How To Plan A Link Acquisition Strategy In The Era Of Google EEAT

How to plan a Link Acquisition Strategy in the era of Google EEAT

Google’s algorithm has undergone numerous changes over the years, forcing webmasters and online marketers to adjust their strategy to the ongoing changes, some of which have represented an authentic paradigm shift.

“Adapt or die”, as the famous English naturalist Charles Darwin once said, refers to those species that are unable to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

The same is true for anyone involved in online marketing and especially in Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO.

Adapt or die: accepting change as a constant

The frequency of these updates can vary and not all of them are equally important. Many of them even go unnoticed by most users, while others are very obvious because of the significant impact they often have on search results, thus generating the so-called “Google dance” or SERP dance (which sometimes turns into a real earthquake that completely changes the configuration of search result pages).

Google also publishes and notifies webmasters of major updates to its algorithm (which are usually assigned a name). These updates can be referred to as ‘core updates’ and usually have a significant impact on a large number of websites and search queries, either targeting specific industries or niches, or affecting the SERPs globally, or finally addressing specific issues, such as spam, thin content or other targets.

Keeping in mind that Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and changing is therefore a notion of great importance for anyone designing and implementing a SEO strategy of an online business, as it is necessary to adapt and be flexible to keep up with the changes.

Websites that focus on creating high quality content and building natural, authoritative links are more likely to cope with any changes in the algorithm and maintain their search engine rankings.

As mentioned above, Google updates its algorithm regularly, with the aim of offering the results that most closely match the search intentions of users who have performed a given query. In order to do this, being a search engine based on Natural Language Processing (NLP), Google relies mainly on content, but also on dozens of other positioning factors, including links, which according to numerous surveys among SEO specialists, continue to be extremely important when it comes to positioning a website, especially in a competitive environments.

Understanding Google’s algorithm change timeline

For this reason it is very important to consider how Google has changed over the years and how these changes have also affected the way a strong and natural link profile is built in the eyes of Google.

Some of the key changes that have affected link acquisition strategies include the following:

• Panda (2011): This update focused on low-quality content and websites, and penalized sites that had a high number of duplicate or low-quality pages. This update made it more important for websites to focus on creating original and high quality content.
• Penguin (2012): This major algorithm change focused on websites that engaged in manipulative link acquisition practices, such as buying links or participating in link farms. The Penguin update forced websites to focus on obtaining high quality natural links.
• Hummingbird (2013): As part of Google’s radical shift that has been unfolding over the last decade, this update was launched with the aim of improving the way Google understands search queries and the intent behind them. Hummingbird represented another big change for webmasters, forcing websites to focus on creating relevant and useful content for their target audience (helping Google to close the gap between user search intent and SERP results).
• RankBrain (2015): This umpteenth  update introduced a machine learning component to the algorithm that allows Google to better understand the meaning of search queries, taking a further step towards full natural language understanding by the search engine.
• “Core updates (ongoing, there were two in 2022): As mentioned above, these are updates that often have a significant impact on SERPs and make it more important for websites to focus on delivering relevant, high quality content, as well as getting semantically relevant links and from authoritative domain authorities.

As Google’s algorithm continues to evolve, it is becoming increasingly important for websites to focus on creating high quality content (providing useful information to users and satisfying their search intent, whether informational or commercial) and building natural, authoritative links. This means that link acquisition strategies should focus on obtaining links from trusted sources, creating valuable and shareable content, and building relationships with other websites.

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness: Google’s new paradigm

The acronym EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) represents a set of guidelines, rules and best practices that Google uses to evaluate the quality and relevance of web pages, especially those containing sensitive information that could be considered “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL). 

Google uses EEAT to assess the reputation and trustworthiness of a website and to ensure that users receive accurate and high quality information. Websites that score well on EEAT are more likely to rank higher in search results, while those that score poorly may be demoted or even removed from the index if Google considers the information they provide to be outdated or misleading.

Strictly linked to EEAT is the other acronym, YMYL (Your Money or Your Life). This refers to websites that could potentially impact a user’s financial stability or affect their health and safety. Examples of YMYL pages include financial advice, health advice, legal advice and other types of content that could have a significant impact on a user’s well-being or financial situation.

For this reason, Google EEAT guidelines emphasize particularly on YMYL pages and the quality of information provided on these types of pages. This is because Google’s ultimate goal is to ensure that users receive accurate and reliable information that they can trust.

How is link acquisition affected by Google EEAT?

When it comes to link acquisition for YMYL pages (and in general for all types of websites), it is important to focus on obtaining links that are semantically relevant (consistency between source and target content) and of high quality (i.e. from trusted and authoritative sources). 

This may include industry-specific websites, governmental or educational institutions and well-established news media. 

In addition, it is important to establish that the authors and creators of content are experts, authoritative and trustworthy in their field. This can be done by including information on the author’s qualifications, credentials and experience, as well as by providing links to other reputable sources.

As far as a website’s link profile is concerned, it should be balanced. That is, it should have a mix of different types of links from different sources, although there is no exact ratio to follow and, as with everything in SEO, it is relative and highly dependent on how it compares to the competition. This is why it is essential to be able to count on experts capable of analyzing the link profile of a website and detecting what it lacks and what is needed to generate a solid link profile, which helps to position the most complex SEO keywords or improve the brand awareness. 

As a general summary, we can indicate some elements to take into account when designing the link acquisition strategy of a website:

• Get relevant (semantic correlation) and high quality (domain authority) links from sources such as government and educational websites, industry-specific websites and well-established news media.
• Get natural and organic links from other websites that have linked to your content because they consider it valuable and relevant to their audience. 
• Diversify link typology, including text links, image links and links from social networks. 
• Combine different anchor texts, with a good mix of branded keywords (brand “plain”, brand variations, brand + search term), naked URL (the website URL itself, with and without www, with/without https or http, etc.), generic keywords (website, click here, etc.) and SEO anchor text (either the exact keyword or its long-tail variations).
• Depending on the market and language targeting of the website, it might be advisable to get links from different countries, languages and TLDs.
• Maintain a steady growth of links over time, rather than a sudden spike, highly focused on a keyword you want to rank for.

It is important to keep in mind that search engines may consider a link profile that is too biased towards a particular type of link or source as manipulative, which could result in a penalty. 

A balanced link profile is not only important for SEO, but also helps to make the website appear more natural and trustworthy to search engines.To conclude, in general terms the link acquisition strategy in the Google EEAT era should focus on obtaining relevant and high quality links from reputable sources, creating valuable and shareable content, and building relationships with other websites, while ensuring that the authors and creators of the website are experts, reputable and trustworthy in their field.