Do Links Work? The Proof!
Link-building is a crucial activity for improving results in organic results. While Google representatives downplay their role in their statements, there is no denying it ...
LINKS INFLUENCE RESULTS
However, the relationship of links and organic traffic or positions is not directly related.
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➤ What you will read:
🗝 Proving links impact results
🗝 The process
🗝 Factors to consider
🗝 Not all links are equal
🗝 Proving links impact results
In a recent quantitative analysis of link-building efforts, I reviewed 10 articles we had build the most links by various link-building efforts:
8 out of the 10 pages had increases with some correlation with when the new links were created.
As some pages had few relative links, we reviewed the relationship of naturally occured links side-by-side with the "built" links.
Of course, there was a stronger correlation with total links acquired over built links in those cases.
Links impact traffic, as well as position growth for pages.
They also push the pages to appear in more searches (keywords).
Curve Change & Delayed effect
When building a small number of links in competitive articles, we observed a "curve change" in most of the months following new links. A curve change meant a minor impact from the link-building activities, but does not mean a direct correlation.
Also, we did observe a delayed effect, usually the impact was visible on the next month. This is because of the way we collected & reported the data, as well the how long would Google need to discover, crawl, and evaluate a new link.
Why some pages did not had an impact?
Almost all the pages in the report were in competitive topics. Some of those topics were extremely competitive, and required much more links to show an impact.
At the same time, a couple of pages were hit by Google's core updates, which changed the intent required to high-authority pages (like Forbes).
🗝 The process
We collected the total organic traffic to the page from GA4 & GA3. There was a slight change in how traffic is estimated due to the change between GA3 to GA4 in July 2023.
Then, we collected all links we intentionally created from various activities every month.
Ahrefs was used to measure the cumulative total links to a page each month of this study.
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Due to links being created in different days within a month, and the change in traffic being more visible a few days later, most effects take 1-2 months to show in the graphs. That's a delayed response, but is due mostly to the data collection method.
We tried to take into account:
Unfortunately, that was too complex to track. Some link-building is also happening around times of content updates, the two effects combined usually bring the highest results for short-term impact.
🗝 Factors to Consider
There are of course many more factors to consider when review this data:
First position attracts links
An article on the first 3 positions in Google is more likely to get links by journalists, bloggers, and others as a source for the topic.
If an article gets the first position for a long time, it naturally collects a lot of links, and slowly increases it's traffic as it accumulates more keywords and high positions.
It's difficult to dissassociate the effect, whether the article showed up first on the highest position or whether it acquired a few links and climbed the ranks.
Natural vs Building Links
Similarly to before, building links pushes an article higher up, which means it will get more natural links. This organically pushes the article higher up.
Building links is more like the "booster" shot to help the content get stronger over time.
Quality of Links
Some links are better than others due to their relevancy, authority, page position, and link density of the page they are in. Not all links are equal, but that would be a very complex experiment to run (and pretty expensive).
Content Updates
All articles had at least once been updated in the period of this study. Some articles were updated multiple times, had their titles changed, or had content added/removed.
Core Updates
The past two years were pretty ripe with Core Updates, and smaller algorithmic changes by Google :)
Competition
Competition is never stable. Even if you could control for all other variables, competitors keep creating content, updating previous pages, and building links as well.
They also accumulate natural links as well.
Both an old competitor might get stronger in SEO or a new one will show up and really muddy the waters.
Limited impact (keep building)
The impact of links does not last forever.
If you need to build links to acquire a position, you will naturally get more, but you need to keep building links to keep the position.
🗝 Not all links are equal
Keep in mind that many factors influence the links you build:
Not all links are of the same quality, and sometimes you need to create lower-valued links as well with lower impact.
Those could not be reviewed in scale for this small study.
SEO Specialist | Ethical Link Building 5x your Traffic & Rankings | Let's Build Your Growth Strategy
8moGreat advice. Now that the update finally over. What do you think about link building and backlinks. Do they have any worth or it will eventually die down?
Undoubtedly, links hold significant importance, despite Google's occasional denial of their relevance. However, I firmly assert that a shift towards prioritizing content has emerged and should be regarded as more crucial than link acquisition. It's a great data-backed story, thanks.
Head of SEO @ Submagic | Edit Videos In Seconds With AI
8moExactly what I needed, thanks!!
Local SEO, to boost your sales ➜ TOP 1 Google Maps
8moLinks work but only the relevant and non spammy ones! That's why we look watch out for quality! Nick Malekos