What is link building?
Link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites to your own. Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website, and they will crawl the links between entire websites. If you want to learn more about how search works, Google has created a video to explain this process:
The landscape of SEO and link building is always changing, and today, the importance of building high-quality links has never been higher. But let’s start from the beginning…
What are backlinks?
A backlink is when other websites link to your website through a hyperlink. Backlinks can be a ranking signal for Google to measure your website. Some other terms used are inbound links and incoming links.
Backlinks used to be the backbone of the internet and were the only way for you to find new websites and gain traffic. However, marketers discover how to manipulate search results for chosen keywords. In response to this, Google has changed its algorithm and started to penalise the ranking of the websites that have attempted such overuse of these techniques in their link building.
Backlinks are still important, however, there’s a lot more to it such as link building.
How can link building help your business visibility online?
Link building can provide you with improved ranking and to increase discoverability.
Reasons why you should think of your backlink strategy
Improved Rankings
Websites with a high number of backlinks tend to have a higher amount of traffic. Especially if there are high-quality links from websites with high domain authority (DA). They have the potential to help your website authority and drive more traffic to your website. Backlinks can be thought of as a “vote of confidence” from Google.
Increased Discoverability
Just like advertising, a backlink has the potential to increase your discoverability. If a website links to you in their blog, that can lead traffic back to your website. Let us say someone is reading a blog, and the blog links back to your website that can lead that user to your website.
Understanding the types of backlinks
Follow and No Follow links
Follow and No Follow linksA link can be one of two things. A follow link (Normal link) or a no-follow link. The main difference between these links is the way it is understood by search engines. A follow link will add to your page ranking, whereas the no-follow will tell the search engines not to count the link. The more follow links a page gets from quality websites, the higher score it will attain from Google.
No-follow links are used when you have a sponsored link, user-generated content such as comments, and other websites.
Editorial links
These links are natural links that come from other websites that cite or refer to your website. Editorial links come from popular pages such as a popular blog, product pages, pricing pages and many more. Editorial links involve creating content where other websites will want to link to it.
Outreach Links
This type of link is when you are asking other websites for links. Outreach links can be free, sponsored links, or guest posting on another website.
Self-Created Links
The most common form of this type of link building is local business citations. Self-created links tend to have less value.
How to check for backlinks
Checking the backlinks you already have can give you an idea of your link building strategy. You can use websites like Ubersuggest, Small SEO tools and Ahrefs backlink checker. These websites are completely free and offer you simple metrics to understand.
Link Building Strategy
Link building is based on the value of your content. Creating quality content promotes natural link building.
Here are some link building examples:
- Guest posting – Guest Blogging is becoming more popular for companies and marketers.
- Create Infographics – This is not only a great way to stand out on your blogs as it can earn you quality links.
- Social Media – If you are not already active on social media, you may be missing out on extra exposure and traffic.
- Broken link strategy – The broken link strategy involves finding broken blog links and get the blogger to replace the link with your link.
- Check competitor backlinks – The best way to get ahead of the competition is to beat them at their own game. It is crucial to see what is working and find ways to make it work for you.
Conclusion
In conclusion, link building is still important and it should be part of your website SEO strategy. It may not be the most thought of SEO practice, but it can certainly help bring you more traffic and build authority.
