Using home pages for link building: does it still work?

Using link building is an important technique in building better online visibility in the search engines. But does using home pages still fit into this? In this article, I talk more about how I still use homepages for link building .

What is link building anyway?

I also tell more about this in my article on getting backlinks and my page on outsourcing link building, but in brief. Link building is about getting quality link entries from other Web sites to your Web site.

Google uses this in its algorithm to determine a website’s authority. When you have more authority within a particular industry, the content is more likely to come up in Google.

What are home pages?

For a long time, the home page was the foundation of the Internet. Compare it to the phone book or newspaper ad page. It used to be the place for businesses to advertise and the place for consumers to look for businesses that fit their demand. In short, back then they were “real” websites with lots of visitors. Now this has decreased considerably and the websites are mostly used for link building.

Using home pages for link building (video)

No time for a long article? No problem. Watch the video below for a summary of this article.

The importance of quality backlinks

In the link building project I carry out anno 2024, I focus largely on getting quality backlinks. Basically, home pages no longer belong there. Think of websites or pages that receive a lot of links, are not created just for link building and also receive a lot of (and especially relevant) organic traffic.

Link building with home pages in 2024

But on the other hand, there are still home pages that actually have a lot of history and a high degree of intrinsic value. Think Startpagina(.)nl or Startkabel(.)nl clones. These could be labeled qualitative in some cases.

There are a number of things I look at when reviewing home page clones. What matters most to me are the following:

• How many domains does the clone obtain and what kind of links are these?
• How much traffic does the clone receive and what kind of traffic is this?
• How many links are on the clone? What kind of links are these?
• Is the clone relevant to the keyword I want to come up for?

You won’t find the world’s strongest links here, but it can be interesting to incorporate a number of home pages into a link-buliding journey. My reason is mostly variety. This ensures that a backlink profile is more complete and varied than if you only publish guest articles with 2 links per article.

Summary

I think it’s still possible, using home pages for link building in 2024. I do think you have to be careful about which clones/websites you use for this and also especially the amount of links you use in this. I certainly would not base my link building strategy on using home pages. The core should be quality, not quantity.

Also note, Google will get better and better at recognizing these types of links. This is not a future-proof strategy.