Link Building is Worthless. Do This Instead.

Most SEOs will tell you that if you don't build links to your site, you have no hope of ever ranking anywhere near to page 1 of Google. But that belief is based on the old days of Google SEO. We've been building sites for over a decade now to millions of pageviews per month and countless posts ranking at or near the top of page 1 of Google, and all without any link building. Let me show you how
Link to resource mentioned in the video
Podmatch - podmatch.com
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Stop building links
0:10 - What is link building?
0:24 - Backlinks are good
0:51 - Getting backlinks doesn't require link building
2:10 - Backlinks are necessary for ranking well???
3:48 - Link building strategies and issues
5:21 - What Google says about link building
8:12 - Industry Outreach
11:47 - The danger of the "Backlinks are Necessary" Fallacy
13:38 - What we do instead
14:48 - Making industry outreach easy
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Project 24 is a product of Income School LLC. Results mentioned are not typical. The trademark “Project 24” refers to the goal of some people to create a successful business in 24 months, but is not a promise or guarantee of that success. Many online businesses fail because, like any business, it requires hard work, skill, and dedication. Before making business decisions, consult financial and legal professionals licensed in your jurisdiction.

[@IncomeSchool]

Hey, thanks for being here! For anyone who is skeptical, before leaving a scathing comment, unsubscribing, and leaving, I encourage you to watch the video. Many of the Industry Outreach tactics I teach in this video are very similar to the most effective tactics taught by some influential SEOs as a means to get links. The difference is, they do them with the objective of getting a link. I'm teaching you to do them with the objective to build authority. That mindset change (and timing shift) will make your efforts far more effective, and you'll still get the link... and probably a lot more of them. You'll just get them in the organic way that Google intended.

[@healthyprinciples]

(There is a question in this I promise :)! Also, I have posted this same message in several other of your videos because I wasn’t sure if you were going to see it.) Hello Jim, hello Ricky, hello Income School team! Thank you for your hard work teaching the SEO community with excellent advice! I love what you are doing, especially the not for profit work on Purpose in Christ

[@erictran5680]

The takeaway I'm getting is that guest posting isn't bad but you should spend more time creating content on low comp search queries. Like spend 3 hours a day writing quality blog posts and maybe 30 min a day doing guest post outreach?

[@Bluz1]

I opened a music website recently as a hobby and have around 20 blog posts on it so far. The site barely has an online presence but I receive 20-30 page clicks organically (+ few pageviews from social media) every day without doing anything. I just write the post and publish it, no link building whatsoever. One of the articles even won the snippet ahead of sites like rollingstone and loudwire. Absolutely no idea how it happened but it did. What I want to say is that in my experience, everything said on this video is true. Just focus on writing good (& lengthy) content and wait, it will definitely rank. With the results I've seen so far, I'm confident that after 200+ blog posts I can make good money from it as a side hustle (for my country's standards). Btw I'm not a native English speaker and apps like Grammarly help me a lot to edit the posts and correct grammar or spelling mistakes. So I'd advise non-native speakers to utilize these tools if they write their content in English.

[@mylinhphung1853]

Hi, do you create SEO content or you just publish good and lengthy content, sir?

[@Bluz1]

@@mylinhphung1853 It's both in the same package. I first do my research on the keywords and then write the post around those keywords/phrases.

[@amanhm6968]

For someone looking to build a new blog, this is great motivation. Thank you :)

[@valeriablunt6577]

Thanks for your comment, made me feel better about my new blog!

[@DaveLitten]

Dang! I saw your video header "Link Building is Worthless. Do This Instead", and thought that sounds scammy. Worse, the guy was smiling naturally - NOT doing all false "Shocked eye/open mouth" clickbait garbage. Intriguing. I'm growing a blog /affiliate business and have a successful project management training business (Projex Academy) - and I was intrigued by NOT needing to do all the nonsense to buy/cajole others for backlinks. By the end of the video - I'm a convert, Ricky, and it looks like you too are an educator - so I wanna find out more about what you do! I'm off to sneak around Income School Haha!

[@thataaronromano]

This is why i like income school. the industry is all about figuring out how to game the algorithm. income school comes in and is like "hey, just write good original content and give the consumer what they want".

[@chrissimao14]

Authority Hackers openly say you have to pay for backlinks...😂

[@suk4ed]

True, and pray God 🙏 so your consumer will ever find your original content, lol

[@IncomeSchool]

Right @Papa Q because Google can't find any content unless there's a backlink to it...

[@chrissimao14]

@@suk4ed They'll find it...once you know what ur doing...problem is there are too many untalented (unskilled) people blogging.

[@garbacciojp]

he's right, focus on content

[@jack_of_all_marketing]

I am very grateful that I found your video just now. I'm a new and learning writer/content creator for a company, and as I've been learning about SEO, it has felt pretty overwhelming, since most of the other blogging content I've been finding has been saying that you _have_ to spend all that time doing all these strategies to get backlinks. I'm good at writing content, and I have experience in what I'm writing! It's encouraging to me to hear you say that writing tons of high-quality, experience-based content is better than spending hours and hours cold-emailing people to try to get one more backlink. Writing good content is more fun anyway.

[@danielhalberstadt9984]

I wrote for Adventure life for years. I was part of the SEO team. We only ever focused on page speed (programmers), user usability testing (i think should be part of SEO) and creating king content that was actually helpful to the reader. Needless to say SEO has saved the company and I couldn't even count how many featured snipets we have.

[@fabianschierz]

Great video! I was thinking about building backlinks over the past few days but then thought the same thing you said - Google always puts the end user first and wants them to see the best content, not the content with the most backlinks. So thank you for confirming this, I will proceed without link building now :)

[@petcontentsolutions3328]

Hello, Ricky. Thanks for sharing. I love how Income School sticks to giving emphasis on content creation FIRST rather than technical SEO. For people who wanted to start blogging because they love to write, this is an excellent starting point, that you don't have to overwhelm yourself with too much info to get started. Take care, and looking forward to the next video :)

[@carladams9345]

Without doing any active link building my site now has 1400 backlinks in a bit over 1 year, and about 60% are dofollow. Ahrefs recently emailed me to say that Yahoo News and Newsbreak linked to my site. However, I still sometimes think about trying to build backlinks just because I am afraid to lose ground to competitors in my niche.

[@underwp]

Building good backlinks will not hurt. Try avoiding spam backlinks.

[@user-fx5hs6dp2r]

Backlinks are completely useless, I have 200K pageviews blog in the health niche, with only 5 or 6 valid backlinks and the other links are from junk websites. Obsessiveness about user experience with The highest value, easiest to consume is the Key.

[@SleazyNinja]

link?

[@eoinmcdonnell8629]

200K monthly page views with 5 or 6 valid backlinks?! Not with US traffic you don't.

[@RM-hj7zo]

@@eoinmcdonnell8629 I don't think he said monthly

[@poppyandmylo4802]

Agree broadly with many of the sentiments in this video. For a beginner blogger writing about low competition topics, building links is a low priority allocation of resources, and you can get to #1 without any proactive link creation. But as you go after more competitive terms, you're going to need to build links if you want to move the ranking timeline from years to months. Good luck ranking for "best VPN" with 'great content' alone. A couple of relevant links can also be the boost you need to take a page from position 8 to the top three (for example), therefore 10Xing its revenue. Then it's a good allocation of resources to build the links.

[@VenturaIT]

To get the really competitive rankings you can't build the links, there are other ways and really only sizeable companies can afford it, this is perhaps the whole purpose of Google, to keep the smaller companies down and invisible. Their PageRank system is a top down system.

[@jalliartturi]

It’s all about topical authority. TomsGuide ranks for ”Best VPN” They have thousands of blog posts about VPNs and they’re an ”expert” in that niche. That’s why they rank. Links are useless.

[@jalliartturi]

How come? You don’t need to build links to rank for Best VPNs. You just need a huge site with a ton of content. That’s how business works. Nothing to do with links. That’s exactly like I made a video about myself brushing my teeth. Would get 0 views but if I published it on MrBeast, it would get millions of views. The more competition, the harder it is to stand out. Has absolutely nothing to do with links bro!

[@danettegralewski5308]

I sooo appreciate your perspective! This resonates with me. I’ve been pondering how to go about writhing guests posts and such to get back links, and it’s really stressed me out. So time consuming! I like this approach!

[@alanewart3444]

Wow! This really is a myth buster, especially given the prices people are charging to provide decent backlinks. I have been sceptical about backlink strategies pushed by people selling them as I have always believed that content is king. Having watched this video I intend to continue adding quality content to my website (which is very new) and see where it goes over the next few months before I do anything else.. Thanks for a great video.

[@zaydhabibi9531]

Man! When you said backlinks are a complete waste of time, I thought you were going to reach the ultimate benchmark of stupidity. But, watching your video saved me from wasting my time ultimately. Now I must say, that your video was worth my time. Thank you for delivering immense value! I'm hitting that subscribe button from both of my channels fo' sho'!

[@rizkhanedits]

I followed your ways after when you published video "link building is useless" Years ago.. I am now successful thanks to you.

[@chidiemeke8331]

This is a big motivation for me. Do you think I can rank in a business niche? I was doubting myself

[@destindiary]

how are things now?

[@tmueting]

After watching 3 or 4 of your videos I'm excited to see the next one whatever it might be about. So many KZbinrs out there are snake-oil salesmen, trying to get you to buy their programs. Yes, you mention your program a couple of times in your videos, but the information that you give is detailed and on point. Proving that the content of your program will be well worth the investment.

[@mukulbhargav2399]

Hey Ricky, Thanks for the clarify the myth of backlinks. I'm also a blogger. Now, I definitely more focus on my content not on backlinks. Big Thanks!!!!

[@katef4]

I never did backlink outreach but my SEO clients all ranked. The essence of this video is exactly what I have been telling them.

[@rickytanrmst]

Hi Ricky! My name is Ricky too... This video earned yourself a subscriber! I admire your authenticity and how it shows in your approach. I'm a new blogger, new to SEO and I've been trying to figure out how to rank better on Google. I felt weird when I added a link back to my posts whenever I posted on social media because a lot of SEO articles told me how critical that was (supposedly). I'm glad to hear that the quality and originality of content is #1 since this is what I love doing most about blogging. I'm going to follow your advice in my own blog on side hustles - may I link your relevant videos on some of my blog posts? I think your advice would be really valuable to some of my subscribers.

[@BraceFamAdventures]

This is why I binge watch income school over other seo types. 👏 👏 They have a blunt honesty that cuts through a lot of the algorithm gaming and gets down to what really matters, quality content and research. Keep up the good work guys. 😃

[@rekhadebnath3161]

Thanks to you. You just released me from the tension of link building. That is the toughest part of SEO for me. Now I can surely gain my interest back on just writing relevant posts. Thanks again.

[@Bruceylancer]

Hi there! So almost two years have passed, may you please share your results? Did you succeed with this strategy?

[@BillionDollarActor]

Building authority with great quality content IS the key, that way it helps you get higher quality backlinks. When doing Podcasts, one of the strategies we like to have our clients use is sharing the Top 5 FAQ’s & the Top SAQ’s (Should Ask Questions) that your prospects SHOULD be asking you.

[@rizkhanedits]

Hi Ricky, I have problem with featured snippet. I followed your writing method to rank on 0 position in featured snippet but I am unable to rank. Many pages are ranked on position 1 but they could not be on 0. Some pages were ranking on 0 in past but not now. My site don't use SSL, I think this may be problem.

[@darinjohnson3671]

This is what I have already thought as I have never liked the idea of doing work to do Backlinks. I have always thought that Backlinks can be created organically over time. Thanks for this video it verifies my thoughts on this.

[@emmanuelihuoma7311]

That explains why some search queries I make the first two or three sites are of low DA - like 20 to 38

[@agenticmark]

Now that is a title I can click on, and you KILLED the topic. Thanks!

[@kaswin41]

Okay Ricky, that's an interesting view which is in contrast to SEO gurus view. But your strategy will work well if you can get less competitive & untapped keywords to get good traffic. (By the way, I can't wait for your SEO strategy video) But it will take a while depending on the Industry. I will say with your approach, we will have more time for more contents. But backlink building according to ahrefs "is very important if you want to rank for "competitive keywords"" And that's proven with Adam Enfroy blog's who reach 450k monthly readers in 2 years. His strategy is content & links.

[@jollyjames30]

Adam Enfroy also outsources a lot of his work involving content creation and guest blogging. So bloggers need to be aware of the amount of work involved in scaling a blog to that level.

[@ajayfacts81]

You are absolutely right. Most of my blog posts are ranking on first page. But I never build a single backlink. Neither have I much knowledge about them. ......

[@chidiemeke8331]

How do you do your SEO bro? Help me😖

[@chidiemeke8331]

How often do you Publish new post?

[@taniayager3361]

WOW, that's a real eye-opener. I'm just embarking on blogging for my site to draw people to it. Someone told me to get backlinks but I think they were talking about using the old methods. I love how you explain everything so simply without all the jargon. Years ago people used to frighten you with all the backlinking strategies that it was quite off putting. Luckily, I wasn't building a website then. I'm going to be using an AI writer but will keep the content unique. Do you forsee any problems here? I know that the AI generates keywards relevant to the topic. So let me get this straight are you saying not to create outbound links within the blog that links to other sites? Sorry but might be confusing terms here. Basically, can I get away with not having any links in the content except for using relevant keywords that will get searched on? I hope I'm making sense here. I'm a new subscriber and first time listener. Fantastic information.

[@jalliartturi]

Thanks a lot Incomeschool :) When I found your channel last Aug, I dropped every SEO strategy I was told. Now I only do the Chrome Incognito trick you taught to find relevant topics, and write as comprehensive guides as possible. I Just hit 25k views/ month with less than 5 months of work! So thankful to this channel!

[@2wheelereyes521]

Seems To be good strategy.. would love to know more about it

[@jalliartturi]

@@2wheelereyes521 The idea is to find keywords people are searching for using Google’s own data. In short: 1. Open up Chrome incognito 2. Start typing something related to your niche 3. See what Google suggests 4. Pick one of those suggested keyphrases 5. Do keyword research i.e. understand the search intent and the quality of the top pages for that keyword 6. Write an article that is much better than any one in the top 10 7. Profit By following IncomeSchool, you find all this information in their videos!

[@2wheelereyes521]

@@jalliartturi Thanks bro for this information ... You mean, l should use the Normal chrome browser? And which keyword research tool do you use after picking up the keyword you're going to write about? Or how will you determine the keyword difficulty?

[@jalliartturi]

@@2wheelereyes521 yeah, just a regular free Chrome. Just make sure to activate the incognito mode so that the suggestions are not biased. And as IncomeSchool teaches, you should not use any KW research tools! I highly recommed watching the videos, they teach all this stuff in very clear and actionable fashion.

[@jalliartturi]

@@2wheelereyes521 To clarify, I never know the exact keyword difficulty, or not even close. However, if the top articles are written by some popular agencies, it sometimes is a good sign that the keyphrase is too competitive. Then on the other hand, if the top results are some forum posts, such as Quora, it is a good indication that there is not much competition for that phrase!

[@podopiblogtoyoutubepodcast7967]

Great video. Very true too about content rather than backlinks. Everyone wants a quick fix these days without spending time and effort to create the content that links deserve. Create great content, spread it far and wide, and repeat.

[@chiconico.]

Any chance you could do a quick guide on ahrefs at some point Ricky? Such as what all the numbers mean, how to know what a good domain rating is and how to improve it etc.

[@moyooluwatuyi7811]

Your videos are very enlightening. They give me a different perspective about SEO and content.

[@samisaker7008]

So far and according to my experience, backlinks is a waste of time when the external source has low domain authority. Great video

[@oldewolf5275]

Hey Guys, Love your content. I'm just curious -- what is the pop-up and text box software you use in your videos?

[@ipshitabiswas5661]

I have a doubt. In the first example that you showed, despite having 214 referring domains, the site had a DR of just 0.4. Doesn't that indicate that most of the backlinks were actually of really low quality and didn't really add much value?

[@rokask4596]

This!

[@florianneumann6082]

But isn't this exactly what he's trying to say? Those links are not what most SEO-Experts consider useful, yet the site is doing great and ranking really high. This pretty much proves that bothering with it is a waste of time.

[@hoodiegamer9256]

@@florianneumann6082 bruh i used to think its useless until I joined SEO communities with guys that have sites with DA of 80+ and they're making big money. They invest in getting links from Forbes, NY Times.... and several other super authoritative sites and it pays off big time... we're talking $100 to $200k monthly.

[@Sam-ph5xd]

@@hoodiegamer9256 which community you're in brother, i would like to join the community

[@vaildog1]

Hey Ricky, would love an updated video on niche selection for new sites, if you think things have changed since the old Videos.

[@szymonrachut7320]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. However, there are many industries where it is not possible to break out without gaining links. Not all websites can become "guides for internet users" to which people will be willing to provide links themselves. Small business sites often have to compete with large corporations. Even after creating the best content in the world, they have no chance to overtake the giants at SERP's without linking.

[@IncomeSchool]

What makes the giants giants?

[@szymonrachut7320]

@@IncomeSchool For shure? I don't wonna be "Amazon" or "e-bay". Just wanna sell my products as a small company. I wanna be expert in my nishe. 1. They are simply huge businesses. There is a huge amount of money behind it in many marketing channels. It is a self-propelled machine. Small companies do not have to have the ambition to be giants. The point is to have your niche and have good SEO positions in that niche. 2. Giants grew up when link buying and even link farms were popular and worked very well. Small businesses want to focus on their work, not write a blog or other marketing activities.

[@Dr-Sandip-Roy]

Thank you! Does your snippet optimization video need an update?

[@raisingbarssince1978]

Actually it's quite easy instead of learning how to create Backlinks, learn how to create good content...and you do that by being passionate for what you do. Also I recommend taking up some courses on writing and creative thinking if content creation isn't your thing.

[@marcellpotgieter1992]

I just found your channel and this was my first video. It is worth gold in its weight. Thank for honest education❤

[@MiguelVallejoPwnz]

As a developer myself, this is a solid video, no fluff, great job.

[@p3t3mit]

Ah, man... Great video. Great energy and delivery.

[@ankushzap]

I think its important when content is competitive with larger supply (from other websites)

[@KSigKid]

I know it's not impressive, but organically writing my posts, I've accumulated a little over 900 links with 400ish being follow so far.

[@72janez]

It much depends on industry you are in. Your competition is not very likely going to give you a backlink. And these competition sites would be relevant and important to you, because of similar niche. It's just hard to expect such favours without payment in serious business niches.

[@haroldcrow]

good video, but i was expecting for data and case study... but you have a good point

[@BensWatchClub]

We put very, very little effort into our website content, have never used any form of link building and still manage 100K+ organic website views per month. I can easily see how with more effort you could build a huge site without link building or advertising whatsoever. Anyone denying that has garbage content imo.

[@Bakezonline]

do you monetise? if how much does it make? my goal is to get the site to reach 100k in traffic im close but far!!

[@2wheelereyes521]

Does your strategy also apply on hard niches to crack like Finance and health?

[@VenturaIT]

Totally true and good info... what is interesting is that Google wasn't the first search engine and their PageRank formula is a top down system that focuses all the traffic on a few big sites... most people only click on the top 3 results... before Google existed the Internet was more varied and you could surf and find all kinds of small websites and small companies and interesting and unique and eccentric information... but small websites and small companies don't spend a lot of time writing a lot of content (and most just don't know how and are just too busy), for example why should a landscaping service company write a bunch of content (except to game Google into ranking them hirer than someone else who is also trying to game Google), it's not part of their service... they would only write it in hopes of filling an low competition search query and pleasing Google... but it's totally a drain from their main service job and they are a small company... so while what you say about Google is true, and is very easy to rank for low competition underserved queries, the Google system has really created a very thin and boring Internet that keeps getting more and more thin, by the very nature of their PageRank algorithm, and becomes more and more boring every year by the basis of their own formula that favors the big companies with a lot of money to build content or buy or share links. Each search query basically has 3 results, because most people only click on the top 3... Also Google still ranks an incredible amount of irrelevant junk, because their system is really not that good and they aren't spending a lot of time improving their deeper search results... page 10 or 20 of Google has really irrelevant results in most cases that has nothing to do with what you searched for... The Internet pre-2008 was much more fun due to this.

[@volkan.demircan]

Great and helpful content! Thank you

[@mikepawlikguitar]

Guys, I wholeheartedly agree! Can't stand the thought of link-building :) If you guys and Miles Beckler say that they've achieved massive success without it, then I don't wanna go anywhere near link-building. Seems like one's time would be better spent working on writing new content and creating a lead magnet to capture emails or something.

[@ontarioproperties4742]

Do you have any suggestions as to how to get content indexed? Seems impossible to get anything indexed these days.

[@McPhan86]

I feel like Google is now so smart that the key to most SEO is simply just to write good, relevant, unique content. All of the fluff that we used to throw in to try and crawl our way up the rankings just isn't relevant anymore!

[@floral8139]

hi ricky, i would like to learn the way to write articles to attract backlinks naturally? but i have no idea what kind of topics should i select? topics that reporters like? for example, research, report? do u have complete course about this part? cannot wait to learn!!!

[@ImaxView]

Hi Ricky and Incomeschool I have a blog that was started 3 months back. I am already taking photos by myself. My question is should I watermark them? ( At right bottom corner ) When I saw your blogs I figured that you are not paying your attention to watermarking them. When I search this on youtube people are saying that if I put a watermark in center it will distract the user,. If I put a watermark at the bottom right corner people can crop the image. However, from my perspective cropping an image, will take additional effort. if the user is willing to do that I cant prevent it. But at least it will be the first line of defence, right? What do you think? Really appreciate it if you can share your idea,

[@IncomeSchool]

I like the idea of watermarking your own images in the corner. I think you’re right. People can crop them. But it’ll take extra effort and they’ll lose that part of the photo.

[@misterpogi23]

Great great video!!! I NEVER focused on links. I mostly focused on On-page SEO.

[@chidiemeke8331]

Are you seeing results?

[@misterpogi23]

@@chidiemeke8331 Yes absolutely! For me, I've been focusing on local SEO. I'm almost on the 1st page for a super competitive keyword in my city. I don't ever link build. I let it happen naturally.

[@davidvoorhies812]

I 100% agree. I have done no back-linking but still have a thousand.

[@chidiemeke8331]

Hey bro. Please tell me how you go about your SEO. I'm kinda confused with mine. My niche is blogging & business

[@davidvoorhies812]

@@chidiemeke8331 I follow the Project 24 process just like Ricky points out. Create good unique content and the view start to come after a few weeks. (although it takes 6-8 months to get to their peak per article).

[@2wheelereyes521]

@@davidvoorhies812 does this method apply on hard niches like finance?

[@davidvoorhies812]

@@2wheelereyes521 It totally does. It is all about giving the reader and Google what they want in the same article.

[@JohnWade-cg4zf]

You explain it very well!

[@dejongebelegger]

Great lessons, makes sense and makes the internet 'more fair', which it needs!

[@NetKnowHow1]

Yes, content is king. I see you point. Well presented. Tks.

[@SpookySkeletons]

You can rank very good without a lot of backlinks. My website got around 1,800 after 2 years, which is not very good. But we manage to outrank bigger competitors with a DA of 60+ sometimes. When we are first with a topic for example we get only outranked by 80+ DA sites. But: If you are news related you have to have a high DA and therefore many good Backlinks/Refering Domains, in order to get into Google Discover and News.

[@rgasta7765]

One of the best backlink videos ever produced. It was great.

[@superbcutter16]

Rickey please create a video demonstrating how to do original research for an article? This may sound a bit odd and noobish but İ am confused about stats and stuff

[@chidiemeke8331]

Yeah! We need it.

[@thebasicsproject]

Hey! I have a question I can't seem to find an answer to. I've started a sewing blog for fun. One project I'm wanting to take on is creating a sewing pattern directory, linking to online sewing patterns from other creators. If I'm not making any money off of doing this (linking outside resources) is that ok? Do I need to ask for permission? I just want to create it to be a helpful resource. Thanks in advance for helping!

[@IncomeSchool]

This is absolutely a great idea! And no, you don't need permission to link to someone's sewing pattern on their site. Creating a helpful resource like that is likely to earn you some goodwill with some of those other sites as well.

[@fbryce1ify]

it is not the backlinks that are worthless - it is the process of link building that is…. dont build let it grow

[@IncomeSchool]

Nailed it!

[@dosdaysareover7781]

Couldn’t agree more. On every SEO forum, even in the comments here, people will just scream “backlinks”. It’s easier to blame backlinks instead of admitting that a 1000 word, rewritten article is just mediocre content which holds zero value (can be found elsewhere, just using different words). I Haven’t spend time on getting backlinks in years, yet even some of my smaller websites gets over 600K unique visitors monthly (130 posts). Original research and creativity is key.

[@MrGadu95]

Wow congrats! Really good amount of traffic. I'm also having 130 posts but just getting like 7k visitors a month. How old Is your website?

[@dosdaysareover7781]

@@MrGadu95 That one is 2.5 years old. Lots of really in-depth content and data/stats, as well as unique research or odd, funny stuff, doing weird tests etc. I don’t care about what magical keywords to include, or what the competition does and all that. I focus on writing fun and truly unique, interesting content for my target audience. I just checked, that got me backlinks from 404 different domains (in about 2.5 years) to my website, so that seems to be working. Imagine having to spend time and actually having to pay for those same results… That’s why this video is so correct. Unpopular opinion it seems, but that’s their loss really.

[@dosdaysareover7781]

@@MrGadu95 Oh and don’t worry that much about traffic, a smaller niche can generate good, targeted sales too.

[@MrGadu95]

@@dosdaysareover7781 Thanks for your reply! My Blog Is around 1 year old now and I keep updating It atleast once a week. My goal Is to get accepted for Mediavine that's why I want to achieve atleast 50k sessions a month!

[@CookieJArnett]

I tend to put a lot of links to other sites in my posts. I am not doing this to get backlinks- I just want people to be able to access further information. For instance, I have articles about abuse & weight loss, and other similar type topics. I have included links to sites that provide resources for these kinds of issues to make it easier for people to get help for their specific circumstances. Will I be penalized for adding these types of links to my site?

[@IncomeSchool]

Nope. That’s the kind of organic linking Google wants us to rely on.

[@johnmcintyre9741]

I never built backlinks. I wrote quality content. I have articles ranking #1 and many on page 1. As you state, there are other ways to get backlinks easier than bugging other people.

[@chidiemeke8331]

Ow!🤯 This is a big motivation to me. I've always thought I need Backlinks to rank. Hello can you share some knowledge with me? What niche are you & how do you go about optimizing your blog & website for SEO?

[@chidiemeke8331]

Can I email you? I feel like I need someone to guide me a little. I already have a blog website, but things are not going well💔

[@chidiemeke8331]

How often do you Publish new post on your website?

[@johnmcintyre9741]

@@chidiemeke8331 At least once a week. I also update and improve old content. If the content is good you will get backlinks.

[@2wheelereyes521]

@@johnmcintyre9741 cool strategy for you .. can you write atleast 1 article per day?

[@MoulayOmar]

What a topic! You are amazing. ❤

[@alexisrendon1355]

Youre a very good teacher. You simplified everything into digestible contentfor the newbies like me, thank you

[@atefehz6606]

But what about e-commerce websites ? I tryied to make the best content for each product yet still it's so hard to get backlinks on those

[@lowfijones3346]

Most millionaire folks could care less about people who are broke and have no opportunity. Instead, they just get richer and enjoy life without a care. Thank you Income school for helping people out who want to break out of the normal 9 to 5 existence and do something cool, thanks! Thanks for caring and not hiding on Barts Island isolated in your beach mansion, chucking to yourself! Thanks for pouring your heart into helping and sharing your trade secrets instead of hoarding them!

[@olliep8117]

Yes totally agree on the philosophy on backlinks. One of my blogs has a backlink from the Foreign Policy magazine, and another of my blogs has a backlink from the Guardian newspaper, both very high DA backlinks. And I never asked either of them to link to me. They linked to my content because it had a key, quotable stat in it in one case, and the Guardian one just because it was a well written article that approached the topic creatively, with real life applied examples to a general principle that would otherwise have been boring and dry if didn't bring it to life with some examples.

[@FredsRandomFinds]

And how many of those 400+ backlinks were as a result of that site being previously featured upon this channel?

[@IncomeSchool]

Considering this same thing happens on sites we never publicly mention… I’d say very few.

[@iamcyrix]

@@IncomeSchool Why do you only have a DR 0.4 score on ahrefs, while you say that you get such good backlinks? Does this mean that ahrefs metric is totally wrong?

[@josbertels6959]

@@iamcyrix It means that the backlinks are not that good. DR 0.4 is extremely low. Even with junk backlinks you will reach it very easy.

[@dieterkontich1349]

@@IncomeSchool How can you manage to get 400 backlinks to the cooking site and still get 0.4 Domain Rating? And then you tell that the site got great backlinks? Can you explain this?

[@thomas_xsg]

Awesome video, Ricky. And, from experience, I can testify that this is 100% true! Link building is dead.

[@warrenresearchinc.1883]

This is some great 👍 information on how to authentically increase overall authority! I think there are lot of people that look at link building as short term burst in site traffic source rather than the long term stable traffic builder that it is.

[@mohammadahsan3442]

Hello, kindly please make the separate video how to fulfill E.A.T algorithm requirements, Specifically for trust and authority

[@blackblather]

This guy is a natural. Loved the content.

[@sachinthakar5314]

What is the backlink profile software you using?

[@mythologx]

I learned a lot with this video , thumbs up! Thanks

[@reightgoodbikes]

It really depends on the niche it’s perfectly possible to rank for many things with out backlinks but top niches your will struggle, you mentioned getting links is against Google’s terms of service and then go on to explain how to get a backlink from a podcast, as per your explanation this would also be against Google’s terms of service too as your doing it to influence your rank, this is the paradox of link building, but I agree with you it’s an interesting debate. The real take from it, is there is no one size fits all for seo. You can’t just have one strategy you need to be able to have many for every different niche you enter into…

[@2wheelereyes521]

Yep... True Justin.. say niches like finance, health is hard to rank, and finding low tapped is quite hectic.. So l guess you need some backlinks.. But which kind of backlinks can you recommend or use? Writing blog comments on other sites could turn out spammy

[@nathanchandler6610]

There are niches that absolutely require backlinks. I wish that was the case for me, but no one will link to our content organically. Just the nature of the beast.

[@EndTimeFilmsCoTM]

Very well explained... 👏🏻

[@musicworld5874]

U r an authority in digital marketing

[@ariela_]

I still don’t understand, can I link to my own page? Like if I put my blog link on a Twitter thread or Instagram comments is that a back link?

[@StevenCrews]

Well said Ricky!

[@juliamarsh2077]

How do you protect your site from people with established sites from using Ahrefs or something similar to find sites with low DAs that are ranking on page one and creating content to beat you (scalping)? Once you start getting links the DA rises, but before that aren´t you vulnerable? Why not do some forum and social media linking to push your DA up a bit while you wait for natural links to lift you out of the danger zone.

[@IncomeSchool]

Those social media and forum links don’t do basically anything from an SEO standpoint. Given the size of the internet, the risk is generally very low. There are so many options of sites to scrape from that the risk of yours being harmed is very low. I don’t understand the mentality behind that. People who use those tools to find easy content to scrape are little better than common thieves. If what you’re doing doesn’t add value to the world, find something else to do. That all said, Project 24 members are still succeeding every day.

[@juliamarsh2077]

@@IncomeSchool Thank you for the response, I am with you they are thieves. As you say those links are worthless for ranking, but my understanding is that they will still be found by moz etc which boost the DA score. So when scalpers look for sub 15 DA sites to scalp using Moz, Ahrefs etc, yours is not on the list because its DA is 21 or something....but that said if you say not to worry about it, at the moment, that is good enough for me :) thank you again,

[@petertragardh4571]

What was the tool that showed how many backlinks the site/ page had?

[@rubymoon247]

Ahrefs

[@yussifmohammedalhassan346]

Thank you for the information

[@fanit7161]

I've dealt with link-builders for around a year and must confess I've had much trouble entering around a dozen of them to junk filter daily. But anyway link-building is sometimes needed. It's not about artificial manipulation, it's about building up authority and marketing relations. How else will you start if your website just launched, you have almost no content yet, and need to tell the world about yourself? That's also kind of link-building, only the smart way.

[@underwp]

Building guest posts backlinks will help you gain good authority backlinks as well as authority over the time.

[@RHSEO]

Seems to be difficult to get new content into the SERP though, posts struggling to index, anyone got any methods?

[@IncomeSchool]

I have a video on that topic. However, Google seems to be having trouble getting new content indexed as fast as they used to, especially on new sites. If you follow the steps I outlined in my video on that subject and then focus on content, Google will get to you. They might not if you stop producing content. Once you have 50 posts or so then doing a little industry outreach which I talk about in this video, will help get attention and valuable backlinks to your site which will also help. But I wouldn’t slow down on content creation too so that until at least 50 posts.

[@johnmcintyre9741]

I have posts that get indexed in 2-3 days sometimes. Other times it may be weeks to be indexed.

[@emilysego2400]

I get emails EVERY DAY from people soliciting guest posts to be placed on my blog. I assume it's either spam or people actively trying to build links for SEO. I think now I'll just reply to them all with a link to this video :0)

[@ManojKumar-tg9fo]

Thanks for the informative Knowledge. May I apply this one to e-commerce business? please reply

[@IncomeSchool]

You absolutely can!

[@jhadesdev9576]

Hello Ricky, I followed the strategy of not building any links at all and just left the site site there for 6 months, and nothing, pages getting de-indexed. Then I started posting on social media, creating a Facebook Group, created social media profiles, linked my linkedin back to the website, started posting on reddit and on quora, and only then, slowly I started getting any traffic at all. So for anyone listening, if you are just creating content and posting links to the google search console for a brand new website, it doesn't work anymore in 2022. You need social media presence and you need to post your website in forums to get things started. I think the way you presented things in your last video on this topic a few years ago it was leading people (including myself) to just sit there producing content and not do anything else, which doesn't work anymore unless it's a brand new topic and Google doesn't have any other content to serve. This new video is much better explained, thank you for sharing.

[@IncomeSchool]

Or maybe the fact that more time had passed had something to do with it.

[@jhadesdev9576]

@@IncomeSchool maybe, it’s impossible to tell, but it happened exactly at the same time. I was from october to may with zero search engine traffic or so, many of my pages had dropped from the index. I heard this reported in a interview and a well known guy from google advised to try to get a link from somewhere else in a similar situation. Its getting harder and harder to do it from scratch for new domains, its going to get to a point in 10 years where we almost have to buy a domain i believe.

[@jorgesalazar7740]

Wow, thanks for sharing this. You just got a subscriber.👍

[@United-News]

Great video! Thanks! #LINKBUILDING #SEO #linkbuild #THANKS!

[@ashwinjoy2587]

Nice video Rick

[@andibilibani2625]

Great video. Thank you.

[@rienzseodigital]

Notice how he said waste of time, not useless. :D That's coz there's a fine line to this. Most SEO don't understand how links work, hence most people end up wasting valuable resources on things they don't want or fully understand. Link Building is still a go-to strategy but it does not apply to all situations especially when you are brand positioning.

[@hellomoneytree3628]

I watched someone else's video today and he said to do 50% content and 50% backlinks to your posts. However, the example he gave for how to do industry outreach can't be used by brand new bloggers with low DA and no guest post opportunities lined up. I think Income School is right about creating quality content first. Focus on content and building up your brand, and then, reach out to people who are more likely to say yes to backlinkg to your blog.

[@darndarn99]

Absolutely spot on 👍👍 consecrate on creating amazing content end of . You guys remind me of the great Kyle roof .