Link building is a powerful tool for boosting the visibility of websites and increasing organic traffic. From trustworthy resources such as directories and industry sites, to creative tactics like guest blogging and broken link building, this beginner’s link builder guide covers all the basics with step by step explanations of each approach.
Whether you’re an experienced SEO expert or just starting out, you’ll find actionable tips and techniques throughout this article to improve your website’s ability to build links and to rank in search engine results pages. This primer on link building provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the best strategies to build quality backlinks.
TL;DR:
- High-quality links are the ones that are editorial, come from highly relevant and reputable sources, and are ideally do-follow.
- Tactics for building quality links include guest posting, broken link building, skyscraper technique, resource page link building, influencer collaboration, and engaging in community forums and blog comments
- Evaluate factors like linking root domains, total links, and domain authority using tools like Moz’s Link Explorer, MozBar, and Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool
- Ensure site relevancy using advanced Google search operators and tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Consider link position on the page, aiming for higher spots, and avoid using the same anchor text multiple times
- Determine if a link is editorially placed by checking the source code and looking for additional markup or “rel=nofollow” link attribute
- Build quality SEO links through content promotion, creating linkable assets, guest posting, and targeting competitor links
- Use tools like BacklinkManager to manage your link building eforts.
- Utilize tools like VoilaNorbert.com or HARO to locate suitable websites for guest posting and adhere to best practices
What Are SEO Links?
SEO links are a must for search engine optimization, as they are used to show search engines that a website is reliable. Link building is an essential part of SEO and involves getting other websites to link pages on your own site. Links can be inbound, outbound, or internal and can either help or hurt your SEO.
Backlinks, links pointing from other websites to yours, are the most common type of SEO link. Search engines view backlinks as “endorsements” for the website receiving them, so it’s important to get high-quality backlinks from trustworthy and relevant sites. Popular link building strategies include chasing competitor links, creating shareable assets, content promotion, and guest posting.
Internal links point from one page on your own website to another – these are key for SEO since they help search engines find and index your webpages plus aid visitors navigate around your site. It’s also worth noting that on-page SEO plays an important role when it comes to link building too – this includes optimizing titles, descriptions and keywords with friendly SEO terms on each page of your website.
External links point from one website to another – these are vital for SEO since they assist search engines identify relevance and popularity of a particular site online; quality external links aren’t easy to come by so use a good link explorer tool or other suitable software program to locate valuable ones!
Knowing the types of links available, how search engines interpret them, and why they’re necessary for successful SEO, will help you build quality connections for your webpage, which will boost its visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). With the right strategy & tools in place, you’ll be able to reach desired rankings in Google results with ease!
Why Are SEO Links Important?
Search engine optimization (SEO) links are a vital part of any SEO plan. Links help search engines comprehend and evaluate the relevance of your website to a particular topic. This is why link building is an essential element of SEO. When other websites connect to yours, it’s seen as a sign of trust and reliability by search engines, which can lead to higher rankings in search results. Quality backlinks are especially significant in SEO since they can drive organic traffic to your website from other sites. This can assist you with increasing your website’s visibility and authority. Additionally, link building can help you target specific keywords and topics by strategically placing anchor text on relevant websites. This can aid boost your website’s search rankings, for those keywords and topics.
Link building also helps diversify your website’s link profile. It’s important because you want to make sure that your site isn’t reliant on one source of links only. Having various links from different sources may improve your website’s search engine rankings too. It is also noteworthy that acquiring links from other prominent websites could be advantageous for SEO as it gives more credibility and trustworthiness to the site itself.
Finally, it should be noted that link building must be done legitimately – either buying links or selling followed links violates Google’s guidelines resulting in severe penalties. Manually added SEO links don’t carry much weight for Google rankings either, since they’re created by the owner not editorially given.
To guarantee success with link-building efforts, use quality techniques such as link-building for SEO and on page optimization tools along with understanding the importance of these types of links, strategies for creating quality ones and metrics used when measuring success.
How to Find Quality SEO Links
Finding quality SEO links is essential for success in SEO. Quality links are key to search engine ranking, as they show search engines the relevance and authority of a website. They also drive referral traffic and help build relationships with other websites.
Here are some tactics for building quality links:
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Guest Posting:
- Identify high-authority websites within your niche
- Pitch relevant, well-researched, and engaging content
- Include a backlink to your website in your author bio
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Broken Link Building:
- Use tools like Ahrefs or Screaming Frog to find broken links on relevant websites
- Create content that matches or surpasses the original resource
- Reach out to webmasters, offering your content as a replacement for the broken link
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Skyscraper Technique:
- Research top-performing content within your niche
- Create comprehensive, value-added content that outperforms the competition
- Promote your content to influencers and industry experts to earn high-quality backlinks
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Resource Page Link Building:
- Find relevant resource pages within your industry
- Create exceptional content that offers unique value
- Reach out to the resource page owner, requesting a link to your content
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Influencer Collaboration:
- Partner with influencers in your niche for content creation or promotion
- Leverage their audience and authority to secure backlinks and increase visibility
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Engaging in Community Forums and Blog Comments:
- Identify popular forums, Q&A sites, and blogs within your niche
- Offer insightful, helpful, and relevant comments or answers
- Include a link to your website or relevant content when appropriate
Remember, quality SEO links are built on relationships and valuable content. Focus on providing value to your audience and establishing genuine connections with industry peers to maximize your link-building efforts.
When building quality links, it’s important to consider the linked page name and site authority, relevancy of the site, link position on the page, and if it was editorially placed. Tools like Moz’s Link Explorer or MozBar can be used to evaluate factors such as linking root domains, total links, and domain authority.
Relevance matters too – links from related sites will look more natural and be more valuable for SEO efforts. Semrush’s Link Explorer can check link position. Lastly, make sure that the link wasn’t bought or acquired through any link-exchange schemes – only editorially placed ones count!
By following these steps, you’ll ensure quality SEO links that will boost your website rankings in SERPs!
Check Authority of the Page and Site
Checking the authority of a page and site is an essential part of finding quality SEO links. Tools such as Moz’s Link Explorer, MozBar, Ahrefs, and Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool can help evaluate factors like linking root domains, total links, domain authority, and MozRank. When assessing a page’s authority, it is important to consider the number of backlinks, the quality of inbound links, target keyword and relevance of content. Additionally Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR) metrics from Ahrefs can measure link popularity while leveraging anchor text when building links will be beneficial but should be done without trying to control how different pages and websites link to you or shoehorning all “right words” into anchor text.
By understanding the authority of a page and site, you can ensure that your built-in links are top-notch, which will benefit your SEO efforts by helping search engines understand your website’s relationship with other sites on the web. It is also advantageous to get connections from websites with a higher Domain Authority than yours as this could boost your ranking in Google search results.
Relevancy of the Site
When building links, relevancy is key to quality. You may want to consider factors such as content, website name and alignment with searcher’s intent. How to find the most relevant sites thought? Advanced Google search operators can help you find websites related to your topic. To identify links and patterns on the top pages look out for topics, style, length and format. Ahrefs’ Site Explorer can keep track of links gained and lost – helping create a link reclamation strategy. Evaluating site relevancy ensures high-quality links beneficial to SEO efforts; plus it helps search engines understand the relationship between your website and others online.
Link’s Position on the Page
When it comes to crafting quality SEO links, link position is another important factor you should take into account. Where the link appears on a page can have a major effect on its click-through rate (CTR). Generally, the higher it is, the better CTR you’ll get. Links in body content are more valuable than those found in footers and sidebars.
To check where your link is located in the text, use an SEO tool like SearchMetrics or search for it manually. Aim for a high spot – ideally first page of results – and avoid using the same anchor text multiple times when linking to one page; this could be seen as manipulative by search engines and result in penalties.
When building links, consider attributes too: typically ones without additional attributes imply endorsement and pass along ranking credit while no-follows can point to untrustworthy sources or pages created/paid for by destination page owners but most links still provide brand recognition and referral traffic.
By understanding the importance of link position and how to check it, you ensure the highest quality of your links (+ being mindful of link attributes and descriptive relevant anchor text helps readers understand what the linked page’s about!)
Is the Link Editorially Placed?
Editorial link example from https://loganix.com/what-are-editorial-links/
Editorial links are a key element of SEO link building – the process of increasing the visibility and ranking of a website in search engine results. Google places more emphasis on editorially placed links, as they are seen as more reliable and valuable than other types of link building. Simply put – editorial links are links that are placed in a text naturally by editors (as reference to a reputable source) rather than acquired through link exchanges or paid for.
To determine if a link is editorially placed, it’s important to check the source code for additional markup or the “rel=nofollow” link attribute used. Even nofollow links can be beneficial by sending referral traffic and potentially leading to followed links later on. When looking for editorially placed links, seek out high-quality ones that add value to your website, such as those from authoritative sites, related content, or embedded within text with descriptive anchor text. Editorially placed links help ensure your efforts appear trustworthy and valuable to search engines while using both follow and nofollow links helps avoid Penguin penalties and increase credibility in your profile. Lastly, tracking progress through link building is essential for measuring success and ensuring quality backlinks are created.
Strategies for Building Quality SEO Links
Link building is a must-have for SEO success. Quality SEO links come from reliable, authoritative websites and can be acquired through various link building tactics. These include content promotion, guest posting, competitor link building, creating linkable assets and broken other link building tools.
Content promotion is an effective way to get quality SEO links. By producing top-notch content related to your niche, you attract draw in links from other sites. This can be done by connecting with influencers and content creators as well as leveraging your own social media presence. Content promotion also helps boost website visibility and attract more organic traffic.
Linkable assets are pieces of material such as PDFs, webinars, infographics or tools that are designed to bring in more backlinks, or social shares – another great strategy for getting quality SEO links! Creating these assets will help you earn valuable backlinks from authoritative websites, which increases website visibility and ranking too!
Guest posting is yet another tactic for gaining quality SEO links – create high-quality content then reach out to bloggers/website owners so they feature it on their site earning you those all important backlinks! Plus, this method boosts website visibility and reputation too!
By following these strategies, not only do you build quality SEO links, but also increase website visibility an attract more organic traffic – essential steps towards higher search engine rankings. Let’s dive into each strategy in more detail below.
Go for Competitor Links
Pursuing competitor links is one of the most effective ways to build quality SEO links. To quickly identify link opportunities, analyze your competitors’ link profile and use a backlink checker tool to find websites that are linking to them but not you (e.g. in Ahrefs – see above) Utilize a link-intersect tool for further discovery. Reach out to those sites and ask them to include your website in their list of links.
The broken link-building strategy can also be used – look for websites that are linking to broken pages on your competitor’s sites.
You can monitor broken links with Ahrefs or dedicated tools like BacklinkManager:
When pursuing competitor links, consider the anchor text used in the link (it should relate to the target keyword), the relevancy of the link, as well as its position on the page. Follow these steps and you’ll effectively pursue competitor links while building quality SEO links for your website!
Create Linkable Assets
Creating quality linkable assets is a key part of any link building plan. Linkable assets are pieces of content crafted to draw in backlinks or social shares. These should be top-notch and related to your niche, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, PDFs, webinars, infographics, free apps/tools and free products/services, as well as industry reports with original data collected from research or surveys.
When designing linkable assets, such as infographics or industry reports, it’s essential to do keyword research to identify the most popular terms and topics connected with your niche. This can help you create material that will interest your target audience and have a better chance of earning links from reliable websites.
The Skyscraper Technique is another way of creating highly linkable assets – this time in the form of blog posts. It involves finding already performing content and then crafting something even better before contacting the people who linked to the original material.
As you set out to create linkable assets, take into account the position on the page too – links placed higher up are more likely to get noticed and clicked on. Also make sure it’s editorially placed, which helps improve the visibility of your website in search engine results.
Content Promotion
Content promotion is a key part of constructing quality SEO links. It involves taking advantage of social media, email campaigns, online communities and other channels to spread knowledge about your content and draw in links from other websites. This can be done by interacting with your community, connecting with influencers and creating interesting and useful content. Additionally, transforming your content into a video or posting inspiring quotes can help appeal to a broader audience.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is a content marketing tactic that can bring many advantages when done correctly, such as promoting your own website, reputation marketing and backlinking to authoritative site. To make the most of guest posting as a link-building strategy, you need to create quality content and contact bloggers and website owners. Moreover, it is important to avoid sending spam emails and use scripts for personalizing outreach.
When doing guest posting, concentrate on creating posts that are valuable and relevant to the topic of the site you are submitting to. Additionally, utilize keyword-rich anchor text instead of exact-match anchor text in order to attract links and to guarantee acceptance of your blog post, with quality SEO links in return.
The Skyscraper Technique is another effective link building approach for guest posting which involves finding already successful content then making something even better before reaching out to those who linked the original piece. This helps build relationships, inform people about your work and attract more high-quality SEO links.
Finding suitable websites for guest posting is also essential – tools like VoilaNorbert.com or HARO can help locate small sites or one-person blogs more likely to accept your guest post submission. Furthermore, it’s crucial to follow best practices while doing guest posting so as not cause any eye rolling!
By following best practices and using appropriate tools you can employ guest posting for gaining quality SEO links and measure efforts towards achieving desired results!
Measuring Your Link Building Efforts
Measuring the effectiveness of your link building campaigns is key to success. Google and other search engines use link building to assess the relevance and authority of webpages and websites. To make sure your strategies are effective, you must track progress by focusing on metrics such as Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority, Relevancy score, Site Quality score, Engagement score, and media outlets that covered content.
In addition to tracking these metrics, calculate cost per link by adding all direct costs for first link building campaign. This will help determine the cost of efforts and inform future decisions. Also review referrals report under traffic sources in Google Analytics for websites sending traffic to site.
SEO tools like Moz’s Link Explorer can measure link building too – insert URL into tool to check number of quality backlinks page has; Semrush Backlink Audit tool checks broken links & evaluates quality of backlinks.
To compete in search results it’s important to understand how many backlinks are needed – use Google’s SERP Analysis report compare number of backlinks for URLs ranking term; understanding metrics & looking beyond links ensures successful link building efforts!
Beyond Links: Awareness, Amplification and Sentiment
Beyond link building, there are other essential elements of a successful SEO strategy, such as boosting brand recognition, reach, and sentiment. Brand awareness is critical since it can drive targeted traffic to your website from people who already know your company and what it offers. It can also enhance customer trust and loyalty, which could lead to increased conversions and sales.
To increase brand awareness, you need to create content that’s shareable and linkable. This means creating material that’s informative, entertaining, and valuable enough for site owners to want to link from web pages to their own websites. Additionally, use tools to find unlinked mentions of your brand then contact those sites requesting a link.
Reach or amplification is another key component of SEO that helps boost the visibility of your website. Utilize social media platforms, influencers, and other channels for spreading your message while getting more eyes on your content. This will help extend the reach of your website along with increasing the credibility, authority, and trustworthiness of your brand name.
Finally consider the sentiment associated with your brand by monitoring reviews comments plus mentions online about it as well as tracking customer sentiment over time too. By understanding and responding appropriately, you can identify areas needing improvement while building relationships with customers at the same time too!
By getting all these boxes checked you’ll be able to create an all-encompassing SEO strategy helping achieve goals set out in advance. With a thorough knowledge base regarding brand awareness reach and sentiment combined with a successful link building campaign – ensure high visibility trustworthiness among target audience members alike!
Summary
Link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO), and requires developing quality links from various sources such as website authority, relevance, page position, and if the link is editorially placed. Various strategies such as content promotion, creating linkable assets, competitor link building, and guest posting should be employed to ensure successful and quality SEO links that can help improve website visibility and rankings.
Furthermore, metrics such as Domain Authority, Relevancy score, and Site Quality score, as well as measuring cost per link and using tools like Moz’s Link Explorer, Semrush Backlink Audit or BacklinkManager should be used to monitor link building efforts.
In conclusion, a successful SEO strategy should employ both link building and brand awareness campaigns in order to appeal to a wider audience and achieve visibility and trust for the website.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which links are best for SEO?
The best links for SEO are those that are high quality and come from authoritative, reputable sources. Links from websites with a good reputation, having relevant content to the linking website, and naturally integrated into the text are considered most valuable links by search engines.
Do links improve SEO?
Yes, links improve SEO. Links are a cornerstone of search engine optimization (SEO). Links from other websites help to increase your website’s credibility and authority, allowing search engines to better understand what content is important and valuable.
This can lead to increased rankings and more organic traffic.
How many links are best for SEO?
There’s no rule of thumb when it comes to building links to specific pages as it depends on the competition. You can check it easily in tools like Ahefs which For some, 3-4 links are a good number. For others – you may need many more links. Just remember to build them naturally over time as building hundreds of links to one page at once can be seen as over-linking, which could land you a Google penalty.
Ultimately, the best practice is to build links link carefully and organically.
