SEO is one of the dynamic areas of digital marketing. Google keeps on updating its ranking algorithm to make search a better experience for users. Digital marketers have a plethora of methods to revise their SEO strategies to stay on top and outrank their competitors.
Just like pieces of a puzzle must fit together to complete the picture, the same goes for SEO. All the elements of SEO must work together to rank your website higher. By using the right SEO tools, we can drive more website traffic and convert those prospects into customers.
Link Building plays an important role in SEO and drives organic traffic via the search engine. It is that pillar of SEO that helps digital marketers to increase their overall visibility on the internet.
With that in mind, we have created this beginner’s guide to Link Building to get through long-term organic search success. Keep reading to learn what link building is, why it’s important, what are quality links, and how to build the right link building strategy.
What is Link Building?
Before jumping to the definition of link building, it is important to understand the context behind the word ‘link’.
An inbound link often referred as a backlink or external link is nothing but HTML hyperlink. Its main work is majorly to redirect users from one website to the other.
Meanwhile, the term Link Building is an act of getting other websites to link yours. Link Building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from external sites that point back to yours. It is one of the important SEO practices that boost the authority of your pages.
It leads to bringing more traffic and ranking the website page higher. In a nutshell, the more quality links you have, greater are the chances that the website will rank higher!
Why is Link Building Important in SEO?
Given Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving, links remain a crucial side of site ranking depending on the keywords.
Link Building is an important SEO tactic as backlinks prove how trustworthy and authentic your site is. Developing a sound Link Building plan can have several benefits. Here are a few of them listed below.
- Improves Search Engine Ranking
Link building is a key secret to ranking your website higher in search engine results. No matter how optimized your content/blog is, you need links to rank it on search engines. More backlinks you have, higher are the chances of ranking on search engines.
These links have a deep impact on the website ranking as they act like votes of trust and credibility.
- Increases the Business Revenue
The more traffic you have on your website, better are the chances of revenue generation. Maintaining consistent blog content with authentic CTAs is known to be one of the best ways to fetch organic inbound links.
This in return persuade the readers to click and convert. In short, adding relevant CTA links in the blog post increases the conversion rate and revenue.
- Increases Overall Visibility and Exposure
Creating quality links is just not about improving the website’s ranking. It can also be a great way of generating leads, especially if you want to reach out to a new audience in a new geographical location.
When you link your website with external sites, it adds value to your content. In a world where everything is going digital, having a website dedicated to your business with highly optimized content is must.
High quality content supported by relevant links increases the user experience and ranks better on Google.
- Improve Relationships within the Niche
If you own a niche business, luring potential customers becomes easy with well-optimized website. Following Google’s algorithm and focusing on building relevant links within the industry niche opens the doors for future collaborations.
In short, you just don’t build quality links but also develop a strong relationship with industry counterparts within the niche.
What are the Tips for Successful Link Building?
- Identify the Target Audience
If you need to attract people to your website, there are two things you should know. One, who is your core audience, and second, who should be your targeted audience.
Doing thorough market research will tell you more about the TG’s preference and help with link building campaign.
- List Down the Relevant Websites
To reach out to the audience, you need to understand their preferences. List down all the potential websites that match the preference of the potential target.
Getting a link from these websites will help introduce your website to people who didn’t know about it before.
- Plan a Killer Content Strategy
If you want other websites to link to your content, create a killer content plan that is worth linking to!
This refers to creating quality content that appeals to the audience with the right CTA and USP elements.
- Build Trust
It is important to build trust with audience when they land on your page. By writing clear and user-friendly content, one can easily build trust and engage the audience.
Curating content from the perspective of customers will add a personal touch to the website and create a greater sense of trust.
- Keep the Content Updated
To keep the site relevant, it is important to update the content from time to time. Keeping up with the latest content trend on the website helps to give the users the relevant information they need.
This increases the reliance of users on the website, and they keep coming back to the site. At the same time helps the site rank higher.
What are the Top Link Building Tools?
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular link building tool for SEO and consists of the largest backlink data. Ahrefs is extensively designed with a lot of advanced features and is easy to use for non-technical people.
To measure the link building progress, Hrefs uses two metrics- domain rank and URL rank. Domain rank is used to analyse how authoritative the website is, whereas URL rank measures a particular URL instead of the whole website.
2. SEMrush
SEMrush is another SEO tool that is used by internet marketers all over the world. It does keyword research, tracks keyword strategy, looks for backlinking opportunities, and more.
It is known as a tool for paid traffic data that uses a scoring metric called authority score. Unlike Ahrefs and Moz, this tool creates a single metric but doesn’t carry a lot of backlink data.
3. Majestic
Majestic is a versatile link building tool that can address all business needs like finding link opportunities for the website and analysing the backlinks for the same.
Another standout feature of this tool is link context which helps to discover the link based on its position on a page. It also offers additional features like keyword research.
4. Buzz Stream
From relevant link prospecting to outreach, Buzzstream helps with all-in-one link building campaigns. It also offers project management capabilities to track link building campaigns.
Moreover, its digital PR helps to collaborate with influencers and bloggers for building quality backlinks.
5. Moz
Another addition to the list of link building tools is Moz which caters to the services like link opportunities, backlink analysis, link outreach, and more.
It also shows which anchor text sites use to link to the website. This will help to select the right keywords for future content strategies and get more backlinks.
How to Build Links?
Adding a Link
If you visit another website except yours and add the link of your website, then that’s called adding a link. The most common activities that fall into this category are:
- Commenting on blogs
- Posting on forums, communities, Q&A sites and more
- Business directory submissions
Building links through this method is an easy task, however, these links are not relevant according to SEO guidelines. But these links can be beneficial for the business for reasons other than SEO.
Asking for Links
As the name suggests, if you want a link from another website, you must reach out to the owner of the website. For getting your website linked to another site, you need to have a strong and persuasive reason.
The reason must be compelling enough for making your website linked. People may not be aware of your brand or site; hence you need conclusive factors for addressing the external party.
- A few of these persuasive factors are:
- Writing content for that site as a guest blog
- Exchanging links between each other
- Creating testimonials and case studies on their products/services
Earning Links
The term ‘earning links’ in link building refers to when people link to the pages on your website without you having to ask them.
People may not link your website until and unless they find something very appealing or extraordinary. Hence, keep your website updated and optimized. Make your content interactive so that it can look link worthy to the prospect audience who might end up linking.
What Makes a High-Quality Backlink?
Relevant Content
One of the most important factors that determine the quality of the backlinks is the content. SEO brings website traffic, and sales and increases brand recognition. And this is only possible if the website content is engaging and winsome.
Creating backlinks on the website will be beneficial only if it is empowered with contextually relevant content. Generating links that don’t have anything to do with the subject matter is considered spam.
Keyword Anchor Text
Anchor text plays an important role in making a link building campaign successful. Keyword text is the text used for a link and is considered a major part of Google’s algorithm.
From the SEO point of view, anchor text should be relevant to the page you are linking to, rather than a generic link. It should describe what readers get to read once they click on the given link.
Domain Authority
Domain authority is a ranking metric used by major marketing firms like Moz to determine the authority of a particular website. A website’s authority is measured on the basis 100-point scale.
Higher the score based on 100, more the chances of a higher ranking. Factors affecting the domain authority include the size/age of the site and the trust.
The site’s authority has nothing to do with content quality or anchor text, however, it is still a very useful asset if you are looking for quality links.
Link that Drives Relevant Traffic
A website that is most sought after is the one where you invest time and effort in optimization. It can hit a plateau on sales and traffic only if you know the right traffic-driving tactics.
That’s where the relevancy of backlinks come into the picture. The main purpose of building quality links should be to drive direct traffic to the website. This in turn will help to increase the visibility on Google.
Bottom Line
We hope this guide has helped you to understand the importance of link building and how it can benefit the website to grow and succeed.
To put it briefly, link building is not just about having a high quantity of links. It is also about having versatile links from a variety of sources and establishing a relationship with the site owners.
Creating a website and writing for the web is just the first step, the most crucial part is using different link building tactics and extending the reach of content and the website.
