Links are essential to your website’s SEO, rewarding it with higher SERP rankings. This blog will walk you through the basics of quality link building while ensuring you avoid Google penalties.
What is Link Building?
When other websites link to your website with hyperlinks, it’s known as link building. Your website’s rankings increase when you have many high-quality inbound links because they contribute to its SEO.
You are linking high-quality websites to your website, telling the search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy. Search engines consider these links’ confidence, attributing authority and relevance to your website. Therefore, having a substantial number of high-quality inbound links can enhance your website’s SEO and increase rankings in search engine results pages.
Link-Building Strategies for Beginners
Essentially, there are four ways to build links: add, ask, buy, or earn. Let’s take a closer look at each:
1. Add Links
You can manually place your links on a website that doesn’t belong to you. Some categories to add links include submissions to business directories, posting on forums or Q&A sites, and blog commenting.
However, even though this is easy to do, these links have low value and no competitive advantage, and Google may consider them spam. Their value diminishes because your competitors can do the same.
Though these links might have low SEO values, they can help your business.
Business directories: Depending on your business, you can get some customers by listing your business in a few major directory sites like Google Business, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.
Industry forums: You can use platforms or communities frequented by your target audience to add links to conversations. Add them to valuable conversations; otherwise, it’s considered spamming, which can get you removed.
Note: Used correctly, adding links can be meaningful, but avoid paying companies that promise they can get you lots of links in this way because your website can get penalized.
2. Ask for Links
You can reach out to owners of other websites and ask them to link to your website. However, since these people don’t have a considerable incentive to link to you, here’s how to ask for links compellingly:
- Ask to guest blog with helpful content for their website
- Prove to them that your website provides a better resource for linking to than the one they are using
- If they’ve briefly mentioned something, show them the help you have that enlarges the information
- Mention them positively in your content
- Provide testimonials about their product
- Offer them a link exchange
- Propose a replacement link if you find a broken one on their page
- Ask them to credit you with a link when they use one of your images
- Request a clickable mention of your brand
- You can ask them to make changes if they already have a link to your website
- Ask HARO and journalists if they want an expert quote for their article in exchange for a link
- Please provide them with a story to cover, boosting your PR
However, persuading someone to link to your webpage is often challenging. Try and make it worthwhile by offering something in return, like a mention on your social media, a link in exchange, money, etc. Remember that Google’s guidelines deter these ways of link-building.
Therefore, before pursuing them, ensure you have excellent content everyone wants to read, ensuring it’s link-worthy.
3. Buy Links
Even though people buy links, Google will notice, and you cannot escape it. You risk getting your website penalized.
4. Earn Links
Earning links does not require any of the above tactics. People link to your website thanks to the valuable content you provide. Therefore, you need to create content that’s worth linking to, and you must also promote it to help more people see your page.
Once you have earned links, you will want to preserve them by fixing 404 pages with good backlinks and asking other website owners to fix any issues on their sites.
Providing Good Links
No one thing will measure a good link. Instead, several factors contribute to their value. Here are some of the most relevant:
Authority: Despite denials by Google, linking to web pages that get noticed or have link popularity does perform better.
Relevance: Google also accounts for link relevance, meaning you want links from other prominent websites in your industry.
Anchor Text: The clickable snippet known as anchor text that goes to the linked page allows Google to understand which keywords the page should rank for. However, it’s best to keep how different pages decide to connect on your page to prevent Google from seeing it as manipulation.
After that, other factors include nofollow vs. follow links, the link’s placement, and its destination.
Need help with link-building?
Let us help you gain authority and improve your SEO with effective link-building! Contact us to get started.
Placement
The likelihood of a link being clicked may influence how much authority it transfers. At the same time, the location of a link on a page is one of the few factors that might affect its CTR. A web page comprises three sections: the content, the sidebar, and the footer.
In general, the content can get more links because the content block receives the most attention from visitors. Another thing that can affect the CTR of a link is how high on the pages it appears. Furthermore, the placement of a link within the content is another essential factor that affects its CTR.
Links at the beginning of an article or webpage are generally more likely to be chosen by readers than those at the end. This observation underlines the significance of placing important or attention-grabbing links early in the content to increase their chances of being clicked.
Considering both the location within the content block and the position on the page, website owners and content creators can optimize their link placement strategies to enhance the click-through rates of their links, finally driving more traffic and engagement to the intended destination.
Anchor Text
The clickable text in a hyperlink is known as anchor text. Anchor text is important because search engines and readers use it to determine what a linked website is about. As a result, the more relevant and detailed the anchor text, the better. Therefore, it is essential to ensure the anchor text is pertinent and descriptive, as it significantly impacts the overall user experience and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
By using accurate and information anchor text, you can provide both search engines and readers with valuable context regarding the context you will find upon following the hyperlink. So, choosing the correct anchor text that precisely reflects the topic keywords of the linked pages helps search engines better understand the content’s relevance.
Destination
When building links to the website, there are three destinations where you can use:
- Your homepages
- Your linkable assets
- The actual pages that you need to rank well on Google
Frequently, the pages that require higher ranking which is the most challenging to get links to. This is because individuals generally prefer to link to informational pages that provide value for free rather than commercial pages where the audience is likely to part ways with their cash. Informative and educational content naturally attracts more links because it provides knowledge to readers at the same time. Websites and individuals are more inclined to link to these pages as they enhance the overall user experience and offer valuable resources to their audience.
On the other hand, commercial pages, which often include product listings, sales pages, or promotional content, can be perceived as more self-serving. Audiences may be less likely to link to these pages since they typically involve transactions or monetary exchanges.
Strategies of Link Building
There are four ways to get started:
- Pursuing competitors’ links
- Creating linkable assets
- Content promotion
- Guest posting
Pursuing Competitors’ Links
Conducting competitor link research is one of the most essential aspects of link building. The top-ranked pages of the desired search query get all the links, which persuades Google of its superiority. So, by studying the relations, you can find out which tactics to use to get similar links and outrank that page.
Creating Linkable Assets
In SEO, “linkable assets” or “linkabit” means the content that is strategically crafted to attack links. Such linkable assets can take on many different forms:
- Online tools and calculators
- Infographics, GIFographics, and “Mao-o-graphics”
- Award and rankings
- Studies and research
- Industry surveys
- How-to-guides and tutorials
- Definition and coined terms
Content Promotion
Regardless of how “linkable” your pages are, they cannot link to them without first discovering them. Even the most unique linkable assets must be promoted to attack the links. There are three ways to promote content:
- Influencers and communities
The question of “Who will amplify this? And why?” holds the key to determining the level of exposure of your content they will receive. The term “who” pertains to influential people and relevant communities in the industry might help to put your content with a substantial audience. On the other hand, “why” means the actual merit of the content, which makes it worthy of being promoted in the first place.
- Advertising
With the assistance of advertising on platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, you can quickly bring many visitors to your content. Alternatively, you can partner with selected influencers and content creators in the space and pay them for the content to their audience.
However, some people need help to justify spending money to promote content. And it comes to the following question: How did they explain spending time to create it in the first place? So, when you make the content with your business goals in mind, you should not have issues to justify spending money to promote it to people.
- Growing an audience
Whenever you publish and promote the content, there will be people who find value in it and enjoy it. It will be a missed opportunity to let go of these people and never be able to reach them again. There are a few ways you can on growing your audience:
- Ask them to subscribe to your email list
- Ask them to follow you on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Tik Tok
- Invite them to join your private community on Slack, Discord, and Facebook
- Retarget them with Facebook, Twitter, and Google ads
As you consistently release new and engaging content, the audience should get larger and larger. The more people follow you back, the less you’ll need to bother about promoting your content manually.
Guest Posting
As mentioned, simply asking for links without providing anything valuable in return has become significantly less effective. However, guest posting is different. It involves offering a high-quality content piece in exchange for the opportunity to include a link to your website within it. This creates a fair deal of value. “Write for us” page where we invite our readers to contribute guest articles. Despite this, we reject the vast majority of pitches we receive. Two simple tips can help you get published in the top blogs of the industry:
- Start small and work your way up
If you have a solid portfolio of published content on slightly smaller blogs, it is much easier to get the attention of the top blogs in your niche.
- Make an irresistible offer.
It would be an easy sell if you can persuade them that your guest content will rank well in Google for its target term and generate them continuous traffic.That’s where the previous tips are invaluable. It will be an easy deal if you show examples of your past guest articles that rank well.
A lesser-known guest posting tactic is to find an underperforming article on their blog and offer a complete overhaul to improve Google rankings.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building is finding broken external links on other websites in your niche. So, reach out and recommend the link to your content instead. It works well because no one wants to send visitors to broken pages, and you offer a helpful alternative. There are a few steps to get started in hunting the broken links:
- Sign up for a broken link checker using functions like Check My Links and LinkMiner.
- Visit individual web pages to check for broken links.
- Choose a site from the list to investigate and configure the results.
- Contact the site owner and ask them to fix their broken link by inking the unique content instead.
Link Reclamation
Search for mentions of the company or blog online that don’t include a backlink that leads to the website or resources they mention. Reach out to the webmaster and kindly request an ink back to your site instead. Look for instances where the company or blog is discussed or referenced without a direct hyperlink leading back to your website or the specific resources mentioned. By identifying these instances, you can proactively enhance your online presence and increase traffic to your site.
By requesting a backlink, you can ensure that readers who come across these mentions have a convenient way to access your website or the mentioned resources. Additionally, incorporating backlinks strengthens your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, as search engines consider these links indicators of relevance and authority.
Digital PR Using Content
Digital PR promotes content to a high-traffic site or top-tier news outlet through data studies, breaking news, and other associated content. Remember who your target audience is and what they’re interested in. By following digital PR best practices, you must recognize that you cannot just throw content out and see what sticks. It would help if you had intent behind every marketing campaign, and digital PR is no different.
When implementing digital PR, it is vital to adhere to the best practice and not merely choose the content randomly. By carefully planning and executing your digital PR efforts, you can ensure that your content resonates with the intended audience and achieves its objectives effectively. This approach increases the likelihood of successful outcomes, such as increased brand visibility, improved reputation, and higher engagement.
Bold Solutions and Link-Building Strategies
Now that you have a clearer idea about link building, you can see that it’s important to get links from authoritative sources by providing them with linkable assets. Furthermore, you should promote your content, pursue competitor links, and post guest posts. Since building links takes time, at Bold Solutionz, we have the tools to help make the process easier.
Book your Free Consultation with Our Team of Experts Today!
We help you build and grow your business today with our range of digital marketing services led by industry experts. Take advantage of services and achieve your marketing goals