The best links are the ones that don’t just add another line item to your link profile; the best links drive targeted traffic and beget more links in time. In many circumstances, the best links aren’t ones you can ask for or actively build, you have to earn them by being active in social media and engaging in conversations with your audience and other thought leaders, by creating the kind of content that people want to link to, and by putting your brand out there to be found across a variety of platforms. One or two powerful referral links can become a revolving door of traffic and keep pushing people through to your site over time.

Take a look at the graph below. One of our clients earned a link in a comment on a New York Times article back in August 2013. Fast forward 6 months and that one referral links is still driving traffic to the site.

While 97 extra visitors over the course of 6 months may not seem like all that much, you have to remember this is just one referral link. What if this client had 5 more links like that? That’s an extra 500 visitors or so in 6 months, just from 6 referral links! That’s definitely a solid number of new visitors. When you add those 500 visitors on top of all the new organic and social traffic this client earned over the same 6 month period the grand total is definitely a strong SEO win.

Google has dramatically changed the rules of link building in the last year. In a perfect world, Google would have no one actively building any links. Every link your site earns would come 100% naturally through content creation and promotion and the kind hearts of your fans, followers, and other industry thought leaders. Unfortunately we don’t live in this perfect Google SEO world and most websites cannot afford to sit and wait for links to come their way. That’s why we actively seek out linking opportunities like guest posts on popular and trusted industry sites/blogs, partnerships with other companies to help promote our brands, online PR submissions to catch the attention of local news reporters and more. But even as you actively try to build a few links remember that the most valuable effect of link building isn’t actually that link, it’s the traffic and authority that passes through it.

With all the changes Google has made to the link building guidelines, it’s so important that site owners and marketing managers remember that building a link just to get a link is NOT the way to go. Those easy-win links might look good on a report for your boss, but free directory links, links from article submission sites, and the like are actually going to hurt your website in the long run. Every link building tactic that proved useful is ultimately taken advantage of by the spammer and SEO con-men, and Google is in a race to prevent those folks and their sites from doing well organically. The amount of wiggle room in the algorithm that allows you to slip through the cracks grows smaller and smaller every day.

So the next time you have the opportunity to build/earn a link, ask yourself one questions—“Is this link going to give me traffic?” If the answer is no how much value is that link really going to bring to your website? If they answer is yes (and it’s the right kind of traffic!) then get that link!