All links are created equal, right?

All links are created equal, right?

They're not! Link building used to be simple: you would go out there, write a bunch of articles, submit them to an article submission site and get an external link back to your site.

That doesn't work in the post-Penguin era where this could get you a high PR (page rank). While the right inbound website link can grow your Google rankings, revenue and brand, the wrong ones can get your site penalized. And, you never know what Google will do next.

For example, many people relied on private blog networks to help boost and achieve high PR. Then, Google threw a bomb, known as the PBN deindexing update, which tanked rankings for sites that had used that technique.

Though a lot of people were surprised, I could see that one coming and I'm betting that Google will do it again the next time people try to game search results. So, what should you do?

To be on the safe side, most SEOs would advise you to stop doing anything for link acquisition. If you're doing business online, I think that’s this is the worst advice that you could ever get. Instead, you need to learn how to build a high quality backlink the right way.

Backlinks will remain a vital Google ranking factor. But, effective link building is now about trust and popularity. Only a high quality backlink works in this model. According to Copyblogger, domain trust/authority represents 23.87% of Google’s ranking algorithm.