Link building is a very strange thing.
It’s simultaneously a very niche activity and the activity that powers the entire web. Despite the importance and ubiquity of link building, it remains a mystery to most. Which is pretty good for link builders, but not so good for the world.
People love to complicate link building and to try and elevate it to a much higher standard than it deserves to be held at. And this is coming from someone who lives and breathes link building. I love it and hate it.
In an ideal world, it wouldn’t exist. The internet would sort itself out, arrange itself in the most perfect order, tailored to each user. But we’re not there and we’re probably never going to get there. So it remains a necessary evil of sorts. And yes, I mean evil. Link building can be, in my opinion, more than a bit unethical. It’s concerned with one thing – the acquisition of links. Without care for where those links sit, who clicks on those links, and the power it gives sites who can dish out “authoritative” links.
Here’s a hot take – If you’re relying on PR efforts to acquire links then chances are you’re fuelling the media monster which causes so much misery and wasted time to so many people. You’re fuelling the production of more clickbait content, and you’re fuelling the fabrication of what basically boils down to lies. You’re giving power to large companies who use their power to influence elections and to manipulate you and everyone around you. You might not be – some PR results in genuinely good stories which need to be told. But that’s almost certainly not you.
We got pretty dark there for a minute. But in all honesty, it would be very easy for me to deliberately be ignorant to this stuff, and to not allow my ‘on the spectrum’ brain to wander down these paths. Trust me, I’ve tried. But I can’t in good faith act in this way without feeling like I’m throwing more wood onto the bonfire that is the modern world. I’m trying to be a better human being, and it’s really goddamn hard in this game.
An overreaction? Almost certainly. A diet of too much coffee will do that to you. But let’s be real for a minute – an algorithm which values links from news publication websites – which have been proven countless times to publish misleading and factually incorrect content – as the ultimate vote of “this other site is good” is incredibly flawed and almost laughable in concept when you stop to consider it for a second. “Oh wow, a link from Buzzfeed? They only publish well-researched, quality content so that link must be really valuable!”. Gimme a break.
This is a concept I wrestle with all the time in my line of work, and is partly why I don’t put a huge emphasis on PR-led link building (among other reasons). Luckily, there are sites outside of the big news publications who can pass “authority” through their links (ahem lemme link this awesome guide again). So your job is to focus on them. Get links that rank you, and make the internet a better place.
So, my promise to all clients is that I’ll try my best to keep my link building efforts “ethical”. I’ll try my best to think beyond SEO when building your links, and I’ll try my best to build links which not only help your site rank on Google, but also which helps give power and influence to the sites that deserve it (or at least, not all to the same media conglomerates). Rankings are irrelevant if we’re making the world a worse place (who wants a successful business in a shitty world right?).
