You often hear about link building, backlinks, SEO and sometimes even black hat and you feel that it can be important. YES! Why is it important?
Introduction to link building
While SEO and link building have always gone hand in hand, the importance of high quality link building has never been such an important ranking factor. It is often the only reason why a page is ranked higher than a competitor's. Therefore, understanding the importance of link building as part of a high quality SEO campaign is essential to gaining online visibility and links to your site.
Whether you're new to link building or have been building backlinks for a while now, this blog is designed to help you understand link building, its importance, types of links and how link building can benefit your business.
What is link building?
Linking is simply creating hyperlinks between other websites and yours. Search engines look at links between individual pages on your website and links between entire websites to determine what constitutes a good link.
A link to your site sends a signal to Google that your site is a quality resource on the topic, worthy of being cited. Sites with more backlinks tend to be ranked higher by Google. SEOs often refer to this as \"link juice\".
There are many types of link building techniques you can use, and while they all vary in difficulty and complexity, link building is one of the most time consuming parts of an SEO's job. And not all links are created equal. For example, a link from The World will be far more valuable to you than a link from an unknown travel blogger's site.
Why is link building important for SEO?
Link building is an important part of SEO services, as it helps search engines discover new web pages and determine which pages to rank higher in SERPs.
Google says of link building:
"In general, webmasters can improve the ranking of their sites by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share."
This means that when you use link building strategies, your goal should be to gain links because you have created quality content that your users want to share, not just to build links for the search engines.
Link building is one of the most important ranking factors for Google, along with on-page SEO and content optimization:
- On-page SEO and content optimization
- Website trust and authority
- Website loading speed
- Mobile friendliness
- User experience elements
Link building is one of the most important ranking factors for Google, along with on-page SEO and content optimization:
White hat SEO vs Black hat SEO
When it comes to link building, there is a right way and a wrong way. To ensure the long-term viability and performance of your website, your link building tactics should be natural and follow the webmaster guidelines set forth by Google.
White Hat SEO is the use of organic link building tactics to improve your online visibility in search results. These techniques are approved by Google, but generally take longer than black hat techniques. White hat link building techniques can include
- Publishing articles on guest sites
- Promoting your content
- Creating infographics
- Building online relationships
- Commenting on blogs and authoritative blog posts
- Using website directories and business listings
Black hat SEO methods are unethical practices that help your website rank in search engines. These methods are generally frowned upon by Google. In fact, if Google finds that your techniques violate its quality guidelines, your site may be hit with a manual penalty. These penalties can cost you your hard-earned rankings and take a long time to remove and get your SEO performance back on track. Black Hat SEO techniques include:
- Hidden links
- Linking systems
- Entry pages
- Keyword stuffing
- Automatically generated content
- Misuse of structured data or anchor text
- and basically anything malicious or spammy
Links followed or not followed
It is possible to add attributes to the links in order to tell the Google crawler that it should "count" this link. These attributes are called "follow" or "dofollow" links. Follow\" links are a vote of confidence for Google.
There is also a "nofollow" attribute that can sometimes be applied. Note the addition of rel=\"nofollow\" below:
Link TextPageRank, or "link juice", to that link. Essentially, you are telling Google not to trust that link and that it should not be counted in your backlink profile.
Why use a nofollow? They are actually more useful than you think. Nofollows allow websites to have full control over the links that are added to their pages.
Remember the black hat SEO tactics we talked about? Well, before the introduction of the nofollow attribute, spammy SEO techniques were commonplace as SEOs tried to artificially boost their websites. With the introduction of nofollow, most spammers don't bother posting irrelevant links anymore, as they know they won't receive a "follow" link.
While we still see blog comments and spammy websites, this measure has definitely curbed this practice and weakened the effect it has on more authoritative websites.
You may be wondering what these "nofollow" links belong to. Nofollow links can be used in :
- Blog comments
- Forums
- Yahoo! Answers
- Wiki pages, such as Wikipedia
- Guestbook comments
- Guest post signatures
These are the types of places where users can freely post and add links. Since it is not practical to moderate every spammy link, you can choose to add a "nofollow" to all links posted by other users, but this is at the discretion of the website. For example, you may choose to reward a user who regularly participates in your discussion.
Learn more about the difference between "follow" and "no follow" links to your site.
How can link building services help my business?
As we said, the importance of links makes a difference in search engine rankings. The way we interacted and used link building has changed over the years, but it remains a cornerstone of any SEO strategy.
In addition to the benefits to your SEO performance, link building can help grow your business or brand, with many other significant benefits. Examples of Moz's domain authority tools
Brand development
Link building, when done right, can help build your brand and establish authority in your industry. You want your brand to be at the forefront of your industry content marketing techniques that involve creating high quality content and publishing articles in trade journals can help you do this. Showcasing your company's expertise can go a long way in building the brand, and as an authoritative voice, you'll be known for what you publish in the industry while being rewarded with authoritative inbound links.
Reference traffic
A good link from a highly visited website not only gets you \"link juice\", but can also lead to increased traffic. If you link to websites that are relevant to yours, chances are their traffic will be too. This doesn't just apply to high traffic sites - it's often better to reach a small, very passionate audience from a relevant blog than to reach a larger, more general audience.
Relationship Building
Link building strategies often involve reaching out to relevant websites or blogs related to an article you've created, an interesting infographic or a promotion. While the main goal of outreach is, of course, to get a link, outreach can help your business build long-term relationships with key people in your industry. These relationships can help build your brand, your network and your authority. Whether it's a site owner or a key influencer, the value of connecting with others and building trust in your industry is invaluable.
Better sales opportunities
Referral traffic from relevant sites leads to more leads, which leads to more sales. Not only because of the improved rankings that link building will bring you, but also because of the highly qualified referral traffic you will have obtained from different types of links. This means you can sell more products or services, and generate revenue from a new avenue.
Link building has been an important part of SEO for a long time, and it looks like it's here to stay. Google will always want to serve its users the most authoritative sites with the most beloved content.
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