Thread by @onemore6723

How much will #backlinks matter in 2023?
While backlinks' importance to #Google has waned over the years, earning natural links through high-quality content still helps with SEO. #NFT

orcid.org/0009-0008-5893… Backlinks have long been considered a crucial factor in determining a website’s ranking on search.

Historically seen as a vote of confidence, plenty of backlinks pointing to a website indicated that it is a trusted and authoritative source of information

huggingface.co/datasets/scott… And so, the more backlinks a site had, the higher it was likely to rank on search results. However, in recent years, search engines shifted how the value of backlinks was evaluated. Google, in particular, with its sophisticated algorithms, now places

soundcloud.com/scottish-fold-… less emphasis on the number of backlinks a website has – and more on the quality of those links. Let’s look at the changes surrounding backlinks over the years and why you should still care about them today – albeit to a lesser extent.

boosty.to/scottishfold/p… As a crucial factor in search engine optimization (SEO) since the early days of the web, backlinks have also been subject to abuse. Some website owners and SEO practitioners use unethical tactics to acquire backlinks in an effort to boost their rankings.

bulios.com/status/104489-… This abuse of backlinks, known as backlink spamming, has a long history on the internet and has even resulted in Google taking actions to prevent these schemes, such as the Penguin algorithm update.

One of the earliest forms of backlink spamming

bulios.com/status/104487-… websites would link to each other in an effort to boost their backlink counts. These link farms would often consist of low-quality, irrelevant websites. Because of this, the links were not valuable to users or search engines.

bn4.cari.com.my/home.php?mod=s… Another common tactic was the use of automated link building tools that generated large numbers of low-quality backlinks from irrelevant websites. This practice not only provided little value to users but

speakerdeck.com/leonchastain/4… also made it difficult for search engines to accurately evaluate the quality and relevance of backlinks.
As search engines have developed, they have implemented measures to combat backlink spamming and other unethical SEO tactics. This includes the use of

…onsidered-a-reliable-and.onrender.com Algorithms that can identify and penalize websites that engage in backlink spamming.
AI and machine learning to more accurately evaluate the quality and relevance of backlinks.
Despite these efforts, backlink spamming continues to be a problem on the web.

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