What is Link Building?
7th September 2022
Link building is an essential part of SEO. It provides more opportunities for your content to rank on Google as well as making it easier for audiences to find you. In most cases, a higher number of links works better than lower numbers, but beware of where you place your content, as low-quality links can damage your rank!
So, how do you go about effective link building? Read on…
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of acquiring links to your website content from other websites – you may have heard these links, also known as backlinks. Links from high-quality websites can improve your authority score and your rank on search engines.
Why is Link Building Important?
Backlinks act as confirmation from other websites that you have high-quality content that is worth sharing. More links from trustworthy sites help Google to see your website as authoritative, which can improve your ranking on search results.
Link Quality
Not all backlinks are created equally. It is worth putting in additional effort to make sure you have higher quality links, as these will positively impact your website. It is easy to get many poor-quality links, but they very often do not provide any benefit, and in some cases can negatively impact your ranking.
You can check the authority score of websites, but your priority should be creating links that are highly relevant to your subject matter. This also makes the links more likely to be clicked by new users.
Buying Links
Link building is not an easy process. It takes time and effort to build up a group of quality links, which has led to unscrupulous webmasters providing opportunities to ‘cheat the system’. It is possible to buy links in bulk, however, you should be very wary of this technique. These types of links are often very poor quality, the websites have no relevant information and are commonly used only as lists of links, making them very unlikely to appeal to anyone who would genuinely want to read your content.
Due to this, link building doesn’t always have a good reputation. Google has also started adding penalties to websites that use these techniques, which can even lead to your website being removed from search results altogether.
Types of Links
When putting together a link-building strategy, it is important to know that there are different types of links to aim for.
Follow and No Follow
No Follow links are used if you want to link to another website without Google crawling that website. You need to adjust the link to include the nofollow code. If someone provides a No follow link to your website from theirs, this does not provide authority to your website directly; however, it can still help to improve recognition and referral traffic.
Follow links are regular links that allow the website to pass on authority and help Google understand the content.
User Links
User-generated links are usually created to promote your own work on another website. Google does not consider these links to be as high quality and they will rarely provide any increase in authority. These links include:
- Embedded widgets
- User profile pages
- Forum post signatures
- Unmoderated blog comments
- Advertisements
Natural Links
Content writers usually add natural links to provide additional value to readers. They are not sponsored or asked for, and they are usually included in blog posts, videos, and product listings. Natural links are one of the best types of links, as they effectively share your content with relevant and interested users.
How to Successfully Build Links
Now that you know what link building is, how do you build successful links?
Request Links
If you find a website that could help boost your authority score, you could contact the website owner directly to request a link. Keep in mind that links should be relevant to your content, and it is worth considering the performance of the website before contacting them.
Earn Links
You can earn links by creating compelling and high-quality content that people will naturally want to link to. Get help with promotion from friends, family, or your peer group.
Reviews and Mentions
Get your product or service in front of influential people in your industry to obtain reviews and mentions. Their honest reviews and feedback can spread the word much quicker than you could dream of alone.
Internal Link Building
One way to build links that you have complete control over is by building them internally. For example, if a product page is linked to by many other pages on your website, this tells Google that the product page is important. To do this successfully, there are a few things worth considering:
Anchor Text
Search engines will take your anchor text into account, so use phrases that you want to rank for. This should also be a priority for external links. Try to use highly relevant phrases for maximum benefit.
Quality of the Linking Page
Ensure that links to your content are provided by high-quality pages. This will also provide more benefit than poor-quality links.
Linked Page
Try to link to specific relevant pages rather than the homepage, so that your most valuable pages see the benefit (and the traffic). It’s worth linking to the most relevant page for the reader’s benefit.
Link building is not a quick fix – there is a lot of work involved – but doing it correctly will have a positive impact. It should be an ongoing task that works alongside your other activities in order to meet your marketing goals. For further help and advice on achieving these goals, contact SilverDisc.
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