I have been writing on the internet since 2018. I have worked on many blogs and business websites as a blog writer. I have achieved great results through articles for businesses. I have undestood the importance of E.E.A.T. and website authority the hard way. Earlier, I was a big fan of creating a lot of links and even buy them from anywhere possible.
So, these are my learnings from several of my blogs and client works. I have worked in many niches and was always interested in writing in general. However, I was not very good at off-page SEO. But, I have done a lot of experiments and today, I am going to share what I have learnt during these years.
In modern SEO, search engines are looking for trust and not the noise. When you publish your articles the earliest shock is realizing that publishing an article doesn’t automatically bring traffic. Search engines don’t know you yet. But, instead of being consistent and creating quality content, I was trying to create those signals through link building. The intention was good. But, the execution… not so much.
The First Mistake: Chasing Links Instead of Earning Them
On my first blog, I started off building links from the Day 1. I was writing articles consistently as well but the speed of links was faster than the articles. I started off with forum links, profile links, and some directory submissions. By the time I published 100 articles, I had already created thousands of cheap links on any website that I could possibly find.
But Google is far better at pattern-detecting than I assumed. It doesn’t just see the link; it judges its intent and why is it made. I looks for some of the key things in any link.
• Where it came from
• How fast it appeared
• Whether it’s relevant
• Whether it looks natural
Zero traffic and a sudden burst of low-relevance links triggers alarms in Google’s system. Unless you are a big brand and starting a big website, you should not get any links to your website if you do not have any traffic yet.
The Silent Penalty: When Google Notices Before You Do
I have seen a lot of my websites being hit by both manual and algorithm penalties. Sometimes, they are recognizable and other times, they just come and take away all your traffic.
However, when you start building links manually without any planning and proper execution, the punishment is even quieter: You get no traffic at all. Google just ignores you no matter how good you are doing with your content.
How I Found the Hard Truth
Because of my lack of knowledge, I was making all those links which were actually hurting my rankings. I also didn’t mind reading Google’s guidelines and sometimes just ignore them. The answers started to appear when I dig through some of these things:
The answer only came after digging through:
• Google Search Console’s link report
• Discussions from other webmasters with similar issues
• Google’s guidelines on unnatural links
• Crawling behavior vs. indexing behavior
I slowly recognized that Google was just paying no attention to every link that I have made. In fact, they were supressing my ability to rank on the SERPs. Now, with the AI, the algorithms are going to be much more smarter and we should be much more careful while builing any links to our websites.
The Real Lesson: Authority Comes From Usefulness, Not Tricks
When I stepped back after getting hit multiple times on multiple websites, I re-think my approach. I now refrain from thinking about the rankings or the way to get traffic. Instead, I try to make useful content with an idea in mind that it will take time to rank.
I have full belief that if I create good content, I will get rankings sooner or later. Google rewards good content and credibility, not creativity in shortcuts.
What did I learn?
Every new site owner thinks their first failure is unique and they can outsmart the world’s biggest search engine. They can’t. Search engines evolve constantly, but their core logic remains steady: relevance, trust, and value.
Understanding how your links look from Google’s perspective is the way to create them at the first place. If a link is unnatural, it will hurt you at some place for sure.
My biggest learning in all these years about backlinks is that they are earned not purchased. If you are buying them for anything, it is most probably going to hurt you.
Types of articles that attract natural links
Certain kinds of articles naturally attract links because they solve problems, save time, or provide something that others want to reference. Some of these types are as follows.
- Data-Driven articles
- Definitive Guides
- Problem-Solving Guides
- Standards, terminology explainers, and compatibility charts
- Counterintuitive insights
- Unique visuals
- Breaking News
Just think about an article that proves itself as the ultimate resources for something. We cite research papers in our articles generally because they prove something. A good resource will always attract links and we should spend some time creating it.
Thanks for reading!