Link buildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. is crucial for improving your online visibility and driving steady traffic to your website. However, it is essential you learn to build linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. the right way, as black-hat tactics can lead to deindexing or an unwanted penalty from the search engines.
Whether you are new to the world of link building or a seasoned SEO expert, the following link building guide offers informative advice and tips that can help you to climb the search engines.
What is Link Building?
Link building is an SEO process of acquiring backlinks to your website from external websites, which can help to improve your pages’ ranking in the SERPs and, as a result, boosts your search traffic. What’s more, backlinks from popular websites can also prove to be a superb source of referral web traffic.
What Makes a Powerful Backlink?
As a website acquires many powerful backlinks, its authority will start to grow. A site will then pass on this authority when linking out to other websites, which can help this site’s authority to grow. A website linked to from The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times will, therefore, be more powerful in comparison to a new website with limited inbound links.
There are two metrics you should definitely review when measuring a website’s authority:
– Domain Authority (DA)
The domain rating is the total strength (authority) of a website, which will be measured from 0 to 100. If a website is a 0, this means it has no authority and it is more than likely a new site with zero inbound links. On the other end of the scale is 100, which means it is an established, reputable website that has acquired multiple powerful backlinks throughout the years.
– URL Rating (UR)
The URL rating is the strength of one webpage, which will again be measured from 0 to 100. A backlink from a high authority page will pass more authority to a website.
Why Relevancy Matters
While a site’s authority is a big ranking factor, its relevancy does still matter to your backlink profile. A former Google engineer stated:
“… getting a link from a high PageRank page used to always be valuable. Today, it’s more the relevancy of a site’s theme in regards to yours. Relevance is the new PageRank.”
For this reason, you must not only look at high-authority websites, but you must secure backlinks on websites closely related to your industry.
The Importance of Link Position
A backlink’s position will also determine its power. If it is hidden away in a footer or sidebar, it will not be worth as much as a link that has been embedded in the middle of a webpage’s body content. Also, according to Google’s Reasonable Surfer patent, the search engine will determine how likely a backlink is likely to be clicked on by a reader before deciding how much link juice to pass onto a site. If you want to increase your online visibility effectively, aim to secure a backlink within the main webpage body.
The Benefits of an Editorial Backlink
Google wants to provide its users with interesting, relevant and valuable content for every query. For this reason, they value editorial backlinks, which is when a site links to you because they love your brand or content. If you create a profile on an irrelevant website with a backlink, this will not be classed as an editorial backlink, so it will not be as powerful.
The Perfect Anchor TextAnchor text is the text highlighted by a hyperlink. The words highlighted are crucial for SEO, informing Google’s crawling bots about the content of the site linked to.
Anchor text is a Google ranking signal and provides a semantic connection to your website. For example, if Google reads an anchor text that says “digital marketing agency,” it will indicate that you are exactly that.
Google is also looking for signs your website is a credible resource that is worthy of ranking on page one for a keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business., and your anchor text will provide them with an insight into your link building tactics.
For example, if your backlink profile is filled with many exact match anchor texts, it will look unnatural and spammy, and it could lead to a penalty in the search engines. Instead, you should aim for a diverse mix of anchor texts, such as brand, LSI, generic, naked, and partial match.
Dofollow vs. NofollowThe nofollow attribute is an HTML tag that tells search engine crawlers not to follow a link.
There is a big difference between a ‘Dofollow’ and a ‘Nofollow’ link. For example, ref=”nofollow” is a simple tag that informs the search engines to not view this link as an endorsement. That is why you must aim to secure many dofollow links, as the link will inform Google that you are a trusted, valuable resource.
In theory, a nofollow link will not contribute to a site’s rankings; however, there are conflicting opinions about whether this is true. Remember, Google is looking for a natural backlink profile, so it makes sense that you might organically acquire nofollow backlinks. If your site doesn’t, it could be a red flag that you are attempting to manipulate the search engines. Wikipedia is a prime example, as it features the nofollow tag, but many SEO professionals believe the link is still beneficial to their rankings due to its high authority.
Conclusion
Link building is about finding the right balance between powerful backlinks on high authority websites, which must be relevant to your industry, but appearing both natural and helpful. It is not just the backlink that matters, as its position, anchor text diversity, and relevance to your industry are also important factors to consider.
Now you know the basics of link building, all you need to do now is learn how to build natural backlink placements without catching the attention of Google, such as asking for a backlink on unlinked brand mentions, securing a guest post on a relevant third-party website, or writing exceptional content that websites will want to link back to naturally.
If you bear in mind all the information above when attempting to build a strong backlink profile, there is no reason why you cannot reach the top positions for your most desired keywords in time.
