If you have a website and want to get traffic from organic search, you need to consistently secure good links from relevant websites. This means you need link building, which combined with solid technical SEO foundations, great on-page SEO, excellent content, and a good user experience, can be super effective in driving more organic traffic.
That's the short explanation. Now let's take a deeper look.
Link building: what is it?
Link building is the practice of promoting your website to other website owners with the primary goal of obtaining a link (hyperlink or backlink) from their site to yours. The result of this practice is improved search engine visibility.
Why build links? Google's algorithms are complex and constantly evolving, but backlinks remain 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 these are a ranking signal (the most important) for Google.
Therefore, sites with more quality backlinks tend to rank better.
There's a right way and a wrong way to build links. If you care about the long-term viability of your website and business, you should only focus on building natural links, rather than buying them or obtaining them through manipulative tactics (sometimes known as Blackhat SEO, a practice that can get your site banned from search results).
That said, natural link building is a difficult and time-consuming process. Not all links are created equal: a link from an authoritative website, such as a newspaper, will have a greater impact on your rankings than a link from a small or newly established website.
This guide will teach you how to build quality links to improve your organic rankings without violating Google's guidelines.
Remember, link building is essential to achieving high organic search rankings.
Why are links important for SEO?
Link building, as mentioned above, is important for SEO because it is the key factor by which Google ranks web pages.
To understand this better, we need to go back to the pre-Google days, when search engines like Yahoo were the dominant players. Search results were then ranked 100% based on a web page's content.
Google's famous PageRank Algorithm changed the game. Instead of simply analyzing a page's content, Google looked at how many people linked to that page.
Nearly 20 years later, links are still one of the key ranking factors and the best way to determine the quality of a web page.
That said, thanks to updates like Google Penguin, Google now focuses on link quality (not just link quantity).
You may be wondering:
What exactly are high-quality links? And how do I build them?
This is what I will cover below.
How to identify quality links
Before selling how to do link building, it is important to know what a quality backlink depends on
This way, through a little analysis, you can create links that will actually improve your positioning on Google.
With that said, here's how to identify them:
Site Authority
The quality of a link is determined by the authority of a domain. I personally use Moz to calculate the DA (Domain Authority).
Generally, a backlink from a site like ilsole24ore.com will have a greater impact than other links.
While these links are difficult to obtain, they are worth the effort.
Page Authority
Is the page you're linking from authoritative? If so, that backlink will have a HUGE impact on your rankings.
In fact, after extensive testing, I've discovered that the authority of the page linking to your site is the most important factor. This is because these pages rank well, have numerous links pointing to them, and therefore convey more authority (also known as PageRank) to your site.
Trust
To measure the trustworthiness of a website, I use TF (Trust Flow) and CF (Citation Flow) metrics, metrics created by Majestic in 2012 and now used as standard metrics to measure the quality of a given URL.
The calculations used to create these metrics are complex, but in general they can be defined as follows:
- Trust Flow: Measures how influential a URL might be based on the quality and authority of the sites linking to it.
- Citation Flow: Measures how influential a URL might be based on the number of sites linking to it.
Site relevance
When it comes to links, a site's authority matters. But so does its relevance.
For example, let's say you run a website about the Mediterranean diet.
And get a link from an authoritative site that speaks about skiing. Will that link be relevant?
In general, you want to get backlinks from authoritative sites that are closely related to your site.
Other factors that make a backlink effective
Position of the link on the page
The position of your link on a page is important. Is it in the first paragraphs or towards the end of the page?
Specifically, backlinks hidden in footers and sidebars aren't as valuable as links found in the middle of the page's content.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text section of a link. Google uses anchor text as a ranking signal.
It usually provides a keyword or a short description of what the user will find on the page when they click the link.
Additionally, anchor text analysis helps identify sites that attempt to manipulate search engines.
Using an exact match keyword in a backlink anchor text is one way to strengthen the authority of that term.
However, if used repeatedly across all backlinks, Google will view this unnatural use as black hat techniques. When backlinks are earned naturally, anchor texts tend to be different.
Nofollow vs. Dofollow
rel=”nofollow” is a tag added to a link that tells search engines, “Ignore that link and don’t pass any value to the destination page.”.
This means that nofollow links do not pass link juice.
Of course, when it comes to SEO, you want to get “dofollow” links.
By default, all links are dofollow, or pass link juice. When you don't want to pass authority through a link, you should use the nofollow tag.
Now that you know how to evaluate the quality of a link, it's time to start building them.
SEO Link Building Strategies (tutorial)
Below we'll look at some of my white hat link building strategies for building quality backlinks.
H2: Chapter 3: How to Get World-Class Links with Content Marketing
Build Links Through Email Outreach
If you want to build links through a white hat strategy, you should use email outreach.
First, search for your target keyword on Google.
Take the URL of the first result and enter it into a link analysis tool (I'm using Ahrefs in this example).
Next, click on “Backlinks” in the sidebar and then “Referring domains” to find a list of sites.
How do you know which sites to target and which to ignore? Reread the section on backlink analysis.
Find their email address and send a message like this:
“Hi [Name],
I was searching for content on [Topic], when I came across your article: [Article Title].
Great content! I especially liked [Something specific from their article].
Also, I just posted a new guide on [Your Topic]: [URL].
As someone who writes about [Topic], I thought you might be interested.
My guide may be helpful to your users and your page. Anyway, keep up the great work you're doing on [Site]!
Thank you,
[Your name]”
Notice how the script allows for a lot of customization without a lot of effort.
Skyscraper Method
The Skyscaper strategy refers to the process of developing higher-quality content than what is currently ranking well with the aim of then reaching people who might find your content interesting.
It's a time-consuming strategy that, if executed correctly, can be worth its weight in gold.
The Skyscaper approach is a three-step process:
- Determine a target keyword and research the competitor that ranks well for that topic you think you can improve;
- Produce quality content;
- Contact the websites that link to the original and request that they change their links to your content, which is better than the competitor's.
This strategy is advantageous because it is less risky than developing brand new, untested content.
Guest Post
Finding guest post opportunities on similar, high-authority websites is another effective white-hat linkbuilding strategy.
However, you can't simply pay an authoritative site to get links. This is because, in addition to their origin, Google's algorithm considers the quality of your backlinks. So you'll need to find a way to get those backlinks naturally. It's also a simple but time-consuming strategy. .
You don't have to be a renowned expert in your field to guest post, and even if you don't have much copywriting experience, you can learn how to do it.
What matters is that you create content that will benefit the site you publish on, otherwise it can clearly also become a black-hat SEO technique.
Advanced Link Building Techniques
Broken links
Also called broken link building, it is one of the link building strategies that instead of directly asking for a link, adds value to someone's website.
Here's how to do it:
- Check links on a site with the LinkMiner app.
2. Find pages with lots of outgoing links – The more links a page has, the more likely it is that one of them is broken.
3. Check for broken links – This is where you run the extension you installed in the first step.
4. Email the site owner about their broken link and submit your site's content as a replacement.
Here's the script I recommend:
“Subject: Problem with [Their site name]
Hi [Name],
Are you still updating your site?
I was searching for content on [Topic] when I came across your page: [Page Title or URL].
However, I noticed that some links didn't seem to work:
[Broken Link URL]
Also, I recently published [Your Content]. It might be a good replacement for [Report a specific broken link].
Anyway, I hope this helped you.
Thank you,
[Your name]”
Black Hat Linkbuilding
No link building guide would be complete without a chapter on black hat SEO.
Black-hat link building is fairly easy to spot: if the links go against Google's guidelines, they're probably black hat.
Does this mean you should avoid black hat link building altogether?
This is your choice. I personally don't recommend black hat link building.
That said, whether you are a white hat or black hat SEO, you need to be aware of the penalties Google imposes.
Let's see them briefly:
Google Penguin
A Google algorithm penalty that specifically targets sites that use spammy linkbuilding techniques (such as low-quality guest posts, PBNs, and blog comment spam).
How to avoid it?
Build links using white-hat SEO link building strategies. There's also data showing that you can avoid this penalty by minimizing exact-match anchor text.
Conclusion
That's all for my guide to the link building for SEO.
There's no secret shortcut to securing quality links. You'll need to identify how your website adds value to the web and the opportunities that exist in your niche.
With a little creativity, research, analysis, and link building strategy, you can make the difference your website needs.
Which strategy would you like to try? Or maybe you have some questions.
In any case, let me know by leaving a short comment below.
