Ranking high in search results is critical for attracting new customers and growing your business, but with so much competition online, simply creating great content isn’t enough. That’s where link building comes in.
630 Digital crafts strategic link-building campaigns that establish your website as a trusted authority, propelling you to the top of SERP rankings and driving organic traffic that converts.
What Is Link Building in SEO?
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your own. This helps improve your site’s visibility and authority.
These inbound links, or backlinks, act as votes of confidence from other sites, signaling to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy.
Why Are Links So Important?
In the world of link building and search engine optimization, links from other sites are like votes of confidence from the digital world. They tell search engines your website is valuable, trustworthy, and relevant, which increases organic traffic.
- The more you earn links pointing to your website, the easier it is for search engines to find and index your pages. This increases the chances of your website appearing in search results for relevant keywords.
- When a high-authority website links to yours, some of that authority, or “link juice,” is passed on to your site. The more quality backlinks you have, the more authority your website accumulates, boosting its ranking potential.
- Relevant links to your site from authoritative websites that cover similar themes tell search engines your content is valuable and trustworthy for those specific searches.
- Links from sites with high traffic expose your content to a wider audience, driving organic traffic back to your site.
Benefits of High-Quality Link Building
Well-executed link-building is a strategic SEO investment that fuels organic traffic, bolsters brand authority, and ultimately drives business growth.
- Soaring Search Rankings: Establishing your website as a trusted authority through links from reputable sites puts your business in front of more potential customers.
- Organic Traffic Powerhouse: High search rankings translate into a surge of organic traffic.
- Enhanced Credibility and Brand Authority: Good links from trusted sources vouch for the value and credibility of your content.
- Targeted Audience Expansion: Strategically acquiring links allows you to tap into relevant online communities where your ideal customers reside.
- Long-Term SEO Advantage: Link building delivers long-lasting SEO benefits, propelling your website toward sustainable organic growth.
What Affects a Backlink’s Value?
While securing links is an integral part of SEO, the true power lies in acquiring valuable links that send strong signals to search engines.
Site Authority
High-authority websites have earned the trust and respect of search engines. When these websites link to your content, it passes on significant “link juice,” boosting your own website’s authority and ranking potential.
Link Relevance
Links from websites that cover similar topics or cater to the same audience tell search engines your content is valuable and trustworthy for those specific searches.
The more thematically relevant the linking website is to yours, the stronger the backlink’s influence.
Link Placement
Great links placed within the main content area, like paragraphs or articles, hold more weight than those buried in sidebars or footers, which may be seen as less relevant by search engines.
Anchor Text
The text used to hyperlink your website (anchor text) plays a role. Informative and keyword-rich anchor text can provide context and potentially influence ranking for those specific keywords.
Nofollow, Sponsored, and UGC Attributes
While these attributes tell search engines not to pass on link juice (nofollow), they still offer some SEO benefits. They can still drive referral traffic and establish brand awareness.
However, prioritizing backlinks with “dofollow” attributes remains the primary goal for maximum SEO impact.
What Backlinks Signal to Search Engines
Search engines rely on backlinks to understand the web’s structure and value of content. Here’s how healthy link profiles act as breadcrumbs for search engines:
- Discovery and Indexing: When a search engine encounters a link to your website, it follows that link to discover and index your pages. The more backlinks you have, the easier it is for search engines to find all your valuable content.
- Authority and Credibility: When a top-quality website links to yours, it’s seen as a vote of confidence in your content’s credibility and value. The more links you have, the more authority your website accumulates.
- Relevance and Context: Backlinks from websites that cover similar themes tell search engines your content is relevant and trustworthy for specific searches. This strengthens your website and makes it more likely to rank higher for relevant keywords.
- Understanding User Behavior: Links can indicate which pages are most valuable and engaging to users. If a page receives many backlinks and clicks from those links, it suggests the content is valuable and informative.
How To Build Links
Building backlinks involves creating superior content that others find valuable enough to want to link to.
When building links, focus on quality over quantity. Building relationships with other websites and creating valuable content is key to building your brand and acquiring high-value backlinks
- Craft Link-Worthy Content: Create informative, engaging content that people naturally want to reference and link to.
- Guest Blogging: Contribute guest posts to relevant websites in your niche to establish your expertise and get a link.
- Broken Link Building: Find broken links on relevant sites and offer your content (with a link) as a replacement.
- HARO (Help a Reporter Out): Now called Connectively, respond to journalist questions to potentially have them link to your site in their publication. An alternative to this service is Source of Sources.
- Brand Mentions: If you find unlinked mentions of your brand online, reach out and request a link.
- Link Insertions: This is where a website links to your website in an existing page or article.
- Citation Links: This is done by getting your business listed on relevant business directory sites and is especially important with Local SEO.
Link Building Tools
While crafting quality content remains the cornerstone of link building, there are valuable tools available to streamline and enhance your outreach efforts.
- Link Prospecting Tools: These tools help you discover websites with high domain authority and topical relevance. Some popular options include Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Link Explorer.
- Email Outreach Tools: Tools like Buzzstream, Pitchbox, and Respona help you manage your outreach campaigns, personalize emails at scale, and track your progress.
- Content Monitoring Tools: Platforms like Google Alerts and BrandMentions help you stay informed when your brand is mentioned online, allowing you to reach out for potential linking to your site.
- Broken Link-Checking Tools: Tools like Ahrefs Broken Link Checker and Check My Links allow you to identify broken links on websites. You can offer your own link as a replacement.
- Social Media Monitoring Tools: Platforms like Sprout Social and Hootsuite allow you to track relevant conversations on social media. Engaging with influencers and participating in industry discussions can lead to links.
Best Link-Building Strategies
Building relationships and creating valuable content are key to link-building success.
Here are some effective ways to build links that go beyond the basic guide to link building.
Unconventional Techniques
- Skyscraper Technique: Identify a high-performing article in your niche and create an even better piece of content. Contact websites linking to the original content, and suggest yours as a superior resource.
- Ego Bait: Craft content that recognizes industry leaders or influencers. Often, these individuals will share or link to the content where they’re mentioned, generating backlinks.
- Contests and Giveaways: Host contests or giveaways. Encourage participants to share the contest on social media or link back to your website to enter.
Community Engagement
- Forum Participation: Share your expertise, answer questions, and engage in discussions with others. Over time, your insights may convince them to link to your website as a trusted source.
- Podcast Guesting: Appear as a guest on industry podcasts. This allows you to share your knowledge with a targeted audience and potentially receive a backlink from the podcast website.
- Online Reviews and Testimonials: Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews on relevant platforms like Google My Business. These can indirectly get links for you as other websites reference these positive reviews.
Shady Techniques To Avoid
Link building is a crucial SEO strategy, but black-hat tactics can backfire and even get your website penalized. Here’s a breakdown of shady techniques to absolutely avoid:
- Buying Links: Purchasing even one link is a big no-no. Search engines can easily identify these paid links and penalize your website. Focus on earning backlinks organically through valuable content and outreach.
- Link Exchanges: Swapping links with other websites might seem like a quick win, but search engines frown upon these reciprocal link schemes. Prioritize natural link acquisition where websites link from their website to you because your content deserves it.
- Link Directories: Submitting your website to low-quality link directories is a waste of time and can harm your SEO. Focus on building backlinks from high-authority websites relevant to your niche.
- Article Spinning and Guest Posting on Spammy Sites: Spinning existing content and mass-producing guest posts on low-quality websites is a black-hat tactic. Search engines penalize spammy link building techniques.
- Commenting With Link Spam: Filling comment sections with generic comments containing your website link is ineffective and can come across as spammy.
- Private Blog Networks (PBNs): Creating a network of websites solely for the purpose of linking back to your main site could result in penalties.
- Link Cloaking and Redirects: Hiding the true destination of a link through cloaking or redirects is a deceptive tactic that can get you flagged by search engines.
- Negative SEO: Engaging in negative SEO tactics, such as manipulating competitors’ link building, can have serious repercussions and damage your website’s reputation.
Evaluating & Tracking Your Link-Building Efforts
Here’s how you can evaluate and track your link building:
- Monitor your backlink profile using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz Link Explorer that track the number of backlinks you have, the domain authority of linking websites, and the anchor text used. Look for an increase in high-quality backlinks from established websites.
- Track your website’s organic traffic and keyword rankings over time using Google Analytics and Search Console. You should see a gradual increase in organic traffic and improved rankings for your target keywords.
- Analyze referral traffic sources in Google Analytics to see which backlinks are driving the most traffic to your website. This will help you identify which tactics for link building are most effective and allow you to focus your efforts accordingly.
- Track how your link building impacts lead generation and conversions to measure their overall effectiveness on your business goals.
- Create regular reports that track your linking progress, including the number of links acquired, domain authority of linking sites, organic traffic growth, and conversions.
- Link building is an ongoing process. Regularly adapt your strategy based on what’s working and what’s not. Focus on acquiring high-quality links from authoritative websites and creating content that resonates with your target audience.