Building backlinks is a waste of time, here is what works ...

Without some good links, you'll get very little traffic. I think we can all agree on that.

What I said above (at least, tried to say) is that, after many years building my personal website, including link building, I had accumulated a fair amount of good links and was getting good traffic. Then (not before), I transitioned in my focus. I let my good content (Ph.D. expertise in my field) draw links organically. And I began to devote my time primarily to (1) additional content creation and (2) on-page SEO.

 

You can earn high quality backlinks by writing great content. So it is not a waste of time. Earning your backlinks is the strategy.

 

you aren't going to rank for anything substantial with content alone. Good content helps you attract "natural backlinks". With the correct on page optimisations, you can very well rank for very low comp keywords without links. for anything higher you'll have to build some high quality links. I.E, PBN, niche edits and/or guest posts.

 

Link building is NOT the hardest part of SEO. Its the most easiest part of SEO. Anyone can build backlinks or buy backlinks from anywhere. Hardest part these days is to get those links indexed. None of the indexing services works anymore since last May/June Google update. This is THE hardest part in my view, to get the links indexed.

Good content will keep visitors on your page longer. However, without any backlinks, you do not have any visitors to begin with. You cannot rank even for a low competition KW without any backlink. Try it with good content and let me know. It simply will not work.

 

Content is important, but so do backlinks. Besides, we can always write a guest article where we will post a back link. It is impossible to get good results without returned links.

 

Yes, You're right, Of course, content in SEO is everything if you want long-term business on google.

SEO Agency Denver

 

Good suggestion, but link-building through forums is a herculean task. Is there any easy way to generate backlinks through forum postings?

 

Hi MillieMc
Why link-building through forum posting? It won't be worth the effort and time. Try other link-building techniques, like outreach, live webinars, guest posting on authority niche websites and natural link-building.

 

Building spam backlinks is surely a waste of time but you do need good backlinks in order to get top search engine rankings. I don't think it is possible to have top positions on search engine for competitive keywords without the backlinks.

 

I can't believe there are still people who think like this in year 2019/2022. We rank empty pages using backlinks, so I don't know what you're talking about.

 

Now everyone is talking about chat gpt ... create content , than edit , or create ebook to sell , marketing etc.
so call " Unique content " Google always claim . I don't know how Google side will do. Constant updates as usual
which a lot site owners seem already " used to it "

 

This statement is more suitable for a sites that has already found its users, for new sites, in order to somehow rise, links are needed.

 

It is important to build a user base. You have to find people who actually want to consume your content or interact with your website. Then you need to find ways to keep them coming back. Then the link building process should happen automatically.

If nobody wants to come and view your content, you already are going down the wrong road. You've got to find a way to get people to like what you do and then the rest will follow if you work hard and are consistent over time.

 

Here's how it will not "take forever," although it does take a while. Once your website is:
(1) well established (not brand new), with many pages indexed and ranked, and...
(2) you do internal linking to new content from your existing Google-indexed-and-ranked content, Google and other search engines will easily find and index your new content.

I've been doing that for most of the last 19 years and have built my one-man, Bible-themed, nonprofit website to about 60K visitors a month. I have a high-traffic, well-ranked home page. It comes up #1 or #2 on Google for a term with 2 million search results. On the home page I have a section with links to the five most recent pages of new content. I also add about 5-10 keyword-relevant links to the new page from other indexed pages in my website. Using these methods, plus ongoing SEO (mostly keyword improvement), traffic has risen to about 2,000 daily visitors without my building any inlinks from other websites. But yes, in the early years I did seek out links from other websites. Now being well established with many ranked pages, I do not. The website and its 500+ indexed pages continually generate their own organic links.

Full disclosure: I'll be age 80 shortly and am entirely a one-man office. I'm the webmaster, the copywriter, the SEO guy—all that. If I had more time, more $$, and more of me, I would probably do more. But the system above works great for me. Hopefully the thoughts above will be helpful to some of you working hard out there, with limited resources, to build a successful website. Blessings!

 

I still considered link building the most important thing in Search Engine Optimization. Yes, they are problematic at one time , but it's a powerful tool for SEO.

 

I am partially agreed! Quality content is king, without a doubt. But backlinks from high DA websites are also very much important in SEO. I believe building less number of quality backlinks works wonder than too many unnecessary backlinks. Quality over quantity wins always!

 

I think it's all of the above. Writing good content which will help you build links inbound but the website's design and UX is equally important.

 

Well said, content is king. content is in your hand so you can improve it on daily bases, you can optimize your content, improve your keyword strategy and other SEO aspect point of view, and you can change it as many times do you want.

 

You can do whatever you want, but your traffic amount will be the decision of Google.
They are controlling our sites and traffic.
I have enough websites and I always check the traffic.
If the traffic depends only on me, so why do my websites always get the same daily visitors?
Yes, it is growing, but do you seriously believe 185 daily unique visitors (155 organic traffic) ALWAYS, day by day is something natural?
The next month it can increase or decrease or stay stable, but each day I get the same traffic, the same numbers (+/- 5 visitors).
Each month the traffic changes on the 1 day of the month.
Another website changes the traffic every 3 months. Day in the day.
And you know what? I get the same number of visitors every hour!
Every day, at 01:00 Google Analytics updates my traffic results of the previous day and starts the new round.
It is enough to check my traffic between 01:00 and 02:00 to know how many visitors the site will get in the next 24 hours. The same number!
If I get 90 unique between 01:00 and 02:00, then during the full day I will get 90 unique per hour.
The next day it can be 85 unique per hour or 95 unique per hour.
Until the next month when Google can change the number dramatically and decrease or increase my traffic.
You can control your site traffic meanwhile your traffic is low, but on sites with a few thousand daily visitors, you are not who decides.
Google is manipulating all.

 

The problem is you never will get a free backlink, no one ever will backlink your site.
The only way is to buy links.
The only sites which get free backlinks are news sites.
I have a lot of travel sites and a few news sites and the only sites which get daily backlinked are news sites.