Google did not become popular by providing links to websites that have the best SEO professionals. They have been successful by returning relevant popular results with great content. If the content of your website is worth reading people will mention it on their blogs, tweet about it, and link to it on their own websites. Providing quality information is the best way to get links, and you won’t have to lift a finger.
Google has many checks in place to make sure you are not at the top of their list without providing good information.
- Keyword Stuffing: If all you do on your pages is constantly mention keywords they will recognize it and not rank your page for any of them
- Duplicate Content: If you created a page about a website design in Havertown, then copied it 5 times and replaced the word Havertown with other town names they will recognize that the content is the same and not rank the pages. The same would apply if you tried to create multiple websites with the same content.
- Link Networks: If you link a friend’s website and they return the favor this will not carry as much weight as if it were a one way link. If you link your friend Bob who links to Susie who then links back to you they will recognize this as well and discount its value.
- Link Relevance: If you get links from a whole bunch of websites that have nothing to do with the keywords your targeting they do not count for much. A website with very few links can out rank a website with many more if their link network is more targeted to the search query.
If you have the opportunity to get a link to your website go for it. It can’t hurt your website. If this were the case people could hurt their competitiors rankings by listing them in spammy websites. Just be aware that developing good content is far more important than finding good links because you will gain links without working for them, and those that click on your site will remember that you gave them good information, not that your showed them keyword rich generic content.
