TLDR: Stop link building; focus on quality content for natural backlinks and industry outreach for SEO success. Content is king, not forced links.
This article is a summary of a You Tube video “Link Building is Worthless. Do This Instead” by Income School
Key Takeaways:
- Link Building Misconception: The video challenges the traditional SEO practice of link building, stating it’s a waste of time, effort, and money.
- Backlinks Are Valuable, But…: While backlinks are important for SEO as they act like votes for content quality, actively building them is unnecessary.
- Natural Backlinking Example: The speaker uses their website, cookforfolks.com, as an example of how over 400 backlinks were organically acquired without any active link building efforts.
- Quality of Links Matters: High-quality, do-follow links often come from unique, hard-to-replicate content that others naturally cite and link to.
- Misconceptions in the SEO Community: There’s a highlighted misconception in the SEO community about the absolute necessity of backlinks for good ranking.
- Google’s Stance on Link Building: Google’s guidelines discourage manipulative link schemes and emphasize the importance of content quality over backlinks.
- Industry Outreach vs. Link Building: The speaker advocates for industry outreach for building relationships and authority in the industry, which is different from link building with the sole intent of gaining links.
- Utilizing Podcasts for Outreach: Being interviewed on podcasts is suggested as an effective way of doing industry outreach, naturally leading to authoritative links.
- Content First Approach: High-quality content naturally attracts backlinks and is crucial for gaining authority and recognition in your industry.
- The Danger of Over-Emphasizing Backlinks: Focusing too much on backlinks can be detrimental, as it might neglect the creation of valuable content that naturally earns recognition and links.
