Why I Stopped Doing Link Building (And Should You Too?)

I completely stopped doing link building and it's been almost three years since I did that. Funny thing is my traffic has only grown during this time period and if you ask me, I think I'm never going to build links again. Do you want to learn why? Today I'm going to break down why I stopped doing link building, and why you should potentially, too.

RESOURCES & LINKS:
____________________________________________
Ubersuggest –
CodeCanyon –
____________________________________________

The main reason why I stopped doing link building is that I no longer need to. My website gets Backlinks every day and I don't even have to lift a finger, literally I don't! It hasn't always been that way though, for approximately the first two or three years when I first started the website, I was hitting the pavement hard.

I would hit up every single person who linked out to competitor articles, beg them for links. So you're probably wondering, "Neil used to do this, what's changed? "Is it Google's algorithm?" Well it isn't Google's algorithm.

Here are the main reasons why I stopped link building.

The first reason is, I built a brand.

So with brand building you want to go out there and be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, all the social channels. As well as SEO, Content marketing, E-mail marketing, Push Notifications, Chatbots, like the ManyChats, or MobileMonkeys, text messaging. By having all these channels it's going to get your brand out there, which then makes it easier for you to gain links in the long run. And when you're building up your brand whether it's a corporate or personal brand, the first few years you won't really see the results you're looking for, but if you keep pushing hard for two, three, four, five years, in the long run it will work out.

The second reason I don't build links is, I have valuable content that people want to link back to because it helps them grow their traffic, right? Now, your content doesn't have to help people grow their traffic, but it has to help them in whatever way.

If you provide a lot of value, and when you're providing value it's not just one or two content pieces, but you build up hundreds and hundreds of articles if not thousands over time, and then you do it in a way where it's Evergreen.

The third reason I stopped is, I built an invaluable free tool in my mind, Ubersuggest.

Ubersuggest gets more than 25000 backlinks from over 3400 referring dominions. That's a lot. In essence it's become a household name in the SEO community because I offer what people charge for, for free. You can either pay $1,200 a year, or $100 a month, or save the money.

What I want you to do is go to CodeCanyon. For $10 or $20 you can get a tool in almost any industry, pop it on your website, it's really easy, and over time you'll notice that the links will kick in.

The fourth reason, I've done studies and research that people want to reference.

Last year alone I launched two industry studies. One of them, I gathered 183 companies who are all leveraging content marketing, and I produced 17 charts to show people like you where content marketing is heading. And the other one, it was about social media, and its ability to generate traffic organically right? Without paying for social ads. I polled 483 companies who were all leveraging Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and I showed in that study, what's happening to social traffic over time. At least from an organic perspective. Those two studies alone have generated me 97000 backlinks, from 119 referring domains.

So now the real question is this, should you stop building links too? Well it depends what stage you are.

Now let me first break down if you should stop building backlinks. You should stop if, you have a lot of followers on social media that you can use to promote your content continually. Also you're already ranking for a decent amount of queuers. Your brand is well known and people look up to you in your space, or your company brand is well known and they look up to your company. You're already getting some press, public speaking opportunities, interviews on podcasts, TV interviews, radio interviews, and even mentions on blogs. Your content tends to get backlinks naturally, and you have tools or quizzes or other resources that people love to keep linking back to.

These big established companies don't need to build links and it's obvious, but in your niche you may be one of those brands as well.

► If you need help growing your business check out my ad agency Neil Patel Digital @

►Subscribe: to learn more secret SEO tips.
►Find me on Facebook:
►On Instagram:

#SEO #NeilPatel #DigitalMarketing