Google’s Link Building Guidelines

Google has just changed up the link building guidelines.

Earlier, the links would be either a dofollow link or a nofollow link.

Okay! That’s changed now.

Google is now introducing 2 more SEO – effective link types!

Current SEO Algorithm

The current SEO algorithm is very simple.

In Link Building, there are only 2 type of links – dofollow (regular links) & nofollow links.

So, Total no of backlinks  = dofollow links + nofollow links

Now, when you are link building, if you are paying for links or leveraging tactics like guest posting, Google wants you to nofollow those links because they don’t think you should be leveraging tactics like guest posting to manipulate rankings.

And as for buying links, you shouldn’t do that as it is a simple way to get penalized or banned from Google.

Google’s new link policy

If someone pays you for a link or you are buying a link, Google now wants you to mark it as sponsored. Not just in the text of the site, but more so through the link attribute:

Rel=”sponsored”

And if you build links through user-generated content, they want you to mark the links with the attribute:

Rel=”ugc”

The same goes for site owners. For example, if you have a forum on your site because the content is user generated, the links that people place should contain a rel=”ugc”.

You can still use the nofollow attribute or if you want you can use a combination of the above. For example, if you have a paid link you can use:

Rel=”nofollow sponsored”

Google says, “ All the link attributes — sponsored, UGC and nofollow — are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. We’ll use these hints — along with other signals — as a way to better understand how to appropriately analyze and use links within our systems.”

Google is pretty much saying that adding these attributes will give them a better idea on if they should crawl the link or not or how they should analyze the link when it comes to indexing or SEO.

This change goes into effect March 1, 2020, and don’t worry because you don’t have to make modifications to your old links. The ones that were nofollow can just be left as nofollow.

And even in the future, if you decide to just use nofollow instead of “sponsored”, you’ll be fine.

This will help Google to identify if the URL linked to should be potentially crawled or ignored.

But in the long run, as their algorithm becomes more accurate, it’s safe to say that the real solution to winning is putting the user first.

Their goal isn’t to rank a site at the top that has “perfect SEO”. They want to rank the site that people love the most.

Hence, we need to focus on:

• Amazing Content
• Extraordinary Products/services
• Great user experience

Digital marketing is constantly changing and we think the above tactics and ideas are going to be huge game-changers in 2020. What do you think?

Need help implementing the new link building change in your strategy? Our marketing experts can help! Get in touch by calling +91-7974881696 or mail us here: info@thinkfirstservices.com

So guys, what do you think about the new change? Let us know in the comment section below.