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You know how you’ve been building links to your website for years, trying to get Google look upon it more favorably? Well, according to Google, you shouldn’t bother doing that.
Nearly an hour into a Google Webmaster Central Office Hours hangout on Friday, Google’s John Mueller was asked whether or not link building, in any way, is good for webmasters.
Mueller’s response (via Search Engine Roundtable) was, “That is a good question. In general, I’d try to avoid that. So that you are really sure that your content kind of stands on its own and make it possible for other people of course to link to your content. Make it easy, maybe, put a little widget on your page, if you like this, this is how you can link to it. Make sure that the URLs on your web site are easy to copy and paste. All of those things make it a little bit easier. We do use links as part of our algorithms but we use lots and lots of other factors as well. So only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your web site that actually helps.” Emphasis added.
So let me repeat again for all of you bloggers, content marketers and PR people what Google's own John Mueller says about link building:
"So only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your web site that actually helps.”
I'd repeat it again, but you get the message. Quality content rules.