Google's John Mueller: I'd Avoid Link Building In General

In a Google+ live hangout with Google's John Mueller on last Friday morning, John answered the question, "is link building in anyway way good?"

Yes, a point blank question on should you do link building or not.

The question was asked at the 55:40 mark and is embedded directly below at the start time.

John said, "in general, I'd try to avoid that," that being any link building. John added that focusing on link building will probably going to lead to more problems for your site versus actually help your site.

Here is the transcript to the question, "is link building in any way good?"

That is a good question.

In general, I’d try to avoid that.

So that you are really sure that your content kind of stands on its own and make it possible for other people of course to link to your content. Make it easy, maybe, put a little widget on your page, if you like this, this is how you can link to it. Make sure that the URLs on your web site are easy to copy and paste. All of those things make it a little bit easier.

We do use links as part of our algorithm but we use lots and lots of other factors as well. So only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your web site that actually helps.

Here is the video:

Will you stop with the link building after hearing this?

Forum discussion at Google+.