If you have a website and want to boost organic traffic on it, you’re likely working on improving your SEO practices – but have you added link building to the list of methods to use? What is link building, and why does it matter? This is a very broad topic, with a lot to learn, so we’ve covered all the basics to help you improve your SEO game – let’s get started!
Link building is a common practice used by every professional SEO agency. The concept refers to increasing the number of hyperlinks that lead to your website so that the search engines would recognize it as a reliable source of information and rank it higher on SERPs. This is one of the essential aspects of digital advertising, but it’s a continuous process that takes a bit of time and effort to bring noticeable results.
What Is Link Building in SEO – Why Devote Your Time to This Practice?
If you’re serious about SEO practices that you implement into your business and you pay a lot of attention to increasing organic traffic on your website, you need to be familiar with link building and its numerous benefits. What does this concept represent exactly? Link building is a continuous process of increasing the number of backlinks that lead to your website. This is one of the pillars of any quality digital marketing strategy, and every agency that offers SEO marketing services can offer you assistance in this area.
The Benefits of Link Building in SEO – What Do Links Mean for Search Engines?
What does it mean when we say that links are important for search engine optimization? Although it’s just one of many factors that contribute to the amount of traffic your site receives, link building is something that can help with ranking on search engines more than you might think. It works as a sort of reassurance that your content is valuable.
Google literally sees hyperlinks to your website as a vote of confidence from others, and the more links that lead to your site, the more reliable you appear to Google – which, in turn, means that it will rank you higher on SERPs. Still, it’s worth mentioning this isn’t all it takes for you to rank well. It’s part of the optimization game, but you must also work on other technical aspects of optimization, such as excellent content writing, good user experience on your site, on-page optimization practices, and all the other things that a reputable SEO marketing agency can help you with.
Is There a Difference Between Link Building and Internal Linking?
These two terms are often confused with one another – internal linking, although a popular and useful optimization technique, isn’t the same as link building. It’s actually – as the name suggests – just putting internal hyperlinks on your web pages. Internal links are those that lead to other pages on your site. In addition to this, we should also explain one more term you might’ve come across – what is white hat link building? This is another optimization technique where relevant linking is used to lead the reader to other websites where they can find content that’s relevant to the text where the hyperlink was located. White hat hyperlinking boosts the quality of the content, which Google recognizes and then ranks it better.
Characteristics of a Good Backlink
At first glance, building hyperlinks seems like a simple enough tactic for improving your visibility online – but there’s more to this story than meets the eye. Not every backlink is a good one – some might even do more harm than good.
There are many shady techniques being used nowadays, but Google knows how to recognize them. If you unknowingly use any of them, you may be punished by disappearing from search results. That’s why we’ll talk about the characteristics that every useful backlink should have. Be sure to take notes, so you can implement this in your future work!
Authority – The Quality of a Site and Page Where the Link Is Found
In the context of optimization, authority means the overall quality of websites where the backlinks are located. When the site is reliable and considered high-authority, the backlinks from it are worth something. On the other hand, backlinks from unknown sources leading to your pages probably won’t do much for traffic to your website – it won’t hurt you, but it also won’t be beneficial. That’s why you need to build hyperlinks on well-chosen pages – always keep this in mind!
Additionally, if you happen to have backlinks from suspicious sites – there will likely be some damage to your ranking on Google. For example, people who don’t know much about proper optimization may be tempted to buy backlinks from the so-called link farms. Needless to say, that’s a bad idea – Google won’t like that, and as a consequence, you won’t pop up on result pages.
Relevance of the Link in Regards to the Page
If you’re working on a blog post about, let’s say, digital advertising, it would be good if you could get backlinks from sites that are in the similar or same line of work – sites where the content is relevant to the content you have. A relevant backlink is good because it adds value to your content and it makes you seem trustworthy and reliable since others in your line of business have recognized it as worthy. So, the search engine doesn’t just look at the number of backlinks – it also analyzes the sites where those backlinks are located and checks what they are about.
Now, the common question that pops up is this – what if you have an opportunity to build a hyperlink from a site that’s authoritative but isn’t relevant to your content? This is a bit tricky, but it comes down to this – because the site is high-authoritative, the backlink can’t hurt you. But, because it’s not relevant to your query, it also won’t be very beneficial.
Link’s Position on the Web Page
The value of a backlink can vary drastically depending on where it is positioned on a web page. The most valuable backlinks are located within the main body of the page – the higher it is in the text, the better. When you think about this, it’s very logical. The point of a backlink is to be clicked on and referred to a different page. The chances that someone will click are a lot better if the link is somewhere around the beginning of the text – you have to keep in mind that most people don’t read blog posts till the very end.
Words Used in an Anchor Text
An anchor is a clickable text of the hyperlink that shows up in blogs and pages. In order for a hyperlink to be useful, both the reader and the search engine need to figure out what the linked page is about. That is achieved by carefully choosing the words that will be used in the anchor – the point is to pick words that describe the linked page as closely as possible so that Google can understand. If you use generic anchors like “click here” – your hyperlink loses value.
How to Build Links – Top Methods to Study and Incorporate Into Your Marketing Strategies
Now that you know what a useful backlink should look like, the question is – how to get backlinks that lead to your outstanding content that the world should see? There are a few great strategies that digital advertising experts usually use. Let’s talk a bit about each of them.
Earning Backlinks Thanks to Great Content
We’re starting strong – with the probably most complex strategy. This is due to the fact that it takes a lot of time to create valuable content that will rank well. When you manage to achieve that, people will see what you offer – the idea behind earning backlinks is that someone will want to use your content as a resource to provide more information to their blog. For that to happen, your blogs need to offer something that others don’t – whether it’s a hot new take on some topic, useful statistics, or visual assets such as infographics.
Asking Relevant Sites for Backlinks
It sounds like a strange strategy, but it’s quite common. Not everybody will know about your site – so, how can they link back to it, unless you help them discover its worth? You can ask relevant sites for backlinks to your blog posts, a guide, or case studies, for example. You can also offer to link back to theirs. This is not only a great way to build backlinks but can also lead to quality relationships with others in your niche.
Broken Link Building
If the previous method is out of your comfort zone, you will like this one better. Instead of literally reaching out just to ask for a backlink, you can reach out to someone to actually help them – and yourself as a consequence. What you need to do is find a page that has one or more broken links – finding broken hyperlinks can easily be done with various online tools, and it shouldn’t take you much time to find one that works well for you.
Once you’ve found a page with several broken hyperlinks, you can simply email those in charge of the website. Let them know you’ve noticed an issue with hyperlinks, and offer your content as a replacement. Of course, for this to work, you need to aim for relevant sites with blog topics similar to yours.
Studying the Backlinks From Well-Ranked Competitors to Get Similar Links and Rank Better
You know what they say – works smarter, not harder. Researching the backlinks of our competition can ensure you understand how they ranked high on SERPs. When you study which pages they’ve linked, you can apply similar tactics and find backlinks that are similar to theirs. This will help you outperform them and show Google that your content deserves to be ranked high.
Looking for a Marketing Agency That Can Build Backlinks for You? Made Online Is the Right Choice
Implementing all those excellent SEO strategies is a lot of work – we know that from experience. That’s why you shouldn’t try to do it all on your own. Let the burden fall on our shoulders – our team of skilled marketers at Made Online can assist you. We can guide you through the waters of online advertising with ease – contact us to learn more about the services we offer.