws in Google\u2019s ranking algorithm was the dependence on links for calculating the ranking position of a website. While Google was making huge efforts to keep spammers out of their index, for years you could trick their algorithm and rank for any keyword by pointing thousands of links (of any kind \u2013 I describe the different kinds in detail in what is off-page SEO<\/a><\/b>) to a web site.<\/p>\n

This \u2018hide and seek\u2019 game between the Google Quality team and \u201cSEO\u2019s\u201d continued until February 2011 when Google started rolling out the Panda updates and April 2012 with the Penguin roll out. What Google has finally managed to do is separate artificially generated links from natural links while at the same time devalued the importance of the anchor text.<\/p>\n

The logic behind using links as a ranking factor is valid and links still play an important role but Google is now more efficient in identifying important links from links used for the sole purpose of manipulating their algorithm.<\/p>\n

Other search engines (for example Bing and Yahoo) rely largely on links for rankings and they are behind Google is terms of how sophisticated their ranking algorithms are. This is also the reason why some websites are penalized by Google for link building and are removed from the first pages of their index but at the same time they rank well in Yahoo and Bing.<\/p>\n

Google changes ranking advice<\/b><\/p>\n

As mentioned above Google has updated their ranking article by removing references to links and adding references to high quality websites that users will want to use and share. The change was first spotted by @Baeumlisberger<\/a> and reported by Barry Schwartz on search engine land<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is how the page looked before:<\/p>\n

\"Ranking<\/p>\n

And this is how the page looks now:<\/p>\n

\"Ranking<\/p>\n

This change was made on May 27 2013 although they should have made it right after the release of the first Penguin on April 2012. I have already started talking about the growing importance of building high quality websites<\/a><\/b> since April 2013 and I am glad that now this is getting more attention.<\/p>\n

Does this means that link building is officially dead?<\/b> In my opinion yes, link building as we knew it until now is a think of the past and webmasters and SEO\u2019s should concentrate on the other 200+ factors for ranking their websites higher in the SERPS.<\/p>\n

Guest posting is link building with another name<\/h2>\n

Since last year many people have started to promote guest posting as a valid way to get links and increase the PageRank of a website. Many \u201cSEO\u2019s\u201d are also promoting it as a legitimate way to gain rankings and if you have a website I am sure that you have received at least a couple of requests to publish guest posts on your website or blog.<\/p>\n

You can read when to accept guest posts on your blog<\/a><\/b> and is guest posting a valid way to get links<\/a><\/b> for a detail analysis about the role and type of guest posts but in a nutshell you should know the following:<\/p>\n