Link Building is considered a good search engine optimization or SEO strategy. Apart from the images, content, customer reviews, formal structure, what your website page needs is links. Through effective links, your website will attract organic traffic. 

There is no definitive solution or guide for building links. Because it generally depends on the content of your website. There are millions and millions of websites on the internet, and the content of all these websites differs from each other significantly. Therefore, when you add links to your website content, add those links that will help you improve your business. 

There are certain links that are good for SEO, but they are not good for your business, as they will not guarantee you long-term success. You need not choose low-quality links as they are not authentic. Always opt for links that are top quality and have relevance to the subject of your website. 

In this article, we have explained the concept of building links, why they’re important, how it helps in SEO and the strategies you should follow for acquiring links. 

What is Link Building in SEO? 

Acquiring links from other websites and including them in your website is known as link building. Search engines like Google crawl the web pages, including yours, to find out how authentic your webpage is. Adding links to a website helps SEO, which in turn helps the webpage to rank better on the search results page of Google or Bing. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating an SEO strategy:

• Relevance: Imagine this, you have asked your two friends for some financial advice. One of my friends gives you advice on saving and investing money wisely. While the other friend advises you to buy a vacuum machine. You will be a little confused, right? Same way, Google gets confused if it sees the links of irrelevant topics on your website. 

• Authority: There is either the Page Authority or the Website Authority. Page Authority refers to Google’s page rank algorithm. Google will vote for a page that has many links pointed on it. It is also a good SEO strategy to link websites that have strong backlinks. Website authority or Domain Authority uses a metric score that determines where the website domain will rank in SERPs. 

• No-Follow vs Follow links: Both no-follow and follow links are important for SEO. No-follow links do not increase a page’s rank. Whereas a do-follow link will significantly increase a page’s rank. Therefore, it is in your best interest that you always use follow links because they will help in your website’s page ranking. 

• Placement: Link placement is an element that impacts the CTR of a webpage. If you have placed a link in the written content, people will follow that instead of a link that is in the sidebar. It is because content catches people’s attention. 

Why Is It So Important? 

Links matter a lot for websites. They can be the reason your website gains a lot of attention. Building links greatly helps in SEO too. It is through the links on your website that the Google algorithm decides where your page can rank. At least 52% of digital marketers in the US believe that link building helps a page in increasing its organic rankings. 

Search engines like Google crawl many websites, when they crawl your website they look at everything. They pay attention to the keywords, images, white spaces, page structuring, and the links you have included in your content. If you have added links that have a high search rank themselves, then there are higher chances of your page ranking among the top searches as well. 

The linking strategy is a little complex to understand, but there is a reason why Google considers it as a ranking factor. It is because a link is seen as a vote. This vote means that the website owner is confident enough that the resources of the linked website are useful and genuine. 

In simple terms, think of it as Google asking you the directions to a supermarket. If you give them wrong directions, Google will put you down in their list of friends (meaning the page rank). However, if you provide Google with the right directions, then it will help you too by putting your name on top, i.e., increasing your website’s ranking. 

How To Do Link Building? 

Link building is a complex task. You have to remember many details. But as your website grows and your audience increases, you will need to think of other options. 

Here is how you can build links effectively and make your website SEO friendly. 

• Add links: This is the simplest way of link building. You can add links in two ways. Comments on Blogs: You can post a genuine comment on a blog that is related to your website content and add a link to your website. For example, on a blog post about “Night Time Routines” you can type a meaningful comment and add a link saying “If you are looking for night creams, you can buy the best ones at – your website link.” Social Media: In the same manner, you can find relevant Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn posts, and YouTube videos and add your website link to them. 

• Ask for links: This means just what you think it means, you ask another website owner for a link to their website, and you give them a reason to use yours too. You can ask for links through guest blogging, case studies, links to images, and fixing broken links.

• Buy links: This is a risky move if you do not trust the other party. Unfortunately, here you can end up getting scammed or you can receive a broken link. If you get bad links, that will end up costing your page rankings to you. It is only when the other website owner looks trustworthy and their website content looks legitimate, you can buy links. 

• Earn links: You can only earn links when people know you and your business. Another website will link to your website page when they feel that you have provided them with valuable material. 

The Best Link Building Techniques 

There are many link building techniques you can use to tell the Google algorithm to rank your page higher. Google will verify these techniques according to its standard. 

• Fix the Broken Links: Wouldn’t you find it frustrating to click on a link only to find words like “Error 404” and “The link is broken”. Broken links may be broken because the article has been taken down by the website owners or because the website’s URL structure changes. So instead of upsetting your audience, you should give them a fix. When a particular link is broken, add a redirecting link that will work. 

• Build Relationships: By building relationships, it is meant that you can contact people of your industry. For example, if you sell coffee seeds online on your website. Then you can find people who have a common niche as you. Maybe coffee enthusiasts who have blogs. You can also engage in partnerships with people. As your business sells coffee seeds, you can do a partnership with a popular café. 

• Guest Blogging: As a guest blogger, you write articles and blogs on another website. You may do it for a friend or a close cousin. By guest blogging, you can inform the audience of your friend’s website about your business. You can add links to your website and other social media handles. 

• Find Backlink Partners: As a newcomer, it will be hard to have many backlinks. You do not know who you can trust for these backlinks. People may end up scamming you. In such a situation, you can start small by asking your known group of people to link your website on their blogs or websites. As you grow your business, you should choose to have backlinks from pages that have higher domain authority. 

5 Link Building Strategies For 2022 and Beyond 

These link building strategies will ensure that your site gets organic traffic to it and your audiences engage with the website. 

• Interviews: You can get interviewed or do interviews with other famous people from your industry. Interviews will give the audience insight into your personality. Many people associate an individual’s work with their personality. Your raw and honest opinions could impress a wider range of audiences. 

• Freelance for links: With a few freelance gigs here and there, you can engage with people who would be willing to help you out. Excellent freelancing work will impress a client. When you create a great impression on them, they will be willing to do you a small favour. 

• Engage the audience through contests: Giveaways are extremely popular these days. For instance, if your website sells eco-friendly notebooks, you can host a giveaway in which you would send people those notebooks. To make things more exciting you can always add more items to these, a pair of shoes, custom phone covers, headphones, etc. 

• Follow the trends: When you follow trends, there’s a high possibility that people will follow you. These days, making Instagram Reels and TikTok videos help many small or big business owners to captivate viewers and audiences. And what would help you more is if you started your own trend. 

• Publish lists: Listicles get more attention from the audience. People love reading through lists. It also helps them know more information. Lists follow a simple and easy to read format and make for engaging content. Some listicle examples include: 22 Reasons to Be Happy in 2022, 15 Ways to Reduce Work From Home Stress, 20 Wholesome Movies to Watch During Lockdown, and so on. 

In Conclusion

Link building requires you to communicate with the world. The more people will know about you, the more they will know about your website. Links are important because they will increase your visibility on the search engine results. They will let the search engines know about the authenticity of your website. It is through the links, that people will know how your website content is resourceful. 

Building links is easier if you know a lot of people in your niche-related community. You can ask people to exchange links, you can comment on their social media posts or blogs.

As important it is to build good links, it is equally important to use effective strategies and techniques to help your website.