Don’t build backlinks to your website. It simply doesn’t work—especially in the long run.
Here’s a site I launched 3 weeks ago with 0 links:
And here’s a site I launched 3 months ago without a single link:
See? The blogs are performing better than most new sites without any links.
Let me explain why!
Why Do SEOs Talk about Links?
Backlinks are an age-old SEO trick to boost the rankings of a low-quality website. The idea is to cheat the Google ranking system and make your site appear more trustworthy than it really is.
It’s very similar to how some use fake social media followers to desperately try to fool potential sponsors.
This used to work in the past. But these days, as people (and algorithms) are getting clever, cheap growth hacks like this don’t work anymore.
When Google ranks a website, they want two things: A unique and helpful resource for a visitor.
Anything that doesn’t contribute to the reading experience or helpfulness of an article is useless.
Now, how on earth do backlinks from other websites help your visitors? They don’t!
That’s already a good enough reason for you to stop building links. They don’t help your visitor so why bother?
But for most, that’s not a valid “proof” or explanation of why one shouldn’t build those. After all, there’s still a ton of hype in link-building strategies.
Links Used to Work in the Past
Google wasn’t always good at detecting quality content. And quite frankly, they still aren’t perfect. But they’re getting better and better.
Back in the day, it was easy to rank on Google. All you need to do is repeat a specific keyword a bunch of times and build some links to show authority. Google was so stupid that they would rank pages like that all the time.
That was your #1 rank recipe in the past, like 10-20 years ago.
But the big problem with the aforementioned strategy is simple: It’s all about cheating the system. This is what Google doesn’t want.
Google’s main goal is to find the most helpful, detailed, and unique pieces of content to best answer the searchers’ questions.
Building links or placing keywords is not doing that.
But the reason people still teach link-building is because it used to be one of the best SEO strategies for a long time. Also, by teaching link-building and acting like it still means something allows selling expensive SEO stuff. Pathetic!
Growth Hacks Never Work
SEO growth hacks are always a short-term strategy that might work for a month or two, but will always end up falling short.
This is because Google is playing the cat-and-mouse game with people who try to game their system and manipulate search results. Unfortunately for SEOs, Google will always catch up.
This is why keyword placements, backlinks, or any other SEO strategies will never in the long run.
This is also why SEOs always worry about algorithm updates and most of their sites get struck by one eventually.
If you forget about links and keywords, your site will unlikely ever get hit by an algorithm update.
Backlink-Free Website Examples
Just to name a few examples, here are two sites I’ve launched towards the end of 2023 and at the beginning of 2024.
Example Site 1
The first example site is a 3-week-old site.
I won’t reveal the domain or niche, but the site is in a high EPC affiliate niche.
I wrote 40 posts to the site by hand (not a single image or word has been produced by AI).
Yesterday, the site hit 9 visitors and is already getting 500+ impressions per day.
On this site, I have done no keyword placements or built links to it. I’ve just promoted it on my other site that’s related to the niche.
Although the numbers aren’t that impressive, I just wanted to include this one as it shows how fast non-SEO websites can take off these days.
Example Site 2
The next site is a site I created with my friend. The site already hit $1,000/mo and is just 3 months of age.
The site has 150 mostly hand-written blog posts. I’m not using any SEO tools, building links, or placing keywords on this site with my friend.
This is a 100% naturally built site that’s targeted to people, not for robots.
Now, look at the performance:
The site has constantly over 400 clicks from Google which is crazy for such a young site.
Keep in mind that we’re not building any links or using paid tools. We’re saving a ton of time and money and can progress 2-3x faster than most people who spend time with SEO.
I have 6 SEO-free websites, and the only reason I’m able to do it is because of not wasting time on SEO strategies.
What’s the Best SEO Strategy?
The best SEO strategy is not doing SEO at all.
Your web host takes care of technical stuff automatically (such as SSL certificates etc.).
Your theme is built by a top-notch web designer who has made all the mobile optimizations, UXO, and such.
All that’s left for you is creating content for your audience. If you try to chase the algorithms, you will always fall short.
It’s much less stressful and easier to build sites this way.
Don’t build links. Don’t waste money on SEO. Just write for people, not for robots!