by Boca Raton SEO Guy
29. April 2010 07:34
Why do you get backlinks?
I was reminded this past week why backlinks are so important in the seo game while doing research for a prospective client. I came upon several blog posts regarding webmasters complaining that they are suddenly seeing a massive drop in traffic from the organic serps and other webmasters saying how they are seeing a drop in traffic from their Google Place Pages and how their businesses are being ruined because of this.
As has been stated countless times from Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Guidelines, the fundamental reason for backlinks is not to game the Google algorithm to achieve higher rankings in the SERPS but to advertise and or to brand your business on the web and although a nice side effect of gaining backlinks is (sometimes) higher rankings, the key here is to open up as many marketing channels as you can possibly find to drive traffic to your website for leads or newsletter signups or for buying of "blue widgets in city".
I have seen it happen too many times to not state it here, you do NOT want to rely solely on Google referrals for all of your traffic and sales. Just like in investing you would not want to put all of your retirement funds into a single equity or stock, the same applies to website sales and lead generation. Do not count on a single source of traffic!
If your current SEO Agency is not advising you to diversify your portfolio of traffic generating sources, they are doing you a giant disservice. Ask them what would happen if Google suddenly tweaked their algorithm that moves your website deep past page 1? Do you have the financial backing to withstand a major SERP change?
Several years ago this exact scenario played out in what became known as the "Florida" update. Google made a tweak to their algorithm and entire swaths of search engine results changed on a massive scale and thousands of webmasters literally went out of business within weeks.
So the question again is "why do you get backlinks"? If your answer is higher rankings you are doing it wrong!
That's All For Now,
The Boca Raton SEO Guy