Link Building: The Definitive Guide

If your goal is to increase your organic reach, then ignoring link building can be a fatal mistake. In the world of digital marketing, backlinks are like votes of confidence from other websites. It indicates that others trust you and that your content is valuable.

It is a simple equation: the more high-quality and trustworthy sources of backlinks you have, the higher your content will get in the search results. As easy as it sounds, it is tough to earn high-quality links. This is where these guides come in.

I have 15 years of hands-on experience in search engine optimization (SEO). My journey began in 2010 with my first paid role focused primarily on link building. Since then, a lot of changes have happened in link building, and fortunately, it still works.

This link-building guide will help you understand the ins and outs of link building, how to create them, types of links, importance, strategies, and much more.

What is Link Building?

Link Building is the process of acquiring links from other websites where they post your link. These links are known as backlinks and act as a signal for search engines to rank a website.

When you have a good link-building strategy, you can improve your website’s search ranking, drive organic traffic, and enhance the domain authority of your website.

Where did link building come from?

The concept of link building started in the early days of search engines. Google introduced an algorithm called the PageRank algorithm in the late 1990s. This ranking factor made backlinks a crucial ranking factor to rank your website higher on the search results.

This made websites engage in aggressive link exchange programs, including reciprocal linking, paid links, and automated link building schemes. All these schemes made the quality of search results go down.

To overcome this, Google refined its algorithm and prioritizes high-quality, relevant links. Updates like Penguin Update penalized spammy tactics to be penalized forcing SEOs to adopt ethical and value-driven link-building methods.

Today, Link building requires a well-organized strategy that helps you in acquiring high-quality links from reputable websites.

Why and How Important is Link Building?

Link Building is a very important part of growing your organic reach, which directly impacts your website’s visibility and authority. A strong link-building strategy allows you to improve your search rankings, making your brand grow big and establishing your website as an industry leader. The following are the reasons why link building is important-

• Backlinks are some of the most important ranking factors for search engines. Creating high-quality backlinks would ensure you rank higher on the search results.
• A strong backlink profile allows you to attract traffic from search results as well as authoritative sources.
• A website having diverse and strong backlinks helps you gain higher domain authority, making it more competitive in search results.
• Links from reputable websites enhance your brand’s reputation and help you become an industry authority, essentially helping you to score well with the E-E-A-T Algorithm Update as well.
• Search Engine crawlers use backlinks to discover new pages, hence improving the indexation of your site faster.

Now question remains, how important is link building? In 2023 Google’s Gary Illyes shared at a PubCon Austin that links were not top 3 of Google’s search ranking signals.

Does this mean Google links are no longer important? Not at all. The value of links has simply evolved as Google’s ability to understand content has improved.

Let’s look at it another way: if I launch a blog today and publish top-quality content, should Google instantly trust it? Probably not. That’s where Google relies on EEAT to determine trust and backlinks are an important part of that equation.

While it’s unclear how heavily AI-driven searches will rely on backlinks, I’m positive they’ll still matter. Authority, trust, and relevance don’t vanish with AI, but they will evolve.

Understanding Backlinks’ Values

All Links Are Not the Same, and the value of backlinks depends on multiple factors. If you understand the factor that affects backlink value, then you can formulate your own backlink quality. Here is how you can understand backlinks better-

Authority of the Website Giving Value

The authority of the website giving your backlink carries a greater weight than links from low-quality sites. Whenever you are looking for backlinks, checking for the Domain Authority and Page Authority of that website is a good metric to evaluate for backlink building. The higher the domain and page authority of a page, the better the ranking of the website.

Relevance of the Link

A backlink is more valuable if it comes from a website within your same industry as compared to another irrelevant website. Irrelevant links may have little to low impact and sometimes even be flagged as spammy.

Placement of the Link

On a website, there are multiple areas where links can be placed. Link placement is also important for the relevance of the link. Links placed within the main content of a webpage carry more weight, and links in the footer sidebar are something that is good but not as good as link placement in the content.

Anchor Text

Anchor Text is a clickable text where you place a backlink. The anchor text allows you to showcase information to the user, making the link user-friendly. Keywords are also placed as anchor text, and keyword-rich anchor text allows you to boost ranking.

Nofollow vs Dofollow Links

Understanding the difference between dofollow and nofollow will help you take your link-building strategy up a notch. Let’s explore how each type of link attribute will help your link-building strategy-

Dofollow Links

A Dofollow link is a link that passes link equity, i.e., link juice, and contributes to the website’s SEO scores. It helps your website to rank higher and increases the domain authority of the website. It is typically achieved by editorial content, guest posts, and getting citations naturally from others.

Nofollow Links

A Nofollow link does not pass the equity and does not contribute directly to the rankings. It is commonly used for sponsored content, user-generated content, or in the comment section. This type of link does not pass the link juice. However, it can help you in driving traffic to your website and increase the brand visibility, potentially increasing the SEO benefits.

Link Building Strategies

Now that you know everything about backlinks, it is time to understand the strategies that you can adopt to build those links for your website. Here are some of the slink-building strategies that you can follow-

Content-Driven Link Building

Creating high-quality content helps you in naturally attract backlinks to your website. Good quality, informative, and engaging content is valued by other websites as linking to authoritative sources enhances their credibility.

When you provide valuable data, insights, or research, other sites are likely to reference that information and feature your research data on their website and positioning their website as a reliable resource for the topic.

For instance, creating an ultimate guide, original research, case studies, and infographics can help you get natural backlinks to your website. You can promote your content through social media, email outreach and collaborate with influencers to market your content.

Guest Posting

Writing articles on authoritative websites in exchange for backlinks is called guest posting, and it is one of the common but effective ways you can get backlinks. It also helps your website to get exposure to the users of other websites, build relationships with them, and gain contextual links for your website. To get this right, you have to focus on the high-authoritative website with relevant audiences within your niche.

HARO & Digital PR Link Building

One of the easiest ways to earn high-quality links is through HARO or Digital PR. You can help a reporter and answer their queries that they are researching, and in return, you can get featured in their article and receive a link from high-authority publications. You can also leverage the Press Release, industry news, etc, to earn backlinks from new publications.

Broken Link Building

There are billions of pages created and deleted every day. One of the strategies that you can adopt for link building is to find out the pages that have been deleted and see what pages are linking to them.

When you find those links, you can suggest your content as a replacement, allowing you to earn a link without doing anything. You are essentially helping the site owner fix a broken link, which earns a high-quality backlink.

Skyscraper Technique

The skyscraper technique is a technique where you find a high-performing competitor’s content with numerous backlinks and create your version but better and more informative than this. (Do not copy paste)

It helps you get the same attention and links that your competitor is getting. You can reach out to the sites linking to your competitor and suggest your content as an updated resource for the content, allowing you to earn the link.

Resource Page Link Building

Some websites feature other websites as resources and post links and their resource pages. You can specifically target those pages and try to get your link to be featured on the resource page related to your industry. These pages often contain a list of useful links and references that are highly sustainable for getting clicks.

Influencers & Blogger Outreach

Partnering with your industry experts and influencers is a great way to earn some quality backlinks. You can include product reviews, interviews, and collaboration to gain those important backlinks from these influencers. The backlink that you gain from this would be best suited if you sell some product or service, as you can not only gain a backlink but also make some sales with this.

Forum & Community Link Building

There are a lot of forums and community websites that you can use to gain some links. You can engage in Industry forums, Q&A websites like Quora, Reddit, etc., and other community forum websites. The best strategy to follow is to provide valuable insights or answer questions, and while doing so, you can provide your content or product as a solution.

Social Media & Content Promotion

Social media is one of the most important platforms, as many people spend hours on social media. Promoting content on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit etc would help you. You can encourage shares, engagement, and visibility that may lead to backlinks you get on your website.

Directory & Local Citations

There are many directories and local citation websites where you can submit your business, and where you can also get your website listed. By listing your business in these niche directories and local business listings, you can gain valuable backlinks and improve your online presence. This is especially important if you are a local business.

Future of Link Building

As the landscape of link building is changing continuously, evolving with the advancement in search engine algorithms and AI is the new norm. Some of the emerging trends are as follows-

• Google will now prioritize links that are highly relevant and come from authoritative sources.
• The quality of links will be more important than the quantity of links.
• A smarter algorithm will assess the link quality based on the content context and user intent instead of only considering keywords.
• Brand mentions would play a huge role in getting more quality backlinks, as they help you in PR.
• With the E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) algorithm update, high-authority links from credible sources will carry more weight.
• As AI search evolves, traditional link building may slowly give way to brand mentions.

Conclusion

Link building is a cornerstone of SEO and plays an important role in improving your Google search rankings. You can drive traffic and establish the domain authority of your website if you have a robust link-building strategy.

But when you build a link, you have to focus on quality over quantity. When you acquire backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites, you can increase your website’s credibility and long-term performance.

As the search engine algorithm evolves, the demand for quality-driven links will rise. To achieve that, you can engage in guest posting, HARO, or influencer outreach to build a robust link-building strategy. Also, focus on increasing your brand’s presence overall, ensuring that you can have followers. Ultimately, the more people know you by name, the better your online presence will be as well.