Over the past several years you may have heard Internet Marketing summarized in many different ways. From the first arguments you probably have heard “Content is King!” while other people argued that “Backlinks are King!” As Google updates have changed the online landscape, a variety of things have changed, even leading to sayings like “Quality is King!” and most recently “Context is King!” When you look at all these sayings there are obviously too many kings for one kingdom, so what should you listen to?

Part of this confusion comes from the many changes that have taken place in the world of search engine optimization over the past few years. As SEO keeps changing, the practices that work are going to keep changing as well. When people say, “Context is King!” they are referring to one of the single most important factors in backlinks that work in helping to rank in Google now.

What is “context”?

When someone is talking about context when it comes to SEO, it’s important to know that backlinks used to be perhaps the single most important factor in getting ranked in Google and other search engines. They still remain important, but now it’s extremely important to Google where those backlinks come from.

This is where context comes in. You want backlinks that come from websites on related topics. Plumbing, home improvement, and handyman blogs can all link with one another and make sense. But why would a dentist, lawyer, or video game blog link to any of these pages? The answer is they wouldn’t. So now Google watches where backlinks come from. Ones with a strong related context are powerful. Ones that aren’t related may count for very little, nothing at all, or even hurt you in large numbers.

Why the change?

Google doesn’t like the idea of having their results manipulated. A lot of links from unrelated pages seem to suggest that something fishy is going on while a link from a related topic makes sense. This is Google’s way of rewarding links they see as likely to be genuine while slapping away any that are being used in a manipulative way. This is the reason why, when it comes to backlinking for SEO, context is now king.