In the world of search engine optimization, link building is a major player to build trust, boost organic traffic, and improve search engine rankings. It is the process of acquiring links from external websites that link to your website. You can compare it to when another website refers to you as a source of quality information.
Although 41% of SEO experts believe that link building is the most difficult part of search engine optimization, it is a vital strategy you need for SEO. When coupled with other SEO strategies, it produces highly-stellar results.
But how do you build links for your website? This article will guide you through understanding what link building entails, why it is important for SEO, what makes a good backlink, and common mistakes to avoid when building links for SEO. Dive in!
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to pages on your site. In SEO, these links are called backlinks. The hyperlink, or just link helps users to navigate between pages on your website. Search engines also use these links to crawl the website. They crawl the links that connect the individual pages on your site and also crawl the other links within your entire website.
Link building is one of the most powerful strategies to increase your ranking status in search engines. Getting links you didn’t ask for requires great effort. It’s something you should be working for in the long run. You can achieve this by ensuring your website is link-worthy, whether it is by offering a great product or service or publishing valuable content that other websites can use as a reference.
Importance of Link Building for SEO
Many data-backed studies show how backlinks strongly influence ranking. It’s been a dominant ranking factor since the 1990s. In fact, Larry Page, one of Google’s founders created PageRank to measure the quality of a page based on the number of backlinks it receives.
Although this metric has been used in the past as a part of the overall ranking system, it remains relevant in Google’s algorithm today. By utilizing this metric, Google was able to display more relevant search results than its competitors such as Yahoo.
It is essential to note the difference between the two terms – backlinks and referring domains. A referring domain is a unique domain that has at least one link to your site. The number of unique referring domains is also a relevant factor as it is common for one domain to link to the same website more than once.
If search engines were to solely use the number of backlinks, sites with tons of links from only one referring domain will dominate the web. A study from Backlinko also revealed that there is a correlation between the number of referring domains and rankings.
Want to know the best part?
Link building drives more organic traffic to your website. Also, if your website gets lots of high-quality backlinks, it implies that it is a good page. As a result, search engines will consider it a valuable page and will rank it higher on the result page.
Search engines can also help to discover new web pages, extract the content of those pages, and add it to their indexes. Then, it can decide if the page is of high quality and should be ranked well.
Link-building strategies for SEO
As an SEO expert, there are various strategies you can use to build links for SEO.
Ask for Links
Asking for a link happens when you contact a website and ask them to link to yours. You can link them to blog posts, ebooks, case studies, in-depth guides, visual assets, and so on.
Add Links
Adding links means visiting another website and manually adding your link there. For instance, you can manually add links to social media profiles, blog comments, forums, business directories, user profile pages, communities, Q&A sites, and so on.
However, you should understand that these links are from low-quality sources. And Google doesn’t give much attention to them. This is because you are endorsing yourself. Unlike other links that are offered (links you don’t ask for), they don’t have much effect. Google doesn’t honestly consider it as a fact when ranking websites.
Earn links
When you earn links, it implies that other websites link to yours without asking them to. It is freely given. The best way to earn links is by publishing valuable content people need.
It happens naturally when someone wants to cite you as a reference or a helpful resource. The types of content you can link to our visual assets (charts, infographics), online tools and calculators, in-depth guides, tutorials, case studies, and so on.
What makes a good Backlink
Not all links are created equal. Hence, it is essential to understand what makes a good or bad link. When you know that, you can focus on building links that can increase your ranking on Google.
You may be wondering:
How do I identify good links? Here are some factors to consider.
Authority
Authority refers to the overall quality of a webpage or a website. Whether the link is internal or external, they pass authority from one page to another. The best way to identify a link with high domain authority is through its score. The higher the score, the more value the backlink will pass to your website.
Websites with higher domain authority (DA) correlate with higher rankings. When your site gets links from higher DA websites, your site ranks higher than when you receive links from low DA websites.
For instance, a backlink from Forbes.com (DA 95) will increase your rankings more than a backlink from Loganix.com (DA 45).
Relevance
When building links, you must also consider the site’s relevance. Links from relevant websites are more valuable as they help Google better understand your website. Google’s search works page also reveals the links from “other prominent websites” must “refer to the content.”
In other words, ensure to get links from websites that are relevant to yours. You shouldn’t just get any type of link.
Let’s say you run a website that specializes in food. And you receive a link from an authoritative site about fitness blogs. That’s great! But it may not create an impact on your rankings. It would be better if you receive a link from an authoritative site about food.
Natural
Backlinks should be as natural as possible. Site owners should link to your sites because it provides value to their audience and not because you paid them to do so. You should also not try to get these links in a manipulative way.
This is different from unnatural backlinks where you get links from link farms or include spam comment links in your content. It is best advised to avoid including these types of links, or else you receive a Google penalty. Ensure to acquire natural links with natural placement from reputable websites.
Referral traffic
If the sole purpose of acquiring backlinks is to rank higher on the SERP, you are missing the point. It makes more sense to acquire backlinks from websites that can also have referral traffic made up of the target audience.
In fact, data show that links from sites that pass traffic may also increase rankings. An Ahref study found a correlation between backlinks from sites with organic traffic and higher rankings.
Source: Ahref
Anchor text
Anchor text is the actual text used as the hyperlink. For instance, if I use this article to link to a page using “coffee machines” as the anchor text, that will tell my audience and Google that the linked page has something to do with coffee machines. Anchor text is of different types.
In Google’s original algorithm, anchor text was considered a strong ranking factor. The relevant anchor text (links that have the same keywords in the anchor text) often carries more weight than the generic anchor text (e.g. click here, read more).
But as time went by, SEO experts caught on to the algorithmic game and started misusing anchor text as spam without considering if it was suitable for the user experience. Google also caught up with this and launched the Penguin update to combat spammy anchor text.
But, does anchor text remain relevant when ranking websites today?
The answer is yes.
Google’s Starter Guide reveals that “the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you are linking to is about. With appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what the linked pages contain.” In short, SEO experts must provide anchor text that suggests a basic idea of what the linked page is about.
In addition, Google’s John Muller reveals that anchor text provides a bit of contextual understanding of the link and may therefore be a ranking factor.
Source: Twitter
So, what is the bottom line?
Google still uses anchor text to better understand what the linked page is about. Rather than using generic anchor text that isn’t helpful, relevant and descriptive anchor text can enable your readers and search engines to understand the page, thus improving ranking.
DoFollow vs NoFollow
An attribute of a good backlink is that it must be crawled by search engine spiders. This gives to the two terms — do follow and nofollow
You may be wondering:
What exactly do a dofollow and nofollow mean?
A dofollow link is a link that web spiders can crawl and pass link authority through.
Want to know the best part? Internal or external links often come with a “dofollow.” You don’t need to state anything in the HTML code.
Meanwhile, a nofollow link tells the web spiders not to crawl the page or pass link authority through it. It has a piece of HTML inserted into the link attribute.
For instance, this is what a dofollow link looks like:
<a href=”http://www.website.com/”>link text here </a>
And this is what a nofollow link looks like:
<a href=”http://www.website.com/” rel=”nofollow”>link text here </a>
If you want to improve your ranking, you can use the dofollow link. They are regular links without attributes. On the other hand, nofollow links don’t pass authority. But they can provide referral traffic which improves brand recognition.
Common Link Building Mistakes for SEO
The link building process can be an arduous task, even for SEO experts. As a result, you could end up making mistakes that can cause Google to penalize your website and hurt your overall SEO strategy.
But here is the kicker:
We have identified common link building mistakes so you can scale through successfully and improve the ranking status of your website.
Low-quality content
Google often prefers websites that build backlinks organically. Organic link building refers to the acquisition of links to a website through natural means, as against buying or exchanging links.
Although this can be a slow process for new websites, purchasing or exchanging links is still crucial to building a strong website. But you shouldn’t ignore how to obtain organic backlinks.
So, how do you attract backlinks organically?
The best way to build backlinks organically is by producing high-quality content rather than low-quality content. When you produce high-quality content, you create valuable content that others can’t help but share. Some great examples of share-worthy content are eye-catching infographics, super-engaging Tik Tok videos, informative blog posts, and so on.
Building links from low-authority websites
Imagine your website as a garden, and the links are the flowers that bloom in it. Just as beautiful flowers can make the garden look beautiful, having backlinks from high-quality and authoritative websites is a good sign that your content is valuable to not only your audience but also the search engine. As a result, the search engine can make your website rank higher.
However, imagine having weeds or parasites in your garden. It will inhibit crop productivity and make your garden unattractive. That is what happens when you add lots of low-quality or irrelevant links to your website. These bad backlinks can harm your website’s reputation and make it a bit harder to rank higher on the search engine.
Hence, it is essential to consider the quality of the backlinks. Rather than going for low-authority websites, you should go for websites with higher domain authority. To check for domain authority, you can use tools such as Moz, SEMRush, Ahrefs, and more.
Linking from non-relevant sites
Building links from websites that are not relevant to your niche or industry is like shooting yourself in the foot. This will not only affect your website’s credibility but also the search engine ranking. Google’s recent algorithm update, the Helpful content update, emphasizes delivering relevant and useful content to users, or else they will penalize your website.
They have also become more sophisticated in identifying websites that are specific to certain industries. So, if you link to websites that don’t provide relevant and useful information to your readers, you will witness a drop in the search engine ranking.
Think of it this way, if an automobile company’s website has backlinks from generic food sites, travel sites, or entertainment sites, it becomes difficult for Google to identify the site’s niche. As a result, Google may not rank the website at all due to irrelevant links.
Backlinks from sites with toxic link profiles
Other websites to avoid when building links are sites with spammy or irrelevant content. Sites with spammy backlinks are major red flags.
It shows that the website is not investing in quality link building practices and is probably using black-hat tactics to boost its rankings. If you receive backlinks from these sites, you could end up ruining your site’s credibility and getting penalized by the search engine.
Avoid sites that have dofollow links
Google considers a dofollow link from a website as a sign that it should pass the authority link to another website. But if a website is only providing or receiving dofollow links, it can become harmful to your site’s rankings in the search engine.
A website should consist of the dofollow, nofollow, and UGC links. This diverse link profile shows that such a website is building links organically and is viewed as a positive sign by the search engine. However, if the website is receiving too many dofollow links, it can raise a red flag for the search engine and affect your rankings.
This same principle applies when you build backlinks on your website. Ensure you have different types of backlinks in an ideal ratio to be viewed positively by the search engine.
Conclusion
What’s the bottom line?
Link building is a relevant factor that impacts your overall SEO strategy. Although it is essential to build links, you should consider some factors when doing it.
You must understand that you can’t include links from just any site. Instead, you must consider the domain authority and other factors to have a positive impact on rankings in the search engine.
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