For your business to rank well in search results through search engine optimization (SEO), you need to build your site’s trust and authority. The best way to do that is to build links. But what is link building, anyway? Keep reading to find out!
What is link building?
Link building is a strategy where you get websites to link to your site. These links are known as backlinks.
Why does link building matter?
If you want to improve your performance in search engines, you need to actively build links for your website.
Link building is one of the factors Google’s algorithm takes into consideration when ranking websites — PageRank. These links serve as a “vote” of confidence that your website provides valid and helpful information.
“We have various systems that understand how pages link to each other as a way to determine what pages are about and which might be most helpful in response to a query. Among these is PageRank, one of our core ranking systems…How PageRank works has evolved a lot since then, and it continues to be part of our core ranking systems.” (Source)
When more authoritative and trustworthy sites link to your website, it improves your website’s credibility. Since Google only wants to deliver trustworthy results to searchers, it gives you a better chance of performing well in search results.
Link building also offers benefits like:
- Driving new traffic to your website
- Helping Google crawl and index pages
- Helps you build relationships with websites you link-build with
How to build links: 5 tips for successful link building
Learn how to build links with these five effective strategies:
1. Create quality content that people want to link to
One key component to linking in SEO is creating quality content. When you share valuable and helpful information on your website, other sites will want to share it too. And those websites will want to credit where they got the information.
You can make content in the form of blog posts, informational articles, guides, and more. You’ll want to ensure your content is well-researched, informative, and helpful.
2. Look for broken links on others’ websites
Another strategy of quality link building is finding broken links on others’ websites.
Broken links are something that every website wants to fix because they indirectly, but negatively, impact SEO. Having a broken link can lead to higher bounce rates and reduced time on websites.
Once you find a broken link on someone’s website, you can reach other and notify them of the broken link. You then offer a related link to your website as an alternative to replace it.
Since you were helpful and pointed out the broken link, many websites will replace the link with yours. It’s a potential way you build more links for your pages.
3. Try guest posting
Another SEO link building strategy to use is guest posting. Guest posting is a way for you to increase your brand’s exposure, but it can also help you earn backlinks.
When you guest post on somebody’s website, you create a piece of content for that website. You can then include links back to your website.
If you decide to guest post, make sure you guest post on a relevant website. If you own a restaurant, you don’t want to guest post on a technology website. You would want to guest post on a food blog or something similar.
Guest posting is a great way for you to reach a different audience and create new avenues to earn links back to your website.
4. Ask for links
If you want to know how to build links, try asking for them. If you have a great piece of content that you want someone else to link to, you can reach out to that website and ask them to link to it.
Generally, you’ll want to identify a piece of content on their website where your link is appropriate. If someone wrote a blog about different types of coffee drinks and you have a blog post on how lattes are made, you could reach out and ask them to link to your article.
Keep in mind, though, that people may say no or ignore your emails outright.
5. Avoid buying links from link farms
To wrap up this list of tips for quality link building, let’s talk about buying links.
When you’re trying to learn links from reputable websites, it can take some time to earn them. You may feel like cutting corners and trying to buy links to jump start your link building process.
Doing this, though, is a mistake.
Buying links only hurts your SEO. Google bots can detect when you have spammy links and it will penalize your SEO as a result.
So, if you want to do quality link building, make sure you’re earning links and not buying them. To analyze your backlink profile, as well as your competitors, and conduct research into building your backlinks, try using some of the top link building tools out there, like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Uncover more SEO opportunities
Link building is just one of the many tactics you’ll use to help you improve your SEO performance. Discover more strategies and streamline your SEO efforts with SEO.com’s free tool. Try SEO.com for free for actionable insights and tools to boost your website’s rankings effectively.
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