If you’re wondering if link building still matters, the answer is “Yes!” It is important for your site to rank and build authority in your niche.
This guide will show you some basic tips that you can apply this year:
What is link building?
Link building is an SEO strategy of building hyperlinks to a site to improve its visibility. Public relations, broken link building, content marketing, and email outreach are some link building tactics.
Hyperlinks are used by users to navigate a site. Search engines crawl through the links on a site and the entire site and through the internet.
Building high-quality links involve creativity, social skills, communication, sales, and more. Even SEO experts find it tricky to master link building. If you can do it persistently, you can get ahead of your competition.
Why is it important?
Since search engines like Google changed its algorithm, links have become a Page Ranking factor to determine how relevant and trusted a site is.
The more valuable and relevant sites link to you, the higher your PageRank. Links are still an important factor to determine the quality of a page.
Since the Google Penguin update, the quality of links has been used on how a site page ranks. It is not only the quantity of the links.
Finding Quality Links
You need to learn how you can build quality links. It’s a sure way to rank well on the searches.
Authority of the Page
Is the page linking to you an authority? Authority of a page is more important than any other factor in determining your PageRank.
The authority of the page linking to you passes its authority to your site.
The position of the link on the page.
The position of the links is also an important factor to consider. It should be easily seen and accessible.
A link placed at the footer or sidebar is not noticeable. However, a link in the middle of the page is more accessible. People can click it right away.
Authority of the site.
The authority of the site linking to you is an important factor in your PageRank. A trusted site provides more value than an irrelevant site. Again, the site passes its authority to your site.
The relevance of a site.
Links coming from authority sites are important. However, you must also ensure that the site that links to you is related to your niche.
Link anchor text.
The clickable part of the link is the anchor text. It is very important for Google because it is used as a ranking signal.
For instance, you received a link with the anchor text, “baked cookies,” it gives the indication that the page that links to you is about “baked cookies.” These days, building exact anchor text is now spammy.
Editorial Links?
If a site links to you because they believe that your site is valuable, then it is an editorial link. If you placed a link on a random site, it is not an editorial link. Google gives emphasis on editorial links.
Guest Posts
Guest Posts have become spammy these days. Google considers a guest post spammy when it is irrelevant to your site, the site is working only to publish guest posts, it is a paid guest post, or it has an exact match anchor text.
Link Co-Occurrences
The words or phrases found around your links are called co-occurrences or “baby anchor text.” It tells what your page is all about.
Ways to Get Valuable Links
Not all content can generate your links. Here are examples of content that can give you backlinks:
- List Posts
This content includes techniques, tips, reasons, ways, or anything that lists information. It is a sure way to generate links to your site because it is packed with valuable, bite-sized information.
- Case study/ Data
Content that contains original data from research, case study or surveys can generate backlinks. Original data is useful to many sites. Sites are more likely to provide your backlinks for this reason.
- Visual Content
Visual content includes images, infographics, diagrams, charts, and other visual content. Sites are attracted to link to your content if they contain these visuals. It is also easy to share it, especially on social media.
- Ultimate Guides
A content that covers a detailed description of a certain topic. It is easily linkable because it contains massive amounts of information.
Using email outreach is one way to build white hat links. It is more of a relationship-building because of the quality of relationships you build with the influencers around your area, the more likely you are to secure backlinks.
How Links Matter to Search Engines
Search engines use links in two ways:
- To find new web pages.
- To help rank pages in search results.
Search engines crawl pages on the web to find out if they extract the content for indexing. It weighs if the pages are quality or not to be ranked for relevant keywords.
Search engines check not only the quality of the pages, but the number of links from outside sources, and the quality of these external sites.
If more quality sites link to your site, the higher your rank will be on search results. It makes links as an effective ranking factor for a page because if it is not of quality, it will not get links from other sites.
SEOs apply personalized strategies to convince other sites to link to your site. Here, link building is used to boost traffic to your site through search.
Without links, sites can’t rank well on search engines. Page Rank is part of Google’s algorithm that gives links value and assesses the ranks of pages.
Nofollow Links
The Nofollow attribute gives Google a signal not to consider the link for PageRanking of the target URL. It tells Google not to trust the link because it doesn’t help the target URL to rank.
Nofollow links are more visible on forum posts, blog comments, guest book comments, Yahoo! Answers, editable Wiki pages, and guest post signatures.
Link Building Strategies
There are several ways on how you can encourage relevant sites to link to your site:
Creating and promoting content.
The basic way to build links is by creating high-quality content. Write relevant content for your audience.
When this happens, you’ll get other sites to link to you. Promoting your content is never difficult because they find your site useful. You become a trusted site.
Links.
Ask relevant sites to link to you. The more relevant those sites to you, the highly valuable the links are. It has more value than irrelevant sites.
Mentions and Reviews.
One easy way to build links is to invite influencers in your niche to create reviews of your products or services. Choose relevant influencers who can provide quality content for your site. It can help you gain the confidence of potential customers and search engines.
Build Links Internally
You can also build links on your own. This is a tactic that you have control over with:
The quality of the linking page.
Google takes into account the quality of the page that is providing you backlinks. Search engines put trust in high-quality sites rather than irrelevant ones.
Anchor text.
Search engines give high regard to the actual text a linking page uses.
Benefits of Link Building for your Business:
Keep in mind that links are a ranking factor for search engines. If many relevant sites point to your site, your site will rank well on SERPs.
It sends referral traffic.
When quality and relevant site links to you, your site also receives higher traffic. That means that this is not just traffic, but high-quality traffic that can contribute to your sales.
It helps build your brand.
When done right, links can help establish your brand as a trusted brand in your niche. For instance, creating content can show your expertise in your field.
In order to build links, you need to show that your content is of value and it is worth linking too. You can start on your homepage, blogs, graphics, tools, or case studies.
It helps in building relationships.
When you build links, it involves outreach to relevant sites. When you have new content or infographics, you want to earn links from other sites.
However, you are not only building links but building relationships with key influencers in your niche. When you have a strong relationship with them, building links becomes natural
