72% of the experts of the online ranking industry believe that link building is the most important way to get a website ranked on search engines, predominantly focusing on Google. After having a positive opinion from the 3/4th of the industry surveyed, there is no doubt that you can also use this technique to reach the first page of search results. But there is a problem here. Building links is not very simple. There is a complete science. If they were as simple as you are thinking, even then you would have required mastering a variety of other skills to utilize this strategy for ranking your website.
For the ones who know what link building is, the introduction about would be sufficient to highlight the importance of this technique but for the people who are new in the industry would definitely require a detailed overview. This is why we are discussing each and everything regarding link building in detail. If you feel any of the sections to be a repetition of your existing knowledge, you can skip and move to the information that you are searching for specifically.
What is link building?
Link building means the acquisition of hyperlinks from other websites to your website. In order to explain it in detail, let’s have an example from your life. We are sure that you would have used Wikipedia at least once. While hovering over the content, you would see black and blue text. Putting the mouse cursor over the blue text will allow you to leave the existing page and move to another one. Isn’t it the case? The doorway created for the audience of a page to enter a new website, actually describes the link building. In the case of Wikipedia, the blue text within the content directs you to the other Wikipedia pages only. Although this is one of the types of links, it is not the only type. We’ll shed some more light in the next section of this article.
What are the three main types of links?
These include internal links, inbound links, and outbound links. Each of them is explained below.
A. Internal Links:
Linking one of the pages or post of your website to the other page or post of the same website is known as an internal link. Such links are important for increasing the viewership and time spent on your website. Moreover, it is important from the content management’s perspective as well because you don’t need to explain the concepts, which have been discussed previously. All you can do is create an internal link and redirect your audience from one page to the other. It also facilitates SEO purposes.
B. Inbound Links:
The links that you get from other websites for your website are known as inbound links. In simple words, we call them as backlinks, and this is what we are going to focus in detail in this article.
C. Outbound Link:
The link from your website to the other websites is the outbound links. You can get help from such links to improve your SEO. At the same time, you’ll be able to create a higher level of credibility with your audience by quoting the websites that have the information relevant to what is being discussed.
A bit of trickiness can get you if you are new in this field. How? The inbound links for a website are the outbound links for the other and vice versa. So, you must be sure, which is your referent website when you talk about the link-building phenomenon. You can reread the definition to make sure that you are clear about all these concepts as things are going to get more complex ahead.
Importance of Link Building in SEO:
Before we move ahead, we must know why are we aiming to build links and how can they help us in ranking our website in search engines. Firstly, links are helpful for the users in navigating the content on the internet. They can easily follow the link to the website and get the required information. The more people visit your website, the higher are the chances of ranking on the first page. Secondly, the crawlers of the search engine rank the websites based on the links available. It helps them to know that a certain website is an authority over the topic because of these backlinks and they rank it accordingly. The quality of backlinks is important for ensuring that search engines consider your website as a credible one. Thirdly, the backlinks can be used as a way to bring the relevant traffic for the website.
In the Penguin update by Google, it was announced that the quantity of Backlinks would also be measured by the quality of backlinks for ranking websites. This makes the entire process of backlinking more crucial and probably difficult too. However, you don’t need to worry about it as we are going to help you in creating high-quality backlinks for SEO purposes.
Which other fields are important for mastering the link building techniques?
Link building cannot be managed alone. You either will need help from the experts of the other fields or would have to learn those skills on your own. Here are the fields that you would require to explore while mastering the links.
A. Content Management:
You’ll be expected to write content on pages that you wish to be linked to the other website. A strong and well-written content that is already optimized for SEO would generate better results when coupled with a backlink from the authoritative website. Additionally, it would be easier to generate a backlink if you’ll have the content worthy of it. Thus, it is necessary that you should be aware of the content writing and management strategies.
B. Digital Marketing:
Another skill set that you can associate with link building skill is digital marketing. Digital marketing is a broad dimension, which mostly deals with everything relevant to social media forums. While building links, you can’t ignore the social media websites, which already have high domain authority. Moreover, you might need to connect with the authors or administrators of high authority web pages by using the social media forums. So, an effective group on these forums and the way you can utilize them can be helpful.
C. SEO:
You must be wondering that link building is already a part of SEO, then why are we stating SEO as a skill that you must know. The reason is that link building is just a part of SEO. It is not the entire SEO. So, you’ll have to master the other elements to rank your page, and link building could probably be the last strategy that you should be working on. This is because it has certain prerequisites, i.e., optimized content, and at the same time, it is a continuous effort. So, you must have other factors set well in place to give the undivided attention to this aspect of SEO.
Keep this in mind that the entire SEO technique is continuous, but there can be certain elements that need optimization occasionally. Similarly, for certain elements, you can install plugins and keep them going on their own. So, the only part where you need to have continuous focus is link building.
We hope that there are no confusions regarding the basics that we have covered up until now. If everything is clear, then we must proceed to the next section about the high-quality links.
High-Quality Links:
Let’s start with discussing what high-quality backlinks for a website are and why are they important. The importance of these links is probably not hidden from you anymore.
Importance of High-quality Links:
The high-quality links ensure that the search engines get a message that your content is worth reading, informative for users, and optimal for the niche that you are serving. This is why high-quality links can increase the ranking of your page. Alternatively, by using low-quality links, you are instigating an automatic warning to the search engine that you are doing something span. Once the search engine confirms you do such activities, you’ll be penalized in the form of lower ranks of your website and other such ways.
What are high-quality links?
Following factors are important in determining the quality of the links:
A. Authority of a web page:
The web page from which you are getting a link back to your website is important in determining the quality of link that you are getting. The higher the authority of that particular page, the more you’ll be able to achieve your objectives of ranking your website.
B. Authority of the website:
Apart from the authority of the web page, the authority of the website would be important as well. The domain authority is the term that we use for determining the authority. Again, a higher number for these metrics would be beneficial for you as compared to the lower one. It is indicated out of 100. So, you need a number closer to 100 for best results.
C. Website Relevancy:
The relevancy of the website or the niche that you are targeting is going to create a stronger impact on the quality of the link that you’ll get. This is why; experts in the industry often advise to go for a link from a relevant niche rather than focusing on the high domain authority links only.
D. Position of link:
There are certain websites that allow the audience to comment on them along with a URL being a part of their message. Similarly, there are websites that allow you to create a guest post and add the link to your website in between the content. While analyzing, both these approaches, both of them provide the backlink to your website, but the importance and authority of each of it would be different. Without any doubts, the link within the content would be worth more than the one in the footers PR sidebars of the website.
E. Editorial links:
This is somewhat similar to the above point. The links that are placed in the content based on the wish of the editor of the website are the editorial links, and they are given higher importance by the search engines, especially Google. The other types of links are the ones that are placed on the website by creating a random profile or dropping of a post in the comments section. These links are not much acceptable by the search engines.
F. Anchor Text:
The word that is used for creating the backlink is known as anchor text. Linking to a website with a keyword as anchor text can be important in helping crawl engines know that the link is relevant. However, feting too many backlinks with keyword focused anchor text can also create a negative impact on the ranking of the website. So, you need to look for a mixture where some of the links can be keyword rich anchor text, and the other anchor texts could be without keywords.
G. Link Co-occurrences:
In cases where the anchor text is not the exact keyword, the content around it can also be helpful in determining the relevancy and authenticity of the content by the search engine. And definitely, the content relevant to the backlink would be given higher importance.
H. Do follow and no follow backlinks:
These are two types of backlinks. The Dior follow backlinks works as an endorsement to the content, and the website hears a no follow web link is not an endorsement and just information that the other website might have the relevant content. In order to build up the reputation of your website, you need endorsements so do follow backlinks are the ones that you should aim for.
I. Social Merits:
The social metrics of a particular domain also indicate the domain authority of that website. If a large audience shares and reshare the content on the social media platforms, then it shows the higher level of engagement of the users with the content along with higher credibility of the domain.
Types of SEO:
Before we move further, let us discuss the types of SEO. It is important because the categorization of the SEO techniques is closely linked with link building. The two types of SEO are white hat SEO and black hat SEO. White hat SEO is the SEO in which you look to satisfy the audience or visitors of your content. This is a longer path that will result in long-term benefits for your website. On the other hand, black hat SEO is the SEO technique in which the intention if the website owner is to spam the search engine and portray the website in a way that would mislead them to show the website as the top search result. Although it can yield a positive result for the short run as soon as the search engine would recognize it, you’ll be penalized and the result would be a negative ranking. In some cases, you can be completely blacklisted.
Ways to get high-quality links for your website syuing white hat SEO:
This section is particularly important as it is going to highlight the ways through which you can bring in the high-quality backlinks for your website. All the techniques highlighted in this section relate to white hat SEO Techniques.
A. Content Related Strategies for link building:
Broadly, there are four types of content that we usually use in the online or viral world. Each of these content types has a different tendency when it comes to link building. Let’s have a look at each one of them.
B. Visual Content:
All the diagrams, infographics, and images that we see on the website are included in the visual content. This type of content makes it easier for other people to link to you. Sharing any of this content from your website to any other source would earn you a link without putting in any effort.
C. Listicles:
Listicles are the easiest sort of articles that make it convenient for users to digest the content. This is because they are divided into several sections, and the audience can count them on fingers. Research has shown that such articles are shared more than normal articles. Whenever an article shared on social media or other forums, you get a backlink. So, try going for listless to get the most backlinks.
D. Use original data:
Using original data in the article can increase the possibility of sharing your article to the other website because whenever someone is going to cite the data, you are going to get a backlink.
E. Complete guides:
The last type of content advice that we can give you is to create loner guides containing all the information about the topic at one single place. This makes it easier for the people searching about a topic to get all the information from one place, and as a result, you can easily expect the article to be shared with others, thus generating a high-quality backlink.
F. Use of emails for creating high-quality backlinks:
By finding the email addresses of the people who own a website or small blogs, you can use different tools available online. You must look for relevant linking options before you dig into the email addresses. Once done, you should write a customized email addressing them and request them indirectly to view the content that you have written on the topic. Using this strategy can influence them to link their article to your page, thus the generation of a quality backlink.
G. Resource Page Link Building:
Through this technique, you’ll be able to generate the best links to your website. The purpose of existence of these resource pages is to provide the audience with links to some valuable information, thus you can become the part of that community within no time and get the traffic along with link generation.
In order to find the best resource pages, you should search for authentic and credible resource pages in the search engine. Using the keyword in the search query is essential, as you would be able to land upon the right type of pages without putting in any special effort. Once you find a resource page, you need to check its URL ranking and domain authority. If that suits you, then you should send a customized message stating your website and the reason that you think it should be in the resources.
H. Broken Link Building:
Another technique through which you can earn a link is broken link building. In order to get the most advantage of this technique, you need to install the plugins available to check the broken links of a website without bothering you to do anything special. You must use that plugin in your browser and search for the keyword based content. There are higher chances that you’ll find a broken link in one of the websites where you can get benefit by adding your link as a replacement.
Once you’ll find the broken link, you should send an email to the editor, highlighting that the content available on their website is great, but you have found a few broken links on their page. After that, you must mention your website and the way it can provide a replacement to that broken link. By using this technique, you’ll be helping the owner or editor of the webpage to optimize their website so there would be higher chances that a link to your website would be used, thus resulting in an inbound link for you.
Black Hat SEO:
Up till now, all the techniques that we have discussed are related to white hat SEO. But the techniques being discussed in this section are the SEO techniques that are against the policies of Google and can result in penalization if Google finds out what you are doing. This is why it is recommended to avoid this sort of SEO. However, there are some experts who propose that grey hat SEO can be generated through a mixture of black and white hat SEO. And there is no harm in using grey hat techniques. So, if you really want to take a risk, then you can go for black hat SEO techniques. Most of these techniques relate to link building. This why we are sharing the details here in this article.
AGAIN, a word of caution, we don’t recommend using these techniques for boosting the page ranking, as risk is way higher than the reward. But you must know these techniques to avoid them, or probably mix them with white hat SEO to get the ranking on the search engine.
A. Spam Blog Comment:
In order to increase the ranking of the page, some of the users leave their link in different blog posts randomly. This technique increases the number of backlinks that they get to their page or website, but this is one of the spammy practices that can lead to long-term problems for your domain. In order to use it is a grey hat strategy, you can use the comment section of a few of the blogs, and it would be considered natural, thus limiting the chances of flagging your website.
B. Shady guest posting:
Guest posting done just in order to share the link of your website without having the adequate knowledge on the subject or getting the paid guest post slot is another technique, which is not liked by search engines. Doing such practices often can result in the generation of a warning to your domain.
C. Cloaking:
Another technique that some of the users can employ is the use of cloaking. In this technique, the users get different results for the search query, whereas the search engine gets a different one. The search engine is usually fooled to rank the website on the first page. Sooner or later, the powerful algorithms of the search engines would highlight the anomaly and the domain would be banned forever.
D. Buying backlinks:
Some of the website owners are desperate to get their website ranked by the search engine, so they look for buying the backlinks. Google and the other search engines do not like the practice because it exploits the algorithm of the search engine to show a particular website to be on the top even when the content on it is not worthy enough to be on the top. In any case, if the search engines find it that you have been involved in such a practice, then you would be penalized. There is no direct way through which search engines can find that the links have been purchased if you have kept all the other things under consideration. But the person to whom you have requested to sell the link can definitely complain about your website, and you’ll have to face the consequences.
E. Excessive Link Exchange:
You might be thinking that you can simply exchange the link with the other websites to increase the authority. But that is not possible. You can easily share a link or two between websites. Search engines don’t have any problems with that. But if you’ll make it a practice, then it is a black hat practice, and the search engine will penalize you for being a part of such practices.
You can link with the same website you are having a link from if you have a legitimate reason for doing so. You can’t link anything in order to get the exchange. Moreover, if you’ll select a single website to build all your links or if you’ll link back to each website from which you have taken the link, then this is not a practical approach and you’ll have to bear the problems in the form of lower search rankings by the search engine or other penalties that the search engines would deem suitable.
In case, you receive the manual warnings related to the inappropriate content, make sure to request for reconsideration and vow not to do again such a practice again, and there are chances that you’ll get a second chance. But in case, your website has been warned by the search engine automatically, then there are little chances that you can continue working. This is why it is advised that you must not be involved in black hat SEO practices.
Advanced Link Building Techniques:
If you have practiced all the stuff above, then it is time to step up the efforts for the generation of backlinks. Here are some of these methods that can help you in increasing the number of links quickly but using the white hat SEO techniques.
A. Reclaim your Links:
If you are famous enough that someone would have used your domain name on their website, then you can easily get a backlink from that website. You just need to find those websites where you have been mentioned. There are some specific tools that czn be used. Through these tools, you’ll be able to flag the website where your name has been used. By sending them the request to provide you with the due acknowledgment, you can easily get a link. This is probably an easy method for this purpose but gain this would work well if you have a possibility of a lot of mentions of your domain name.
B. Use Reverse Image Search:
The use of reverse image search can provide you with a lot of links that are using your images without giving you the backlinks to your website. So, you can get in touch with them as well and ask for a backlink.
C. Find the backlinks of the competitors:
One of the other techniques that you can use for increasing the number of your high-quality backlinks is to analyze your competitors. The analysis of the competitor will reveal some of the forums through which your competitors have gathered the backlink. If a particular domain can link to your competitor, then there are higher chances that it can link to you as well. So, you can reach out to them and ask for a backlink.
Conclusion:
In this article, we have tried to cover everything related to link building, just to help you get over this fussy topic as quickly as possible. Once you’ll implement the techniques mentioned for link building, you’ll feel that it is an interesting job revealing the best results for you and your website.
We recommend that using white hat techniques for building links must be the only strategy used. Going for grey hat or black hat strategies can land you at the wrong place, leading to a lot of penalties, amongst which monetary and non-monetary consequences are included. So, it is better to avoid them.
Additionally, we have tried to cover all the important techniques that can help you. If you think something is left, please share it with us and our audience. We’ll love to hear from you.
