The Absurd Myth of Passive Link Building

If you operate a website and you’ve done at least a little bit of research into SEO, you’ve probably come across the term “link earning.” Some refer to it as “passive link building.”

The idea behind it is fairly simple: if you build it, they will come.

Essentially, the belief is that if you build a piece of content that is so compelling or your site is so exquisitely designed and has an innate and unique value proposition, you’re good to go. Influential webmasters in your niche are going to find your site, recognize you, and the links will start pouting in; little need for marketing on your end.

As someone who has personally sent hundreds of thousands of emails asking for links, I can tell you that this is an appealing idea. 

Unfortunately, it’s also an unsustainable and impractical idea. 

Don’t get me wrong: sometimes the scenario I played out will happen. Sometimes someone will in fact link to you without you having to ask. And those instances are a treat, but you can’t rely on this strategy as a whole.

If you want links, you’re going to have to change your mindset to: if you build links, they will come.

Here are a few reasons why “passive link building” just doesn’t cut it as a comprehensive strategy.

Background Info: Google Relies Heavily on Links

The internet as we know it is a little over 35 years old. That’s not an extraordinarily long time, mind you, but it’s time enough that over 1.7 billion (with a b) websites are currently active.

Google is one of those websites, but also not just one of those websites, if you know what I mean. Google is practically the internet’s traffic cop. It’s the largest distributor of traffic on the internet, and it’s really not particularly close.

In 2018, Google was responsible for 57.8% of the internet’s referral traffic. That’s more than ten times Facebook’s share, and Facebook was the second largest referrer. And if you think that’s a big discrepancy, 92% of search queries in the first three months of 2020 went through Google. Bing came in at second with just under 4%.

I’ve just thrown all those numbers to confirm this very basic and fundamental point: ranking in Google is pretty crucial if you want sustained, high-volume traffic.

And here’s the thing about ranking in Google: you’re going to need backlinks. Links from authoritative and relevant sources.

Google has an abundance of ranking factors, and to be clear, I don’t know each and every one of them. No one who doesn’t work for Google knows what all of the ranking factors are, and I suspect that even the majority of people who do work for the company don’t know. The ranking algorithm is core to their success; you wouldn’t expect McDonald’s to just hand out its recipes, would you?

But I can unequivocally name one of the most important ranking factors: links.

The folks at Google don’t exactly hide the fact that links are part of their algorithm; it’s more of a question of just how crucial they are. And if you look at correlation case studies, you’ll consistently see that links are one of the most important ranking signals, year-after-year.

Google views a link as something of a vote. If site A links to site B, Google construes this as site A endorsing the content, service, or value that site B provides. A site wouldn’t intentionally link to a site it didn’t think was worthwhile, right?

It’s not a perfect system and it’s been manipulated in different ways over the years, but this emphasis on links was fundamental to Google’s algorithm right from the start and is why it continues to be the number one search engine in the world.

So You Want to Earn Links?

So now you’re probably asking: how do I get links?

This is where link earning and link building come into play. There are more ways to acquire links than these methods, but they fall into the aforementioned manipulative tactics that can get you penalized.

That means it’s time to start your strategy around link earning, right?

Pump the brakes.

Remember some of the numbers I mentioned before? Like for example that there are over 1.7 billion websites? To say that the internet is crowded would be quite the understatement.

The problem with link earning is that if you don’t rank in Google for the keywords relevant to your site, users are going to have an extraordinarily tough time finding you.

So that means you have to get links. But if people can’t discover you and then link to you, then… you see the conundrum here?

If you never, ever ask for a link (aka build a link) in the first place, how will anyone ever find out about your site? After all, it would be impossible for someone to link to a website that they don’t even know exists?

Link earning really only works if you have a well-established site already. People know where to find you and they trust you. If that is in fact the case, you’re already likely ranking pretty high for the necessary keywords.

There are definitely exceptions to this; I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But the overwhelming majority of the time, you can’t rely on passive link earning. Not as any sort of link building strategy anyway.

Think of it this way: you’re stranded on an island. You follow all of the best practices for survival to a tee. You have an unlimited amount of flares for your flare gun to send off signals. The problem is the island you’re stranded on is on another planet in another galaxy, one that is literally inaccessible to American technologies.

Essentially, this is the problem with link earning and passive link building.

So Now What?

What are you to do if passive link building isn’t a realistic strategy?

Get active.

Don’t just wait for the links to come in, because they won’t. Instead, ask for links.

This is essentially what link building is: the process of finding webmasters and influencers within your niche and asking them to link back to your site. Obviously, it’s a little more complicated than that, but not much.

When done correctly, link building is one of the most powerful methods for increasing your search visibility. 

There are multiple effective ways to build links. You can look for broken links that already exist, you can try to place yourself on resource pages, etc.

That’s not the point of this particular article. The point is to take active measures and to get your name out there; promote yourself. If you don’t promote yourself, no one is going to do the heavy lifting for you.

Think of it this way: Link building is the work, link earning is the reward.

Link building is a time-intensive effort; anything of value usually is. Thankfully, link building has benefits that aren’t just related to Google’s algorithm. You will build beneficial relationships with influencers and webmasters within your niche as an ancillary benefit. 

You can’t just build it and sit there and wait for them to come. Or you can, but you won’t be pleased with the results.

You have to build the road that will take people to where you want them to go, and that’s the purpose of link building.