Link Building
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of acquiring backlinks (or inbound links) from other websites to different pages on your site. Links are an important ranking factor because search engines like Google use them to determine the relevance and authority of a website. That’s why link building is a crucial part of SEO.
Why is link building important?
Backlinks are one of the most crucial ranking factors for search engines. In fact, Google’s Andrey Lipattsev confirmed in 2016 that links are one of the top three ranking factors for Google.
Additionally, there are several mentions of links in Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) framework in the Page Quality Rater Guidelines. According to these guidelines, the quality and context of links on a web page are factors that determine the overall Page Quality Rating.
Search engines view backlinks as votes of confidence from other websites. Therefore, the more votes your pages receive, the higher their chances are of ranking for relevant keywords. Our study, which analyzed over one billion pages, even established a direct correlation between referring domains and rankings.
Needless to say, the higher your website ranks, the more organic traffic it receives. Therefore, if you expect to generate organic search traffic from Google, link building is essential.
What makes a good link?
Link building is not just about quantity; it’s about building a solid backlink profile with high-quality links. While there is no clear framework from Google to measure the value of a link, the SEO community believes that the following characteristics make a good backlink:
1. Dofollow
A dofollow link is a link without any attributions such as “rel=nofollow,” “sponsored,” or “UGC.” These attributions help Googlebot determine how to treat each link while crawling the site. For ranking purposes, Google does not count links with nofollow, sponsored, or UGC attributes. Only dofollow links pass PageRank, also known as link juice, to the destination page. Therefore, dofollow links are the most desired type of backlinks to help your web pages rank high in search results.
2. Relevance
Acquiring backlinks from relevant pages and niches is crucial. If the linking site and its content are completely irrelevant to your web page, such a link won’t provide much value. For example, if you’re running a golf blog, a link from a “sports blogger” is more valuable than one from an affiliate blog about “home gardening tools.”
3. Anchor text
The anchor text serves two purposes. First, it provides context to the reader about the linked page’s topic. Second, it helps Google understand the context of the linked page.
It’s safe to say that anchor text is one of the confirmed ranking factors for Google.
It’s important that anchor texts are relevant, descriptive, diversified, and not stuffed with keywords. If all the anchor texts of inbound links to a page are the same money keyword, it raises a spam signal to Google. However, you have limited control over the anchor texts of inbound links, except for guest blogging where you write the content for the publisher.
4. Authority
Links from high-authority websites hold more value than those from low-quality sites. Therefore, it is important to acquire backlinks from authoritative websites to build a robust backlink profile. An authoritative site can be defined as a website that is frequently mentioned and linked to on other websites, receives decent organic search traffic, has quality design and user experience (UX), and more. In addition to the authority of the website, the authoritativeness of the linking page also matters.
By considering these characteristics, you can focus on building a high-quality backlink profile that can positively impact your website’s visibility and search engine rankings.
Link building methods
Link building is not easy. It requires a significant investment of time, effort, and sometimes money. While there are many link building methods available, their results may vary depending on the niche.
Just like SEO tactics, link building practices can be classified into two categories: black hat and white hat. Black hat link building techniques violate search engines’ guidelines and involve manipulative practices such as buying links, using Private Blog Networks (PBNs), and other link schemes.
On the other hand, white hat link building tactics comply with search engine guidelines. We strongly recommend using only white hat methods if you want to avoid potential penalties from Google.
Create high-quality content
Develop informative and engaging content that naturally attracts backlinks from other websites. When you provide valuable information, other webmasters and bloggers are more likely to link to your content as a reference. And, great content is easier to promote and build links to.
Guest blogging
Contribute high-quality articles to reputable websites in your industry. Including a relevant link back to your website in the author bio or content bas been the most popular link building methods for years.
Broken link building
Find broken links on other websites and reach out to the website owners, suggesting your content as a replacement. With this method, you help website owners fix broken links while gaining backlinks to your site.
Social media promotion
Share your content on social media platforms to increase its visibility. When your content gets attention and shares, it has more chances of attracting backlinks from other websites.
Resource page link building
Resource page link building involves acquiring backlinks from resource pages on other websites. Resource pages are dedicated pages that curate and list helpful resources, tools, articles, or websites related to a particular topic or industry.