What Is Link Building and How Does It Work?
Simply explained, link building is the process of obtaining links from other websites to your own. Building links should be a priority for all marketers and business owners who want to boost their site’s authority and drive referral traffic.
Why do you need to develop links? Although Google’s algorithms are sophisticated and constantly changing, backlinks continue to play a significant role in how search engines assess which sites rank for which keywords. Because links are a signal to Google that your site is a quality resource worthy of citation, building links is one of the numerous methods employed in search engine optimization (SEO). As a result, sites with more backlinks tend to rank higher.
However, there is a correct way and a wrong way to develop links to your website. If you care about your site’s and business’s long-term health, you should only engage in natural link building, which is the practice of earning connections rather than buying them or obtaining them through other means.
Natural, organic link building, on the other hand, is a complex and time-consuming procedure. Not all links are made equal: a link from a reputable website will have a higher impact on your SERP rankings than a connection from a small or freshly launched site, but high-quality links are more difficult to get by.
This article will show you how to create high-quality links that will help you increase your organic results while staying inside Google’s restrictions.
Keep in mind that link development is crucial for attaining high organic search rankings.
Why Is Link Building Vital for SEO?
Link building is crucial since it influences how Google ranks web pages. According to Google:
“In general, webmasters can raise their site’s ranking by increasing the number of high-quality sites linking to their pages.”
Assume we possess a website that promotes the wind turbine equipment we offer. We’re up against another maker of wind turbine components. Link popularity is one of the ranking variables Google considers when choosing how to rank our pages.
While the example above gives a general idea of why link building is necessary, it is fairly simplistic. It leaves out important details such as:
- The connecting pages’ authority and trustworthiness.
- The respective sites’ SEO and content optimization.
- The text of the inbound links’ anchors.
Read through these links for a more detailed explanation of how PageRank is calculated:
- The Google PageRank paper that started it all
- An in-depth examination of the PageRank formula.
- Wikipedia’s entry on the subject
The most important concept to grasp is that, according to Google, if you can get external websites to link to your pages, your content will rank higher for the keywords you’re targeting.
- Create fascinating, distinctive, high-quality material that people will naturally want to reference and connect to, and tell others about it. Before you can expect anyone to locate your content and connect to it, you must first spread the word!
- Reviews and Mentions – Get your product, service, or website in front of industry influencers like well-known bloggers and others with a huge social media following.
- Links from Friends and Partners – Request that people you know and work with link to your site. Keep in mind that relevance is important; connections from sites in the same general industry or niche as yours will be more valuable than links from unrelated sites.
- It may take some time to establish a large number of links, but be patient, and keep in mind that shortcuts such as buying links are against Google’s standards and can be detrimental to your SEO. Don’t take any risks.
Internal Link Building is a great way to get free links
There’s a simple, underappreciated approach to gain links to the pages you’re trying to rank higher in search engines. And it’s a method over which you have complete control: Creating internal links.
There are a few crucial elements to consider when attempting to rank a Web page:
- Anchor Text – The actual text a linking page uses to talk about your content is one of the most critical factors search engines use when ranking a page.
- Quality of the Linking Website – Another aspect to consider is the quality of the page that is delivering the link; search engines value links from high-quality, trusted pages and sites more than connections from doubtful pages and sites in increasing ranks.
- Page to Which the Link Is Aimed – When people talk about your site, they frequently link to the home page. Because it’s so tough for individual pages to develop their own link equity, it’s impossible for them to attain high rankings.
All of these are factors we have little control over when attempting to get other websites to connect to us. All of these features, however, can be controlled when linking to our own pages from our own material. We are able to:
- Make a decision on which anchor text to utilize.
- Choose the page you want the anchor text to link to.
- Ascertain that the connecting page’s quality and content are both excellent.
Building external connections to your site is crucial, but concentrating more of your efforts on internal link optimization will allow you to create high-quality inbound links with rich anchor text to the appropriate pages, giving you an unrivaled ranking boost.
Tools & Techniques for Creating Internal Links
So, how do you create these fantastic internal links? In a few simple steps, you may build up a mechanism for interlinking your pages:
- Keyword Research for Link Building – First, you should use a keyword research tool to get a list of relevant and popular keywords offered to you.
- Assign Keywords to Content – Next, create a search-friendly information architecture by strategically grouping your keywords.
- Link Pages Using Targeted Anchor Text – The final step is to use your keyword research to create intelligent inter-linking by connecting to material that contains the keywords you found.
As you can see, each page has multiple keywords linked with it. By making this document available to all of your content authors, they will be able to easily identify which pages are targeting which keywords, as well as check your SEO wireframe.
Do you require additional SEO assistance? Consultation is available at Sotavento Medios.