What Is Link Building? Exploring Key Back Linking Strategies 

Link building is still revered and used voraciously as one of the best-ranking factors in the Google SERP and also among several other search engines. 

Link building helps your website gain the required amount of traffic on your website from organic searches. 

SEO workers put their social skills, communication skills, resilience, and creativity into looking for relevant links. The Google search engine can find new content via the links. 

Links rate the content and help the search engine judge the quality of the content. They also work as a testimonial for deciding a site’s authority and value in the SERP. 

Links help the search engine decide what a user may find valuable to their search and what might not be most accurate based on the searches. 

In the same way, backdated link-building strategies will no longer be effective for SEO. You cannot expect a better result by spamming comments, posting in forums, and using PBNs. 

As a business SEO, you need to only look for links that are– natural, high quality, and relevant to your page and the content. 

The present article is all about link building. This article should help you build relevant, good-quality, and natural links on your website pages. 

What Is Link Building? 

Link building is a process of acquiring one-way hyperlinks (otherwise known as backlinks) for a website.

The sole purpose of building links is to improve a website’s visibilit on the SERP. It also helps you earn referral traffic on your website. Building links is an essential ranking strategy that requires the combined skills of psychology, marketing, and sales. 

Why Is Link Building Important?

Before the age of Google, when search engines like Yahoo! and AltaVista were the big names, the search engines ranked the pages only based on on-page content. After several algorithm changes, Links became one of the most relevant ranking factors for a page. 

Instead of only looking at the content on a page, Google looks at the number of pages that link back to a website. By doing so, Google determines its position in the SERP. 

Recently, Google’s 2024 spam update and link algorithm have completely altered the paradigm of SEO practices. That is, it focused on countering the spam links and improving the content quality. 

So, Google’s new link algorithm is designed to refine the rankings based on the link qualities placed within the content. That is, spammy links and overly link-stuffed content are devalued and removed from the SERPs. In contrast, high-quality links in content are rewarded. 

As an SEO worker, you need to look for high-quality links for your business website; as for how to build high-quality links on your website, you need to read this article further. 

How to Create Links for Your Site?

If you are new to SEO, you may ask — How to do link building for SEO? 

There is a process for looking for the best pages to link back to your website. You can take a strategic method, creating a parameter as to how to spot the perfect link for your website. 

Here is a short process- 

1. High Authority Pages

The high-quality links come from high-authority websites.

One of the key factors for ranking your website on the SERP through building links is by linking back to a high authority page. A high authority page will always send a good authority to your webpage.

2. Higher Domain Authority

Linking back to a website with a higher domain authority is another positive sign that Google considers for ranking your website. 

While it will be good to link back to websites like Forbes, having them link back to your site is nearly impossible.

There is no harm in trying, though.

3. Relevant Niche

You may find a higher authority website with higher authority webpages, but if the website is not relevant to your website, then linking back to it will be pointless. Linking back your food-based website to a tech website will be pointless.

4. Position Of The Link

Your backlink’s position on a page matters a lot in driving the referral traffic for which you are getting a backlink.

Linking back to the footer or the sidebar of a website is almost ineffective when you intend to earn traffic.

Linking back to the body of content is, on the other hand, more effective and helpful for higher SERP ranking. Therefore, it would help if you always link back to the main body of the webpage.

When building links, you need to use an anchor text on which you can place your website’s link.

How Does Your Business Benefit From Link Building?

Link building offers several benefits to businesses, starting from a higher ranking in the SERP and referral traffic. In addition, links help build connections within your niche industry and help you improve your brand value in the market. 

Here are several of those benefits- 

1. Building Relationship

There are existing key influencers in your industry with higher authority websites than yours. A positive effect of building links through BloggerOutreach or using other similar outreach services is to build relationships with other websites in the industry. 

Once you create good quality content within your niche, you will get links from good authority websites that help you ascend your ranking in the SERP.

2. Sending Referral Traffic

A key intention for most businesses is to acquire a healthy amount of referral traffic. When you link back to a high authority website relevant to your niche industry, your site’s traffic will increase.

Linking back to a frequently visited site is a commonly used link-building strategy for increasing organic traffic and thereby driving more sales.

3. Increasing Brand Value

Once you create valuable content in your niche industry, you create a chance for yourself to build recognition. Building links for that piece of content will further improve your recognition creating better brand value for your website.

When you are doing outreach for your content to get a backlink, you are increasing its potential to get more viewers. Your website’s brand value increases once you spread your content by building links.

Major Link Building Metrics To Track 

Some of the core metrics that help businesses and brands to track their link-building quality include— 

• Domain Strength (DA & DR) 

Firstly, the domain strength metric helps evaluate the authority of the website in its niche market. This allows brands to visualize how easily the domain will rank on Google’s SERPs. 

Moreover, Moz provides the DA score for a website that helps predict the ranking ability of the site. Also, Ahrefs DR checks the strength of the backlinks used on the website. That is, it provides a score to evaluate the quality of the unique domain links. 

• Anchor Text Profile 

Given that anchor texts play a vital role in link-building strategies, using a proper profile can boost the ranking position of sites on SERPs. That is, the anchor text used for the backlinks needs to be relevant to the topic of the link. 

Moreover, it should have the target keywords to engage the right audience with the content. Then only can it help in improving the ranking position of the websites. 

• Link Relevance 

One of the most vital factors of link building is to evaluate the relevance of the backlinks. That is, the links used as backlinks should be relevant and obtained from high-authority sites. 

Moreover, it is important to check the relevance of the content of the page that is being used for backlinks. So, businesses need to use proper anchor texts to refer to the content on the high-authority sites. 

• Number Of Links 

Even if it seems that the more links used for backlinking, the better the SEO performance of the site, it is not so. That is, if businesses use irrelevant or low-quality links, it might adversely impact the SEO growth. 

Moreover, if businesses stuff the content with excessive backlinks, it can become spammy in the eyes of Google’s bots. So, keeping an optimal number of links in the content can help improve the SEO performance. 

In addition to this, measuring the number of links can provide a clear image of how the link-building strategies are working. So, it gives a clear idea of how the links are performing with the target audience. 

• New Backlinks 

Apart from these, using new backlinks is not wrong. That is, the more relevant links the businesses build, can help in ranking the specific content pages. So, this allows businesses to stand out in the competitive market. 

In addition to this, checking the backlink velocity is also crucial. That is, the number of backlinks that businesses build over a specific time period helps in improving the competitive edge in engaging the target audience. 

• NoFollow vs DoFollow Backlinks 

Using only NoFollow or DoFollow links is not the right strategy. Rather, mixing them both in the right amount can create a natural backlinking profile for the site. 

Moreover, using DoFollow links will accentuate the SEO value of the site. Whereas NoFollow links can at most pass as adding value to the overall impact. 

So, it is better to compare the ratio of both kinds of backlinks in your content with that of your competitors. Allowing businesses to make informed decisions about backlinks. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

After reading the above article, you may have some questions about the topic. I have answered some of these popularly asked internet questions to help you understand them better.

Link Building The Right Way 

Without link building, it is impossible to increase your website’s visibility in the SERP. You need to perform strategic link building for a higher ranking and send more referral traffic to your business website. 

This article has covered the basics of link building and helps you understand the topic with simple explanations. Anyway, if you have any confusion, you can ask about them in the comments.