Over the years Google has valued links in their ranking algorithm by boosting sites with more links to a higher position in the organic or unpaid search results. By valuing links Google created a cottage industry that SEO’s jumped on and really milked with clients. Some SEOs charged exorbitant amounts to clients with very little accountability in regards to the price a client was paying for the number and quality of links they received.This past year Google has addressed this cottage industry by “smacking it down” stating that links from spammy resources, article directories, and forum postings would not be a good fit and encouraged site owners to start moving away from link building and into content creation and site optimization that focuses on improving the users’ experience.
However, Google has admitted that even though they themselves have a love hate relationship with links, that the results in their own search engine are better and have more relevancy to readers when Google does include links in their placement algorithm.
I feel that quality links that point to a website and shares of links do allow Google to evaluate the popularity and relevancy for readers so there will always be a place for links in the Google algorithm but link numbers are getting less important than a review of the whole picture which include links, social shares, co-citation, and blog mentions.
To further explore this important topic I would recommend that you watch this video from the MOZ blog. It provides two differing points of view on are links valuable to Google or not. The take away from this blog post is that yes links are still valuable but less valuable than they have been previously.