Evolution of Link Building ThroughOut Years

Link building is to establish the relationship, to nurture it with time and you will always have a leg up on the competition.

Discovering and employing the new link building techniques require creativity and ingenuity. To think outside of the box, it is requisite to find out the solutions to your problems. And, simply to solve a problem is to build the links. Broken link building and guest blogging are the robust link building techniques in 2015 to build more and more links. The links are an imperative piece and beneficial to the website only if the links are of quality and relevant.

However, have you ever heard about how link building has evolved? How has it become a significant aspect of the SEO? Numerous queries have sprouted about link building within a few years. Therefore, in 2015, many new link building techniques have been introduced and the process will never end. With many alterations in the digital ambiance, many new revolutions have made and will arise in the future also.

Life-cycle of Link Building

Let us discuss the process of link building from the early phase to beyond the future.

• Pre-Penguin Era:

The race, of being popular and to rank higher, of the websites, had been prevailing before the introduction of the Penguin algorithm. For this, some webmasters and SEO Experts had started to employ unethical techniques to boost their search results. And, it was the time when the algorithm Penguin emerged.

Let us have a look at the pre-penguin time.

1. 1999 (The period of Link Exchanges)

It was the era where the link building included the exchange of the links, i.e., link back to your site and exchanging the irrelevant links with other sites so as to drive the traffic.

2. 2000 (Email Link Requests)

In 2000, the criteria had changed and people initiated to email the link requests, asking certain links to be added to their site.

3. 2001 (Directory Submission)

Yes, the directory submission is the old technique to acquire the links. Simply, submitting your site to the multiple directories once had a great influence on the search rankings.

4. 2003 (Blog Comments)

The content has always been the King in the SEO procedure. 2003 was the year when the blog commenting technique had been initiated. The perceptions had been lifted up from the absurd linking to the actual peer interaction.

5. 2004 (Article Submission)

Now, it was the turn of Article marketing. Many websites had started to accept the content from virtually any author on any topic. This was the influential approach to establish domain authority and rank power in 2004.

Also Read: Best of Internet Marketing 2017

6. 2005 (Blogroll Links)

Blogroll or a list of hyperlinks to other blogs or websites was an impactful approach to earn the maximum number of the links and proved to be the way for the blog communities to grow. However, be careful! Many of the links might be artificial.

7. 2006 (Paid for Links)

Pay to have your link placed on a website for instant traffic. Nevertheless, Google soon stopped this technique by giving no SEO value to such links.

8. 2007 (Link Networks)

Text link selling was the other tactic to link sites to one another, but again it was the paid formula. So, Google had ceased it very soon.

9. 2008 (Linkbait)

Linkbait via infographics and cheap listicle articles was the other attempt to acquire the links. But, soon it was also ended.

10. 2009 (Guest blogging)

Guest Blogging… It was evolved in 2009. It was then an effective way to exchange the relevant links. Indirectly, the content had won. Nonetheless, it was the organic technique so; it didn’t deliver instant results like link baiting and paid for links.

11. 2010 (Press Releases)

The press release was then an effective technique to assure your position on page 1 of Google. Since it had also faced the sad cessation due to having a little editorial review and credibility.

12. 2011 (Blog Networks)

It was to establish a robust network with other sites. It was a prominent way to get the links posted on a number of sites to enhance the SEO value. But, unfortunately, it also worked for a while.

Also Read: A Complete Guide On How To Increase Domain Authority

 Post-Penguin Era:

The Penguin update was first announced on April 24, 2012, and then it had affected 3.1% searches in language English. Its direct attack was on the spam links. It had simply improved Google’s ability to detect manipulation and gave better and precise search results. It was a sort of terror. If, unfortunately, a website became the victim of it, then before its updating or evolution of the new algorithm, there were no chances of liberty.

The upshots are somewhat like these after the introduction of the Penguin algorithm.

1. 2012 (The death of Guest Blogging)

The guest blogging technique was surrounded by many questions as early as 2012 and by the end of 2013; it would be declared as dead by Matt Cutts.

2. 2013 (Link Removals and Disavows)

With the crackdown on link networks and guest blogging sites, many webmasters had faced many manual penalties. Ultimately, all would direct to start removing or disavowing the links and the blogs that were paid in the past.

3. 2014 (Broken Link Building)

While this tactic has been around for quite some time, it was back on the rise due to the crackdown on other spammy link building practices.

Also Read: Common SEO Mistakes Every Blogger Do

4. 2015 and Beyond (Link Earning)

It is 2015 and now each aspect has been relied on the term- “quality”. Link building is all about link earning. It involves content creation and the content which earns the links naturally. Don’t let the evolution of link building get you down. Staying at the top and adapting to change is the nature of the internet beast.

Links…Links…Links! To acquire or we can say earn the links in 2015, simply create the persuasive content and let it screams to Google and compels it to rank the website higher in the organic listings on the search engine result page.