“Backlink even though there’s some noise and certainly a lot of spam, for the most part, are still a really, really big win in terms of quality for search results.” –Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google.
The world of link building in SEO has changed significantly over the last several years. Tactics that were once used and were greatly effective are now easily caught and is being penalized by Google. But earning links is still very important to succeed in search marketing. Here is a little detail of what link building is all about – for beginners of course. It is the process of getting external pages to link to a page on your website and is used in search engine optimization. And it is important because it gives your website more traffic and helps you get a better rank. As Google becomes more complex and sophisticated at filtering out low-quality links so, we need to make sure link building techniques choose to focus primarily on the quality of the website or content.
With that being explained a little, let us discussed more on link building and learn who are the ones that can benefit from these and how link building is being used? We will use types of links that are commonly used by SEOs, tactics one can use for more effective link building, and some good and bad linking.
Link Building Explained
The process of getting a hyperlink from other websites to your own is called link building. And in common knowledge, a hyperlink is used to navigate between pages on the internet. Acquiring high-quality link usually gives you a high advantage against your competition and SEO. In order to understand the value of link building, it is important to know how one is created. First is to create an anchor tag, this will open the link tag and it will show a search engine that a link leads to something else, the second step is to make a hyperlink referral or address of the image or file. The third step is to show an anchor text of the link. It is often seen as a blue text that stands out from others and is a clickable link. The last is the closure of the link tag obviously understandable this signals the end of the link tag to the search engine. The link created will be used by search engines to discover new web pages and help determine how well a page should rank in the results. After the search engines have the page they will then decide if it’s sufficient quality to be ranked well for relevant keywords. Aside from the content they also look at the number of links pointing to that page from external websites and the quality of those websites too.
How Link Building Helps With SEO
Of course, link building benefits an online business. Because links are used for determining ranks so it will show your page on the top if it is ranked well and will generate more traffic for you. It can also build relationships when links are being outreached to relevant websites and blogs in your industry and links help you in brand building. Good link building helps build your brand and establish you as an authority in your niche.
Types of Links
After knowing the value of link building and how it works we should know about the types of links and define which are good and which are bad. Quality is the most important when doing link building, Google has started penalizing websites that build low-quality links or spam links. The first one we will tackle is natural editorial links, this type of link is the Holy Grail for SEOs. These links that you don’t need to beg for because website owners give it to you for free and they are also considered good links. Next is manual outreach link building this is common for beginners and involves contacting the bloggers and web owners personally asking them to link to you. Self-created links are links that can be considered as a bad link as it falls as a black-hat strategy with is considered unethical business practice. The links you choose to pursue with your strategy should depend on your existing link profile and it means avoid links that are not editorially given.
With that said we’ll also be giving you some of the tactics you can use on your journey as a link building beginner. Note though that these are only tactics commonly used and you are not limited to these. There are thousands of ways to get a link and collect links you just have to know what strategies and techniques you can use to get one. The right tactics will actually depend on the resources you have at your disposal as well as the industry you are in and involve with. Of course, some tactics work only for some industries so you have to be careful with that. New businesses are now rapidly competing and are easily growing, some industries are full of opportunities to engage with bloggers and start building a community. With that here are few link building tactics that can be applied to most types of websites.
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Content-Based Link Building
This tactic is in the form of a content like infographics, data visualization, white paper, how to guides, videos or image gallery. You create these assets with a view to earning links to them from people who find it relevant. Over time you aim to reach a point at which you don’t need to ask each and every link you receive.
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Guest Blogging
This one is a process of approaching other websites to see if they will publish a piece of content that you will write on their blog. Though this tactic is already considered way too common and is being haunted by Google Web Spam team but if you can create high-quality content then this will work for you.
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Ego Bait
This one is in the form of a content that plays on the edge of the people who are featured within that content. The hope is that by being included, these people will be lured to share the content links. But don’t go overboard with this keep it simple. And you can, later on, add details slowly but you can send your content across quickly with this.
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Broken Link Building
This last one works on the finishing someone else’s links and filling them with the regular one. This is already a popular practice that works.
Bottom Line
There you have it few tactics that will help you in link building. The article solely aims to equip you with the basic knowledge on link building and help you in doing your own. Remember all link building campaigns must start with something worth linking to. Hope this article helps you in your journey.
