{"id":2563,"date":"2012-04-02T01:31:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-01T23:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aleydasolis.com\/?p=2563"},"modified":"2012-04-02T08:34:13","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T06:34:13","slug":"reference-relationship-link-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aleydasolis.com\/en\/search-engine-optimization\/reference-relationship-link-building\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop doing -and calling it- Link Building: It’s Reference Building now!"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we are all seeing\u00a0Google is quickly changing<\/a>\u00a0the way of\u00a0evaluating links<\/a>, taking social<\/a> related signals and authority<\/a> factors<\/a> more and more into consideration -with special focus in its<\/a> own social network<\/a>– and less to those links that could be the result of manipulative tactics, such as link building schemes, by penalizing link networks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some days ago Rand shared an interesting post written by Ed Fryand<\/a>, “Building Awesome Relationships For Links, Likes, and Love<\/a>”\u00a0and commented in Twitter that link building is “relationship building”:<\/p>\n

@randfish<\/a> is “reference building”! Like it because it encompasses links, citations, likes, +1s, tweets… “authority” references in general<\/p>\n

\u2014 Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) marzo 22, 2012<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As you can see my response to his tweet was that for me link building is “reference building<\/strong>” and here is why:<\/p>\n

What are References?<\/h2>\n

According to the Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Reference<\/strong>\u00a0is a relation between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object.\u00a0The first object in this relation is said to\u00a0refer to<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0the second object. The second object \u2013 the one to which the first object refers \u2013 is called the\u00a0referent<\/strong>\u00a0of the first object.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In summary, a\u00a0“reference”<\/strong>\u00a0happens when an object connects or refers another. In SEO a reference\u00a0can encompass\u00a0links, mentions or votes<\/strong>,\u00a0those signals that a user creates to “refer” a site (or a related brand) and that can increase a site’s authority in the eyes of search engines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In a time when links were the only type of signal that search engines took into consideration to identify trust and authority it made sense to talk about “link building”.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless this time has ended already and we work now in an ecosystem where users can refer a site or a brand with mentions<\/strong> (in Twitter or Google Plus, for example) or votes<\/strong> (with a +1 in Google or Like in Facebook) not just links, and these are also taken into consideration more and more by search engines.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it’s actually far easier to explain to “non-SEO” people how Off-Page SEO works when you talk about “reference building” instead of “link building”, since a “reference” is a well known concept that is more easily related to votes or endorsements than “links”.<\/p>\n

But why not directly “Relationship Building”?<\/h2>\n

A relationship is “the\u00a0state<\/strong>\u00a0of\u00a0being\u00a0connected\u00a0or\u00a0related<\/a>” and it is a concept used to call an ongoing, recurrent\u00a0association<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In this sense creating “relationships<\/strong>” should be seen as a scalable strategy to get long-term, consistent “references”<\/strong> (which is actually something really important since scalability and consistency over time has been one of the most challenging aspects<\/strong> of link building… and reference building now).<\/p>\n

\"Reference<\/p>\n

At the same time,<\/p>\n