Link buildings
a. What is a backlink?
A backlink is a link that comes from an external source i.e., another webpage) that links back to your website. Google looks favorably on backlinks and measures the quantity and quality of each one by its popularity.
If you create links that are not legitimate, you may get penalized by Google for creating a fake link.
b. Why are backlinks important?
As a brokerage or insurer, it’s your aim to generate quality links, not just any links. While getting backlinks, also called link building, can be difficult it should be a critical part of your SEO strategy. Backlinking will pay off with higher rankings if done properly. Outreach and guest postings are two strategies to rein in links to your website.
Link building is an effective SEO practice that will help you rank your website and gives a thumbs up to search engines and users that your site has great, unique content.
Most importantly, backlinks are one of the top 10 ranking factors in Google’s organic ranking algorithm. There are more than 200 ranking factors in Google’s algorithms.
c. White hat vs Black hat SEO
Black hat SEO is a practice of tricking the search engine algorithms to rank your website using techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, and purchasing links. Cloaking is hiding keywords in the coding of your site – this activity may result in a website penalty.
Penguin update
Google’s 2012 Penguin update focused on reviewing the legitimacy of a website’s backlinks to discover whether the links were genuine. This update was set up to discourage people from buying links to boost their ranking. The update, which assigned negative and positive values to actions companies took on link building, was added to the core algorithm in 2016.
ii. Risks of black hat link building - manual penalty
JC Penny was penalized for incorporating black hat practices, including buying links. The retail giant’s activities resulted in a significant lowering of their rankings on Google. This is an example of a manual penalty that costs a company their top-level ranking.
Note that some penalties are a result of not taking time or not knowing when to follow SEO best practices. It’s key to keep abreast of the latest Google algorithms updates for this reason.