Linkbuilding, simply put, is the process of getting other websites to link to your website. All marketers and business owners should be interested in link building to drive referral traffic and increase the authority of their site.
Why create links? Google’s algorithms are complex and constantly evolving, but backlinks are still an important factor in how each search engine determines which sites rank for which keywords. Link building is one of the many tactics used in search engine optimization (SEO) because links are a signal to Google that your site is a quality resource worth citing. Therefore, sites with more backlinks offer to get better rankings.
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What is Link Building?
However, there is a right way and a wrong way to build links to your website. If you care about the long-term viability of your site and your business, you should only engage in natural link building, that is, the process of earning links instead of buying them or obtaining them through manipulative tactics (sometimes known as hot hat SEO). black, a practice that can basically get your website kicked out of search results).
That said, building natural and organic links is a difficult and time-consuming process. Not all links are created equal: A link from an authoritative website like the Wall Street Journal will have a greater impact on your SERP rankings than a link from a small or newly built website, but high-quality links are harder to get. This guide will teach you how to create quality links that improve your organic rankings without violating Google guidelines. Remember that link building is essential to achieve good organic positioning in searches.
Why is Link Building important for SEO?
Link building is important because it is a major factor in how Google ranks web pages.
Google notes that: “In general, webmasters can improve the rankings of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”
Let’s imagine we have a site that promotes wind turbine equipment that we sell. We are competing with another manufacturer of wind turbine equipment. One of the ranking factors that Google will take into account to determine the ranking of our respective pages.
Also Read: Global Content vs. local content
Link Building Strategies
Although the example above provides a general visual understanding of why link building is important, it is very basic.
It omits key factors such as:
• The trust and authority of the pages they link to.
• SEO and website content optimization.
• The anchor text of the incoming links.
The most important concept to understand is that, as Google says, your content is more likely to rank better for the keywords it targets if it gets external websites to link to its pages.
Simple strategies to get external links
There are a number of link building strategies used to get external websites to link to yours: Content Creation and Promotion – Create engaging, unique, high-quality content that people want to reference and link to naturally. and tell people about them. You have to spread the word before you expect someone to find your content and link to it:
Reviews and Mentions: Get your product, service, or website in front of influencers in your industry, such as popular bloggers or people with large social media followers.
Links from friends and associates – Ask people you know and work with to link to your site. Remember that relevance is important; Links from sites that deal with general topics or are in the same niche as your site will be worth more than links from random, unrelated sites. It may take a while to build a lot of links, but be patient and remember that shortcuts like link buying go against Google’s guidelines and can be devastating to your SEO. Don’t risk it.
Also Read: How Google Core Updates Affect Your SEO Positioning
Internal Link Building
There is an easy and underrated way to build links to the pages you are trying to improve search engine rankings. And it is a method over which you have complete control: Building internal links and linking to external pages (OBL) . When trying to get a website to rank, there are some key factors to keep in mind:
Anchor Text – One of the most important things that search engines take into account when ranking a page is the actual text that a linking page uses to talk about its content. Another factor that is taken into account is the quality of the page that sends the link; Search engines allow links from high-quality, trusted pages to count more in boosting rankings than dubious pages and sites.
Page to which the link is directed – Many times, when people talk about your site, they link to the main page. This makes it difficult for individual pages to achieve a high ranking (because it is very difficult for them to generate their own link equity). These are all elements that we cannot control when trying to get other sites to link to us. However, we can control all of these elements by linking to our own pages from our own content.
We can:
• Determine what anchor text to use.
• Decide which page to point that anchor text to.
• Make sure that the quality and content of the linking page is high (since it is our page!).
• Building external links to your site is important, but by focusing more of your efforts on internal link optimization you can build quality internal links with rich anchor text to the right pages, giving you a ranking boost without the same (free!).
Internal Link Building Tools and Tips
So how do you build these great internal links? Well, you can set up a system to interconnect your pages in a few easy steps:
Keyword Research for Link Building – First of all, you need to use a keyword research tool to have numerous suggested keywords that are relevant and popular.
Map Keywords to Content – Next, you need to group your keywords strategically, creating an information architecture that makes it easy to search. Link pages using specific anchor text – The last step is to apply your keyword research to smart linking; It does this by linking to the content using the keywords it has discovered. The execution of the third point is key. You have to make sure you are linking to the right pages with the right anchor text.
Here are a couple of quick tips to carry it out effectively:
Also Read: How to recover from a Google Core Update
Use search within websites
This is pretty simple, and can be used for multiple purposes:
• Find pages on your website to link to a new page – When you create new content, you want to make sure you can search your site for mentions of similar keyword variations that you might want to link to that page.
• Find a page created to link to – You can search on Google using “site:” plus your domain (site: excellentdigitalservices.com) and the pages listed in Google for your domain will appear.
• Create an internal SEO link building framework – To do this, simply assign keywords to the most logical pages. This way we will align that keyword with that page.
