Why You Need Organic and High-Quality Links

Shopify SEO Course ↗️ > Unit 6 > Lesson 1 > Why You Need Organic and High-Quality Links

Search engines (especially Google) are constantly improving their algorithms in an effort to detect websites that have been utilizing black hat (against Google guidelines and spammy) tactics to gain links. Once detected, websites that have been identified as using black hat tactics for link building are penalized, which can harm their ranking and visibility in search engines.

To avoid getting penalized, it’s important to focus on the most organic and high-quality links you can get for your website. Organic links are simply links that are not paid for, and high-quality links are links from relevant, reputable websites. A great example of both an organic and high-quality link would be an online store that sells socks for diabetics getting a link from the American Diabetes Association website.

What would this link do? In theory, when a search crawler found this link, it would tell the search engine that a relevant, reputable website about diabetes links to this online store for diabetic socks. The search engine, because it respects the American Diabetes Association, would therefore respect the online store for diabetic socks more because of this link.

Now let’s say there are two websites for diabetic socks. One that has received 10 organic and high-quality links and one that has received 50 organic and high-quality links. Both have been optimized similarly for the same keyword phrases. Search engines would typically rank the website with 50 organic and high-quality links above the website with only 10. Hence, the website with 50 links would be #1 and the website with 10 links would be #2.

Think of it like votes. If the two websites of the same caliber are competing for the top spots in search engine results for the same keyword, the website with 50 links would have 50 votes, and the website with 10 links would have 10 votes.

In reality, not all links are made equal. And the number of organic and high-quality links you will need for your website will vary based on the keywords you are targeting and the competing websites that are targeting the same keyword.