Author: Digital Tailors
Date: 11/07/2025
10 minute Read

 

If we were asked for our opinion, we would have to say that link building is the area where many businesses go wrong. We would even go so far as to say it’s one of the areas that many agencies also get wrong when implementing SEO.

Because of this, many people say that link building is no longer effective. Therefore, at this moment in time, you might be a little confused, perplexed and disoriented as to which areas of your digital marketing you should be working on?

However, as always, our team of Digital Tailors is here to help you to improve your organic search engine optimisation.

 

A quick history lesson

When Google was founded, Larry Page and Sergey Brin created its first algorithm, known as “PageRank”.

The reason we are going back in time is simple: Google’s original algorithm, PageRank, was highly reliant on backlinks as a way to decipher how to rank websites.

For those interested, it is said that the inspiration for PageRank was based on how someone might write and create a dissertation.

When you are at university, and you write a dissertation, you often have to cite your sources, perhaps using the Harvard referencing system.

This demonstrates that the work has been thoroughly researched and carefully compiled. Now, this allows you to begin to gain insight into how Google’s page rank works and the logic behind it.

That’s because back links are similar to referencing, just as you would if you were to referencing system when writing a dissertation.

 

Votes of confidence

Even since those very early days, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google, we can begin to understand the inner workings behind how Google’s algorithm worked.

What, put, the more links, the better the page ranked during the time Google was using PageRank. However, don’t take that concept quite literally today.

The reason is that more is better when it comes to link building in 2025.

Its now about link quality

Now, it’s more about quality. Building the right links, considering link velocity slowly building links, and establishing an excellent backlink profile can significantly help improve your business’s organic search engine optimisation.

 

Gaming the system

In 2009, Google removed PageRank scores from its Webmaster Tools. We believe, and many other SEO agencies also think the same, as the businesses got carried away with building more and more back links. Business got obsessed, thinkin that more is better!

This becomes somewhat of an obsession, with actual pages being set up to send links to other websites. These were often referred to “link farms”.

Link farms and other highly black-hat, spammy link-building methods are intended solely to increase the number of backlinks sent to another business.

Therefore this is a black hat method of SEO and shouldn’t be used.

However, this does not benefit the shopper who wants to find an answer to their query, it’s merely a method to try and manipulate search engine results, such as on Google, into ranking the page higher than it deserves to be.

We believe that around this time in 2009, when Google made the conscious decision to remove Page Rank from Webmaster Tools, marked the beginning of Google’s message to focus less on link quantity and more on quality.

Therefore an emphasis was made to concentrate on other performance metrics, such lowering bounce rates, and focus on writing high-quality content marketing for example.

 

Links as votes

As you read various blog posts, trying to decipher the best way to build backlinks, you often see many statements made stating ‘links are like votes of confidence”. Another is that backlinks are “the currency of the Internet”.

The reason why links in particular are described as votes is quite simple: if you gain powerful links from the right websites, it’s just like a vote. Just as a politician looks for votes to win power, a website seeks to gain powerful links to occupy the number one position on Google.

However, we have to return to our previous point and say that many businesses do not understand how to build links, even though link building, as a discipline, has been around for years.

Many businesses falsely believe that even in 2025, Google still uses its PageRank -it doesn’t the algorithm is now much more sophisticated.
The truth is that things have evolved; the Google algorithm has undergone significant improvements.

For quite a long while prior to Penguin update, businesses were been frustrated by their ranking, often appearing say fifth on the first page of Google, only to be surpassed by numerous competitors using spam, black-hat methods, and purchasing backlinks in bulk. This is why Google introduced the penguin update.

There can be nothing more frustrating than a company that is following the rules and Google Webmaster guidelines, only to be overtaken by a multitude of businesses that are buying spam backlinks.

However the Penguin update changed all this. Now spam links do not work, and will harm your companies marketing.

 

 

Enter the Google Penguin update.

This was a very significant change to Google’s algorithm. Basically, without going into great detail, Google Penguin update became an integral part of the algorithm. It was essentially a filter, a spam filter; website owners with good-quality links would be rewarded for their efforts.

On the other hand, businesses that didn’t white-hat methods would be penalised. What could actually happen is that the website vanishes into thin air, well not literally disappearing altogether, but still being de-indexed, which means it’s taken entirely out of Google results.

 

 

Are backlinks still important today?

As one of the most experienced SEO experts in this area, we can confidently say that, without a doubt, high-quality backlinks still make a significant difference. Even though we are entering a period of artificial intelligence, where it is likely to have a substantial impact on search engine results pages ranking, a business still needs backlinks to decipher whether it has authoritative backlinks or perhaps they have spammy backlinks.

Ahrefs ran an experiment in 2021, where the company deliberately disavowed backlinks assigned to specific pages. The results were conclusive, proving that organic traffic sharply dropped, which indicates that good-quality backlinks are necessary to improve your organic search engine optimisation.

 

Stood the test of time

The truth is that various marketing companies, such as ours, have spent a considerable amount of time writing updates, blog posts, and creating evergreen content marketing that offers various SEO advice.

For example, since Google’s PageRank reigns supreme right through today in 2025, your marketing businesses are writing endlessly about search engine optimisation in order to rank highly for marketing keywords.

However, some aspects of SEO have stood the test of time, including good quality content and good quality links.

Naturally, SEO is hard work; it’s massively time-consuming, and if you want the advice of some of the best minds working in SEO, the time can be expensive.

Therefore, businesses have naturally wanted to cut corners.

The point we are trying to make here is quite simple: businesses that follow Google Webmaster Guidelines, whether in 2009 or 2025, will rank well in organic search results if the work is done to a good standard.

Therefore, don’t cut corners, do white hat SEO.

Spam, link penalties, and websites being de-indexed

As a customer, might have shopped around various agencies in order to gain an understanding of different prices that SEO agencys can charge.

What you might have become aware of is that the prices can vary massively, in terms of what one agency charges compared to another in their monthly retainer.

And you might be scratching your head, thinking how these prices vary so much?

Although paying a lot for SEO is no guarantee that it will result in quality work, it can sometimes reveal that the agency needs to cover a significant portion of staff wages to do the job correctly.

If an agency is offering a very low price, which is totally out of whack with all the other quotes, you do have to ask the question on the cutting call: ‘Should we use them?’ Are you using black hat methods? Are you using spam link-building methods?

As you are now aware of the Google Penguin update, you will also be mindful that businesses can get de-indexed.

This means, therefore, that if Google detects that you are building a large number of spam links, the website will be removed entirely from Google’s index.

It can take a very long time to recover rankings; personal experience shows that websites can sometimes take years to recover where they once ranked if they get hit by a penalty.

So, although things might seem to be moving at a snail’s pace, if the agency doing things the right way, then it’s worth waiting for the results to be reaped at a later date.

The difference between do-follow and no-follow backlinks

You might have read various blog posts where authors discuss domain authority and how a website passes through something called “link juice”?

Now, this is where things can get a bit complicated, but please bear with us; we will keep things as simple as possible.

Different websites have different DA scores, which stands for “domain authority”.

This is not a score assigned to the website by Google, but rather a metric created by various SEO tools to indicate the website’s authority. It was first created by Moz we believe.

Therefore, it’s a score out of 100, based on the strength of companies’ backlinks.

Now that brings us nicely to the point about do-follow and no-follow backlinks.

Quite simply put, it’s only do-follow backlinks that will send the link equity, commonly referred to as link juice, through to a connected page.

Therefore, if a page has a lot of link equity flowing to it from websites with a very high domain authority score, this can raise the page’s authority.

As a result, the connected page, having many backlinks itself, can rank higher within Google’s organic results.

This is why businesses fight so fiercely to get high quality back links which have a high domain authority score.

Quite simply put, in our experience, as one of the most experienced SEO agencies in this area of Bristol, we would say that all websites ranking in the top three positions on Google will normally have strong backlink profiles.

How content marketing and link building work hand in glove

When you’re first setting up a business and trying to improve your search engine optimisation, you might think, ‘ Why am I spending an endless amount of hours writing blog posts? ‘

Single blog posts might take you over 10 hours to write and research.

Therefore, you might be scratching your head and asking, ‘Why should we give away so much free advice?’

The answer is simple: without good, well-written, and well-researched content marketing, the page stands no chance whatsoever of ranking on the first page of Google results.

Therefore, well-written content marketing is critical to the business’s search engine optimisation efforts.

The content marketing needs to have the following three qualities?
Be relevant.

Google needs to understand the products and services that you’re selling. What is your website relevant for? Are you a solicitors practice, what are you selling? Lawnmowers? Content marketing helps define your website’s terms of relevance, specifying the keywords for which you want to improve your websites relevancy for.

 

Helping the customer

Google would have absolutely no way of knowing dwell times, bounce rates, or how many pages have been viewed by the average customer on your company website, without publishing a lot of quality content marketing on your company website.

Content marketing, therefore, allows the search engines, such as Google, to understand how customers are engaging with your work. Are they interested in the work? If so, they are likely to spend a considerable amount of time on the page, which positively impacts the dwell time.

Suppose the shopper is disinterested and immediately recognises that the page is of no use to them.

In that case, the bounce rate will likely be extremely high, which can negatively impact the business’s organic search engine optimisation. If you have a sustained high bounce rate this can damage your SEO efforts.

Customer engagement is, therefore, a critical metric that Google analyses.

Link-worthy content

Another reason why businesses’ content marketing needs to be top-notch is that it gives a reason for other companies not to want to link to you.

Let’s say, for example, that you manufacture high-quality running trainers.

Lets say a business conducts in-depth market research, which details, for instance, how many runners have developed foot injuries because they have bought the wrong footwear that is ill-fitting.

This market research could be cited by many e-commerce businesses that sell and running trainers. Some may want to link back to recent findings because they found it very interesting read.

They may want to highlight the research to show to their own customers why they need trainers to be properly fitted and calibrated to their feet.

Therefore as you can see content marketing serves many different purposes.

If the content marketing is of good quality, then it can serve as link-worthy content, meaning that you can obtain backlinks without even asking anybody to link to your business.

 

Link velocity and why it’s important to take things slow

As a director of the business, you may be frustrated and somewhat annoyed that your appointed search engine optimisation company is not delivering results quickly enough.

Now, this could become a problem because the methods they are using are could be ineffective?

However, it’s perfectly possible that doing things the right way, yet, it’s taking longer than you have anticipated.

The thing is with search engine optimisation, everything has to be done properly. Listen carefully.

This means copywriters need to research carefully and consider the type of original content marketing they are writing.

You also have to think about “link velocity”; you don’t want to build a ton of spam links too fast.

If you build backlinks too quickly, these links can get indexed in quick succession by Google, which can then raise eyebrows. The algorithm starts to think that you could be buying links? Are you engaging in spammy link-building methods?

Therefore, you need to build links slowly, think about link velocity, and build links with a slow pace.

Toxic backlinks, we often say that we live in a world where more is perceived as better.

Those who might think that a large plate of food is better than having a smaller plate, as it’s perceived that the bigger plate offers better value for money.

However, sitting down with a nutritionist, they will tell you it’s better to have small plates with more nutritious and fresh ingredients on the plate than a mass of chips!

Think of this concept when you’re engaging in link building; you don’t want a massive number of backlinks if they’re of poor quality.

They have two adverse effects on the backlinks.

If they are run-of-the-mill backlinks, they could dilute your backlink profile, ultimately not helping you and not causing any significant problems, except perhaps diluting the effectiveness of more valuable backlinks.

Many toxic backlinks need to be avoided like the plague.

Too many of these toxic links on your website and you’re going to get a big fat Google penalty, which can mean your website disappears into the fresh air on Google. By that we mean de-indexed.

Is it all about backlinks?

The answer to that question is no, for search engine optimisation to be highly effective, helping to draw in more customers for you need to take a rounded marketing strategy.

The central pillars are technical SEO, content marketing and link building. However, there are over 200 various ranking factors that Google uses to assess and calculate the strength of your business’s search engine optimisation.

This is why SEO agencies are always in demand; they must continually strengthen these various ranking factors. It’s like spinning plates – as soon as they focus on one area, they need to go back and start working on the other regions, strengthening them.

 

FAQ regarding backlinks:

Will artificial intelligence replace the need for building backlinks?

In our view, artificial intelligence is often massively misunderstood. A lot of it’s based on large language models (LLM’s), which is simply similar to how the algorithms works now. For example, Google’s bot reads the Internet by “crawling and indexing” links.

Then, Google possesses the knowledge to have an in-depth understanding of entities via Google Knowledge Vault.

This is similar to how artificial intelligence works; it reads most of the Internet.

Then, using large language models, it possesses massive amounts of knowledge that it can answer any question you ask of it.

However, there will always be a need to determine which businesses are more authoritative, which pages are more important, and therefore, which are more trusted in terms of the information they offer.

Therefore, we believe that backlink building is here to stay; it’s a surefire way of discerning which pages are of high quality and which ones are not.

How does our digital marketing agency nestled in the city of Bristol build backlinks?

We like to build backlinks in two different ways: through competitor backlink analysis, as well as earning backlinks.

The most effective way to build links is through high-quality content marketing. Therefore, what should happen then is that other businesses should want to link to you on their own accord, because they believe the information is of high quality and will be of interest to their readers.

Competitor backlink research involves using various backlink research tools. You can then obtain a comprehensive list of your direct competitors’ backlinks.

The purpose here is to replicate links; it’s similar to creating the same links leading to your website to enhance your business’s backlink profile.

Why choose our agency in Bristol?
Quite simply put, just as you would want to employ a highly experienced tradesperson, we are one of the most highly experienced SEO agencies operating in Bristol.
With over 10 years of experience, we know which SEO methods are effective and which ones are not.
Monthly retainer staff for just £ 1,000 PCM. Do contact us today for further information.
Meta title
Is backlink building still important? And how should we do it?
There is considerable confusion surrounding the notion that AI will replace the need to build links. We explain why link building remains essential, even in the era of artificial intelligence.