Driving traffic to their business’s website ranks high in the priority list of an SEO manager. Though uploading creative and informational content to your channels helps establish your authority and drive traffic, your content quality alone won’t determine the number of people who visit your website. To drive traffic to your website, you also have to get links from different sources.
Link building: An introduction
Link building involves getting hyperlinks that link back to your website from other websites. Hyperlinks are used by users to navigate between pages on the Internet. Because Google’s and other search engines’ algorithm consider links a strong ranking factor, acquiring backlinks from reputable websites can do a world of good to your page’s ranking.
Additionally, securing a link on other websites can give audience from other channels direct access to your website. The importance of link building for SEO cannot be emphasized enough. Websites without links do not get any traffic from search engines or other sources. Some link building factors to keep in mind are content and anchor text quality, page rank, anchor title, link placement, the number of outbound links, and click-through-rate.
Importance of link building
Helps build relationships
To get links from other websites, you need to reach out to different businesses, which helps build relationships. During your meetings with the company’s top brass, you can discuss your current and future promotions and learn about the business’s offerings. Such discussions can open avenues for mutually beneficial collaborations.
Helps build brand value
Gone are the days when customers had limited choice when choosing a brand for their next purchase. The modern customer is surrounded by brands and is extremely picky when it comes to choosing a brand for their next purchase. When deciding which businesses to deal with, the single most important factor that buyers consider is the brand’s trustworthiness. Clearly, the need for building brand value is more than ever before.
Acquiring links from reputable websites helps establish your expertise, which is a prerequisite for promoting your brand. To ensure your website is considered as a valuable resource, upload relevant, thought-provoking, and interesting content.
Helps get more traffic
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out this benefit of link building. When your links are visible to multiple websites, you can expect a rise in the number of visitors. Additionally, getting quality backlinks does a world of good to your ranking. And we all know that better the ranking, more the traffic to a website.
Link building techniques
Two major types of link building techniques are
Black hat link building
Black hat link building practices involve the use of unfair means for link building. SEO professionals who adopt these practices exploit website loopholes to drive traffic. Some black hat link building practices include posting comments and links on third-party sites and creating link farms that feature series links linking to other websites without any relevant content. The idea is to enable a website rank higher than it originally should.
Earlier Google’s algorithm was designed to consider incoming links as an indicator of a website’s success. To increase the number of incoming links to their websites, black hat SEO practitioners resorted to unfair practices such as creating a secondary website that would send links to the primary website, resulting in them outranking reputable sites.
To put an end to this malpractice, Google launched its Penguin algorithm that was designed to evaluate the quality and not the number of links. Since the algorithm was introduced, Google has penalized various businesses including heavyweights such as JC Penny, Forbes, and BMW for using unfair link-building tactics.
In 20014, Google introduced Penguin 3.0, an upgrade to its algorithm that focuses on penalizing websites that employ unfair link building practices to create unnatural links. Black hat link building may deliver speedy results; however, in the long run, the ranking of websites employing these tactics takes a hit.
White hat link building
White hat link building is the exact opposite of black hat link building. Unlike black hat link building practices, the focus of white hat link building practices is creating value for users. White hat SEO practitioners abide by Google rules. White hat link building strategies help deliver favorable results that can be sustained for a long time. Natural link building involves the use of acceptable and fair SEO practices to boost content visibility.
White hat link building practices aim to educate users. Though white hat link building is labor-intensive and time-consuming, it is known for delivering favorable results not just for the business but also the end users and the online community. Google rewards businesses adopting these practices in terms of their search engine rankings.
Some white hat link building strategies include directory submissions, getting the business listed in local directories, inviting industry authorities to guest blog on your website, and earning backlinks from visual content such as infographics, SlideShare presentations, and videos.
Tips to get quality backlinks
Getting quality backlinks can take time, especially if you are a new player in your industry. Here are some tips you can follow to speed up the process.
- Use high-quality infographics
- Use social bookmarking and social networking sites that allow you to add links to your website.
- Create press releases with newsworthy and attractive titles.
- Use the skyscraper technique that focuses on turning excellent content into quality backlinks.
The primary benefit of Link Building is to boost website traffic and to be more visible online. Allow our experts to help you gain a large number of quality backlinks that will boost your website authority, trust & online credibility. Receive Quote Now!
LINK BUILDING – WHAT IT IS & WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
