Bing on Link Fixation

[djbaxter]

Link Fixation ? What To Know, What To Do
by Duane Forrester, Bing Webmaster Blog
February 2, 2014

Why do you seek links? The answer to this question may tell you more about your future chances of success in organic search than you realize.

Always a hot topic among SEOs ? the need to collect links to their content. But why do people seek links in the first place? Once upon a time, links were needed to rank well. In the early days of search (5 ? 10 years ago) when algorithms were more unrefined than we see today, links counted for much. And more links counted for more.

And links from .edu sites counted for even more. The holy grail being links from .gov sites.

And as with so many things, those lines of thinking are so old, busted and trampled on, they are simply blind alleys today. Shortcuts to a dead end.

....

So where is the value in links?

Where it?s always been, for years now ? referral traffic. Now many will split hairs at this point (as proof of being a true SEO). What?s the difference? The difference is in intent. And outcome. The difference is felt by your business. We won?t really care about the links, but developing links from locations capable of driving traffic directly to converting pages, well, you?ll care a great deal about that.

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