What It Affects and Why You Need It for SEO
Link building is a strategy for placing links to your resource on third-party sites. Search engines analyze link mass, and the more links on authoritative and relevant sites lead to your page, the higher you will rise in the ranking of the search engines. Statistics say that 70% of successful promotion depends on your skill in building links. In this article, you’ll learn about link building and how to get more good links on external resources.
What Do We Call a Link?
Let’s start with the basics: what is a link? The main thing in link building is a link. In its simplest form, it looks like a line in the HTML markup, which, when clicked, takes you to the page it is connected with. For example, if you are the Home Bakery For All site owner, the link placed on another resource will allow users to get to your site and buy tasty buns.
The source where the hyperlink is located is called the donor, and your page acts as the acceptor. The donor provides trust to the acceptor and depends on the number of posted links. The more trusted links lead to the site, the higher it is ranked in search engine results.
What Is Link Building?
Link building promotes a web resource, creating links from external sources to your resource. It creates a natural link mass – the most significant difference between natural links and the banal purchase of links.
The main linkbuilding task is to get a link from such a resource that will provide traffic and conversions. The links allow the following:
- successfully promote sites;
- attract potential buyers to the site;
- improve the recognition of a company or a specialist because their names fall into the anchor.
It is necessary to understand that the natural building of links is a long game that involves considerable time and labor costs. But in the long run, it ensures the site’s promotion and sales. Creating high-quality content on your platform and external resources is almost the primary condition for SEO link building to have the desired effect.
Who Needs Link Building?
SEO link building is necessary if:
- You are just starting your online activity and want as many potential clients as possible to find out about you.
- You are looking for effective ways to increase traffic to your site.
- You work in a field where the competition is very high, and you fight for each client.
In general, every business should use link building tools to promote itself with the help of online resources.
Pros and Cons of Link Building
Let’s start with the advantages:
- Long-lasting effect. It ensures traffic growth, increasing the site’s position in the top search results and maintaining these positions.
- Almost a free option. Suppose you initially decided to refuse paid links. In that case, you will either do all the work yourself or only pay for the work of an SEO specialist who is engaged in building a link profile and a content marketer or copywriter.
Don’t forget about the disadvantages:
It takes time. You spend time on two aspects: searching for sites for placement and waiting for them to start giving the expected effect. The “manual” mode of link building involves long-term work, but you can always use marketplaces where potential backlink donors and acceptors find each other by specific parameters.
What Are the Types of Links?
Here is the most straightforward classification of links for link building strategy:
1. According to How You Got Them: Natural and Purchased
Natural links are links to the site that users and owners place without financial compensation. The reason is that the site’s content is valid and/or interesting for them. Such SEO links are free and are almost always more effective than the links explicitly placed to influence search results without considering the interests of the site’s audience.
Natural links will appear when you start regularly publishing on your site what people want to share: quality articles, graphics, video, audio, etc. Purchased links are sold on special exchanges or link marketplaces. But suppose you do not rush to every such site. Carefully read the placement conditions, and study the guaranteed result. In that case, you can do link building, which in terms of effectiveness, will not be inferior to natural growth.
2. According to the In-Text Position: Anchored and Unanchored
Anchor links appear in the text in part or the entire keyword phrase. The user sees such a link and understands what content is waiting for him even before clicking on it. It is critically important that the anchor link organically fits into the text grammatically and semantically. Constructions of “plastic windows Chicago to buy cheap” are the reason to remove such a link immediately.
At the same time, search engines closely monitor anchor links of the type “order,” “buy,” and similar ones. If such links are concentrated in large numbers, this may lead to a site ban. It is necessary to ensure that the anchor links are evenly spread throughout the text, are written in different words, and lead to other pages.
3. According to How Search Engines Reach Them: Indexable and Non-Indexable
Non-indexed links contain a specific attribute that tells search engines not to transmit the entire page. If you write such an attribute in the URL, you give a command that you are not ready to increase the link weight of the site.
The “nofollow” attribute is also used when necessary:
- To prohibit indexing of service pages of your resource: for example, entering the administrative panel.
- To protect the site from spam in the comments when visitors leave uncontrolled links to different pages.
- To publish materials on your site with the author’s link limitedly.
Remember that if “nofollow” is not specified for a link, it will be indexed by default. To check the indexing of backlinks in Google, you must visit the appropriate section in Google Search Console. The necessary information is located in the Links section.
4. According to the Life Time: Permanent and Rental
Permanent are types of SEO links present on the site as long as the site exists or until the site owner decides to remove them. They can be seen on forums, blog articles, maps, and social networks. These links are natural, so they are provided free of charge.
They can also be purchased on link exchanges: of course, they will cost more than rented ones, but they will be of higher quality because they will be organically included in the site’s content.The life span of rented links directly depends on the time of payment: day – week – month – six months – hour, etc. Such an SEO link is placed on the main page, and the announced contextual advertising, and two or more site pages.
5. According to the Location on the Site: Contextual, Sidebar, and Footer
From the point of view of search engines, the most valuable links are those written in context, i.e., found in a blog article or news text. Post links are placed before or after the article’s main text and may not be directly related to the article’s topic.
Where to Get Backlinks to Your Site?
You can use the following platforms to get different types of backlinks to your site:
Social Networks
This is one of the best ways to get an SEO link to your site. Social networks prefer internal links to external ones. For this reason, you can place the link in the first comment under the post. Leave such links on personal pages, in company publications, and thematic communities, and also insert them into posts (more often – advertising ones) in agreement with the group administration.
Blogs
A good blog is quality articles and other content formats that many people read and willingly share. As a rule, it is enough to ask visitors to share the material they liked with their friends, having previously placed social network buttons on the blog page. You can ask the audience directly in the text of the article to share their opinion about the material and even post a link to it on your page on social networks.
If you do not have a blog or it is difficult to maintain it permanently, you can search for blogs on the same topic and leave links to your resource in the comments. Be ready that moderators often do not like links to other people’s resources.
Interview
The beauty of this format is that any interested interviewer will “shine” on an authoritative platform with a demonstration of his expertise. With a probability of 99.9%, he will then post a link to the interview on all his pages, accounts, and publications.
Thematic Forums
There are three vectors for the development of referral activity:
- Placing links in the comments.
- Creating your forum with the correct number of links.
Don’t turn link building into a stream of spam. Your task is to share helpful knowledge with the audience and provide links to sources where this knowledge is disclosed in detail. Naturalness is the main criterion for the work of such links.
Site News Feed
We all love to read and watch the news. So why doesn’t it show links to useful and interesting sites in news feeds? Of course, you need to remember that, in this case, the link to your site will compete with other links of the same type. This is especially relevant when the links have approximately the same value, and it is only a matter of choosing the one that catches the visitor’s eye first.
Channel on YouTube
Making exciting video content and even text links that you will place in the description of the videos will give enough traffic.
Educational Materials
This is any content (most often text, but it can also be graphic video and audio) that can be downloaded for free and contains a link to your site in one way or another.
Site Directories
There are many thematic catalogs on the Internet, where you can place your company card, a link to the main page of its website, and even crucial products and services. Such platforms, mainly if they have existed for a long time and moderate the information added to them, are favorably regarded by search engines.
Placing Articles on Third-Party Platforms
It is worth going to external sites that publish materials on various topics and have earned authority in the audience. The material mustn’t pursue advertising purposes exclusively. You will either not be issued or “locked” in the comments. DA metric for linkbuilding is essential here. A website with a DA more significant than 80 is the best for your SEO, but getting backlinks from those websites is challenging. It is best to look for backlinks from reputable websites that will help you boost your SERP and visibility to your website.
What Types of Links are Relevant in 2023?
According to the main principle of a quality SEO link, the more effort it took to get this link, the greater its effect. This principle is still relevant and still works. For example, editorial links – links received from the *.edu domain, will look much more significant to Google than several links from other less educative tails. Here is a list of the main types of links you can use in 2023:
Outreach Links
Outreach linkbuilding is one of the effective methods of link building, used with the help of agreements between bloggers and site owners. In this case, webmasters are looking for the most favorable terms of cooperation for placing a banner, article, or another type of content on Internet resources.
There are two types of outreach:
- Paid – you must pay the pre-agreed amount to the site owner to place a publication.
- Conditionally free – if the published content is helpful to the resource donor, it can place on a complimentary basis. In this case, you will have to take on only initial costs: content creation and the work of an outreach (a person who negotiates all conditions between the parties).
To submit a request for content placement on the resource you are interested in, you need to create a writing template. After that, you send the offer and expect a soon response. If the request is approved, you can discuss further terms of cooperation and agree on publication.
When preparing content, pay special attention to its quality – this will increase the chances of free, mutually beneficial outreach, which means it will help you save money.
Private Blog Network Links
PBN is a network of sites of neutral topics, for example, news sites. The main task of such a network is the formation and growth of the link profile of the promoted site or sites. Such networks have a complex link system aimed at distributing weight between satellites.
You can create your network or use a ready-made one. Your network is a guarantee that it will always be available and will serve only your projects. But creating a good network will take a lot of time and money. Therefore, a preferable option for link building is the purchase of links in ready-made PBNs.
Multilevel Links
This is a rather tricky way to get links. Let’s say you want to link your site to some authoritative resource. With a high degree of probability, the link will be removed as soon as you do this. In this case, experienced SEO specialists use the Tier strategy. Its essence is that you give a link to an intermediate page that already has a link to your site.
For example, a direct link from Wikipedia will be deleted almost instantly. But if it leads to a helpful video on YouTube, most likely, no one will touch it. And what will be written under the video depends only on you. Using multi-level links, you will not only get new backlinks but also strengthen the positions of old ones.
Crowd Marketing Links
The crowd marketing strategy lies in placing thematic posts on various platforms: forums, sites with reviews, social networks, and marketplaces. The more natural the communication looks, the more likely the moderators will skip your link. This is a very time-consuming way of promotion, but if you do everything right, you can improve your link profile, increase brand awareness and increase traffic to your site.
The main essence of crowd marketing is presenting the expert’s positive opinion about the promoted product. It can be submitted by using different types of links:
- a response with an active link to a popular web resource;
- an article with a link and a positive review about the promoted product;
- publications in blogs or social networks;
- placing information about the resource in the directory with the addition of an expert opinion.
Promotion with the help of crowd marketing will be effective if you need to increase the demand for your product or service as naturally as possible. Be careful when placing links yourself because excessive activity can be classified as spam.
Guest Blogging
This method of link building can be mutually beneficial for the donor and the acceptor, so recently, it has been among the most popular. You don’t have to buy links, but both sides benefit from their cooperation. The donor receives high-quality content for publication, and the acceptor has the opportunity to place an important link inside the published text.
To use guest blogging, it is necessary to analyze websites and publications that may have interesting and valuable information about your product. After that, you should select potential donors and offer them mutually beneficial cooperation. When sending a request for content publication, it is recommended to immediately propose topics and an article plan to increase the chances of approval. Before writing, study the donor’s policy and the main requirements for articles. If you go to high-quality portals, be ready to make changes because the editors of such sites are demanding published content.
Submits
What are submits and their advantages?
Submits are free placement of information about the site with links included in the top schemes used for promotion. The method allows you to get more than 100 quality links with minimal financial costs on resources that enable the publication of user content. This does not require additional knowledge, additional expenses, and a lot of time.
It is possible to place information in catalogs, social networks, resumes, job search sites, video platforms, audio podcasts, etc. This link building metric is aimed at solving the following problems:
- systematic growth of link mass;
- improvement of brand reputation.
This method will be enough to have minimal SEO knowledge and understand the basics of link promotion. Users with a limited budget at the initial stage often stop at this option.
How to Choose Metrics for Linkbuilding?
If, in information areas, the owners have a chance to promote the site without links successfully, then in commercial niches, the competition is so high that development without link building is impossible. Usually, webmasters use several methods of building link mass to determine the most effective and maximize opportunities. When you get backlinks from different platforms with different link metrics, you increase your chances of getting ahead of your competitors by using quality links.
Sites can be promoted in many ways. We recommend everyone use submission promotion. This is the placement of information on maps, video hosting, feedback, and catalogs. Guest posts (posting articles with the help of outreach and exchanges) have proven themselves well. Social networks as a link-building method are not the most effective, but they are also used. Which one to choose?
The strategy is selected individually for each case, but by placing backlinks in the article, you can interest users in quality content. This will lead not only to traffic growth but also to obtaining constant TA.
To correctly apply link building methods, you need to understand their characteristics:
- Safety.
- Scalability – it’s not good when you can get excellent links only once.
- Efficiency.
- Cost.
How to Choose Suitable Methods?
When choosing the most suitable method, look at such variables as:
Your budget: You can create a great link building strategy, but when the budget is announced, it turns out that the strategy does not correspond to reality. It is necessary to work in real conditions and not invent hypothetical situations.
Your skills: It is essential to work with a team with skills in building PBN networks or other cool hard skills in link building.Your tasks: The given task influences the choice of link metrics. This may be the first task set when promoting a new project – ranking according to the brand request of the site. If you take the task but have neither a team nor a budget, it is better not to start.
Stages of Link Building
Don’t increase your website link mass by purchasing links on stock marketplaces. Such an approach will not give a tangible result as you don’t mind their quality. On the contrary, search engines actively filter mass purchasing, and with such a strategy, you can get sanctioned by search engines. Promotion with the help of permanent links written by hand on an authoritative resource using correctly selected anchors is the best way to increase quality link mass.
What Is Essential When Building a Strategy?
When forming a linkbuilding strategy, you must choose an executor: you, an SEO agency, a webmaster, or a direct donor resource. It is also necessary to prepare exciting and related content for your site, which the user visiting the “donor” will read and want to click on the link. And, of course, you need to choose precisely those donors who will help your site become more popular and increase traffic.
Building an effective link building strategy:
- Analyze competitor link profiles.
- Analyze the database of relevant donors for the necessary parameters.
- Do not work according to templates but create an individual strategy for buying links for your site and business.
What To Consider When Working With Links To Avoid Falling Under The Filter?
The main principle to be guided to avoid filters is to grow natural link mass from an authoritative source and receive it in a “white” way. You don’t need to ask to get hundreds of backlinks in one day – you will immediately go under the filters. Move gradually. Carefully approach the choice of the donor site. Better to get one good link than ten bad ones.
How Else Can Link Building Benefit My Business?
This paragraph is for entrepreneurs who have already heard a lot about SEO link building but still did not get a clear answer to the question – what is the use of search engine optimization, and why exactly is SEO needed in 2023?
Do you have a small or large business? You work in B2C or B2B. It doesn’t matter for SEO as the whole world moved to the Internet a long time ago and is actively developing its activities here. Even if you have your shop or any other physical place to sell goods, people will search for you on the Internet. Due to the increase in the number of searches from mobile devices and voice searches, local SEO is a trend that has already gained momentum and will not decrease in the coming years.
In addition, before buying a product (and not only online), modern consumers conduct independent research of the product and the market using a search engine. The choice of a bicycle will be approached responsibly, and the characteristics will be compared. And your task is to offer a product with accessible information in the right place at the right time.
Do not expect Google to offer your site to the user on the first page without search engine optimization. This can happen only if there is no competition and the product provided is unique.
Conclusion
Link building is essential to promoting the company and increasing the flow of clients. But the publication of links is impossible without preliminary analysis. To promote the site with links to be effective, adhere to the fundamental rules:
- Study your target audience and determine what content they will be interested in. If you publish information about car parts in a domain with cosmetics, the audience is unlikely to appreciate your actions.
- Choose individual linkbuilding metrics. A technique that brought success to a shoe store can reduce the rankings of a pet product site. Conduct a competitor analysis, and implement several methods to find your optimal solution.
- Promote the most engaging content. Analyze the site, and determine which pages are viewed most often. They should be used for promotion with the help of links because they can interest users.
These are the primary keys to success that leading webmasters actively use. And if you want high results, you should seek help from specialists.