Link building is one of many services an SEO consultant provides that contributes a large part to developing the authority and credibility of your website. The objective is to acquire links from other websites that link to your site to create backlinks.
What does backlinking mean?
Backlinking is the act of placing a hyperlink with the URL of your website on another website, which acts as a way of taking a user from one site to another. A backlink acts as a referral to provide users with enhanced user experience.
What does a backlink look like?
A backlink can take the form of text or images. Most websites will change the text colour or underline text to show that if you click on the underlined words it will take you to another webpage. Anchor text is the words that are used in the hyperlink that links one site to another.
Backlink examples
Naked URL backlink: https://DigitalDucats.com
Brand anchor text backlink: Digital Ducats Inc.
The two backlinks above are considered Internal Backlinks because they link to other pages within this website. An External Backlink would link to another website. Link building services will build external links on other sites that point to your website.
What are the benefits of backlinks?
- Strengthen optimization
- More authority (ranking power)
- More traffic
Search engines analyze on-site optimization as well as off-site optimization which is largely made up of the number of backlinks from other websites. Backlinks boost the credibility you have in optimizing for specific search phrases.
Websites with high authority transfer more authority to your site via a backlink. A link from any website counts as a “vote” of credibility. Links from high-authority websites are the best backlinks to acquire because their authority makes them highly credible, making their vote count for more than a website of lesser authority.
Backlinks provide a means to drive traffic to your website. The more backlinks to your site from other websites, the more opportunities exist that allow people to visit your website. Additionally, the more referring domains that link to you, the higher your ranking becomes which will increase traffic to your site.
Why are backlinks so important?
Backlinks account for a large percentage of the ranking factors that go into a search engine assessment of your website. You need backlinks in order to build authority and ranking ability in a competitive niche.
Backlinks are an important part of SEO because they optimize your site based on the relevance of the content on the site that is linking to yours. It’s not as simple as getting a link from any site. In fact, there are many instances where linking to a poor quality website can have an adverse effect on ranking.
The reason for another site to link out should be to enhance the user experience. If your website is in the marketing industry, your link should be from marketing and business sites. The more links your website accumulates that are contextually relevant, the more optimized your site becomes within your niche.
What are link building strategies?
A link building strategy is a specific tactic used to acquire backlinks. There are numerous ways to get other websites to link out to yours so a strategy should be formulated in the most effective method that will generate the best results.
10 types of link building examples
- Guest posting
- Link reclamation
- Broken links
- Resource pages
- Publishing statistics and fact sheets (linkbait)
- Expert opinions
- Roundup articles
- Interviews
- Blogger outreach
- Sponsor scholarships/Charity
Link building tactics have varied over the course of the years so it’s important to know what’s working and what will actually damage your website. There are penalties given for unnatural link building tactics in which Google suspects there is a link scheme in place.
White hat vs black hat link building
The white hat represents good tactics and the black hat is the underhanded tactics. It’s important to know the difference because there are methods of backlinking that will damage your site severely. Considering the number of updates Google continuously rolls out a clear understanding of the rules that can save a lot of time and money.
Black hat link building refers to any type of linking practices that attempt to falsely manipulate the authority and ranking position of a website. Google updates have significantly reduced the amount of black hat linking strategies in practice by identifying the practices and making them punishable. If a website is exposed for participating in what is deemed as a “link scheme” a penalty will be imposed from moderate to severe.
White hat link building focuses on building links in the most natural way possible. Links are intended to be used as a way for a website to enhance the experience of a user by providing additional information from another site.
Natural linking patterns show search engines that your site is providing value to users and that websites in similar industries are crediting your content by referring people to your site through the link provided. White hat link building is the safest most effective way to provide longevity in the top-ranking positions.
