To position your business on the Internet, it is fundamental to apply a series of SEO strategies. Among them, the practice of Link Building is one of the most important. That is why today we bring you a complete guide so you know everything about this technique of web positioning and you can make the most of it. Take note!
What is Link Building?
This is an SEO strategy that seeks to promote the reputation, authority, and positioning of your website in the ranking of Google and other search engines, by generating links to relevant external sites that lead to your site.
The foundation of Link Building is based on the fact that search engines take into account a number of SEO On-Site and Off-Site factors in their algorithms to position your website on the Internet. The Link Building technique belongs to Off-Site SEO strategies and has a direct impact on the positioning of your site.
We explain: In order to establish the degree of relevance of your site, search engines like Google take into account in their algorithms the quality and quantity of links that lead to your site from other places on the Internet. These third-party links are also known as “Backlinks” or “Inbound Links”.
For this reason, the Link Building strategy seeks to generate such “qualified” links on other sites, to increase your relevance. As we will see later, quality is better than quantity, since there are correct and incorrect ways to carry out this practice.
For now, just say to say that the best option to be successful with this strategy is to make these backlinks as organic as possible. That is to say, the pages that link to your website do so on the high quality of your content (and not through deceptive methods or spammer).
In this sense and as we will see below, one of the best strategies to make Link Building without violating the norms of Google and other search engines is to use the Guest Posting.
6 Terms You Must Know To Better Understand The Link Building Strategy
Before proceeding, you should review a series of terms linked to the practice of the Link Building, which will help you to better understand how this strategy works and will help you to understand the rest of this Guide. They are the following:
SEO On-Site
This is a set of strategies that you can put into practice on your own website to promote your positioning (e.g. the use of keywords, URL or meta information). Since the Link Building technique works outside your site, it does not belong to this classification.
SEO Off-Site
They are all those techniques of web positioning including Link Building, which focus on external factors to your website and impact on its relevance. Some of them are the external links, social mentions and other indicators that favor the authority of your page.
Backlink
As explained by experts, this kind of links, also known as “inbound links” are generated when a website links to another website. So, the link created between both is what is known as Backlink.
In this sense, the quality of the Backlink will depend on the Domain Authority of the site that has linked to the content, and the thematic link between both sites (if it is real or forced).
Domain Authority
This is a score related to the ranking in the search engines created by MOZ, one of the most important online SEO tools today. Such score predicts how well a site will be positioned in Google’s search results.
So, the score goes from 1 to 100 and, the higher the score, the greater the positioning capacity of a given website.
Anchor Text
The Anchor Text of a link is the part of the link you can click on. E.g. to read our post on SEO and Social Media, you must click on the Anchor Text, which in this example is the text “SEO and Social Media”.
This is important since the algorithm of Google takes into account what is the Anchor Text used by the external pages that link to your site when determining its relevance and positioning in the ranking. In turn, Anchor Texts should be avoided at all costs to avoid penalties.
So, if you want to position a keyword or key word like “Restaurant in Buenos Aires”, it will be best to work with Anchor Texts that include that keyword, per Ex. “The best restaurant in Buenos Aires”.
Inbound Marketing
The so-called Inbound Marketing or Attraction Marketing consists of a series of strategies (including Content Marketing) that seek to attract the target audience through specially created content, SEO strategies, Social Media Marketing and more.
In that context, Link Building as an off-site SEO strategy is fundamental to making Inbound Marketing successful, that is, to promote the dissemination and relevance of a website on the Internet.
What are the Benefits of Link Building?
Now that you know the main terms related to the Link Building strategy, we will tell you what are the most important advantages that this practice can bring to your site.
1- Increase the Domain Authority of your Website
As the specialists explain, when Google determines which sites will rank best for a particular search, one of the most important factors it considers is the quantity and quality of external links (inbound links or backlinks) that lead to each site.
So, the better your Backlinks are, the greater will be the Domain Authority of your site, it is to say, the probability that your website will rank high in search results for a given Keyword.
In this way, making Link Building is a great way to increase the Domain Authority of your site and, therefore, its visibility and diffusion.
2- Promotes the Visibility of your Brand
By doing guest posting on your site (it is to say when you invite an author to post a content on your site in exchange for posting yours on your) each new source you contact for this purpose (e.g. blogs related to your industry industrial) is an effective opportunity to present your brand to new readers.
As a result and how you can imagine Guest Posting is one of the best Link Building strategies since, in addition to promoting the positioning of your site; it greatly increases the chances of spreading your brand as if it were free advertising.
3- Generates More Referral Traffic
Another of the great benefits of Link Building is that it manages to increase your reference traffic, that is to say, those visits that enter your page from a mention (link) in the content of another site, as if it were a recommendation.
So by E.g. when you do guest posting and a reader wants to know more about your proposals, simply click on the link to your site that you have included in the content posted on an external site. In this way, in addition to benefiting your positioning, you generate more visits to your page.
4- Helps You Take Advantage of Influencer Marketing
Many of the external authors that you can use to carry out your Link Building strategy through Guest Posting are prominent figures within Influencer Marketing, that is, they are Influencers, recognized personalities and with a good reputation within their area of expertise.
That way, when using this strategy of Link Building your brand and your site will enjoy the benefits of being “in the hands” of an Influencer: will have a high degree of exposure to a specialized audience, will generate reactions and even interactions in Social Networks and will spread among new readers.
5- Increase the Authority of your Brand
By doing guest posting on reputable sites linked to your industry, you have the opportunity to show your brand as an authority in your sector before numerous new readers and interested in your content. For this, you must assume a safe and professional tone in your articles.
By doing this with some frequency, you will progressively gain new readers and, ultimately, potential customers or consumers of your proposals, all of which will positively impact your conversions.
6- Increase Your Credibility Before Audience
When your site is mentioned in a specialized publication of high quality, the reputation of your brand rises and becomes relevant to the public’s perception. For this reason, many brands display logos or badges of the publications in which they have been mentioned (we recommend you too!).
Such badges function as evidence that such reference is real, and as evidence that you have actually been referred to in a particular relevant source. Consequently, placing them on your site increases the credibility and authority of your brand in the eyes of readers.
7- Exposes You to Authorities of Other Industries
By doing guest posting you not only get Backlinks for your site but also you can get acquainted with what the referents of your industry are communicating. In fact, when doing your research to determine who you should do Guest posting get a clear overview of the influencers in your sector.
It is best to invite them to write on your site so that you can get free and highly qualified content for your blog, as well as new readers (among which there will surely be other influencers and leaders of your industry). The more Guest Posting you make, the higher your level of exposure to authorities in your sector.
8- Brings You Long-Term Benefits
By sustaining your collaboration with other sites as part of your Link Building strategy over time, you will build strong relationships with other industry representatives of your sector. Eventually, you will have numerous links with external sources that, as long as you maintain reciprocity, will always be willing to publish your links.
Consequently, every time you invite a new author to post on your site aims to strengthen the terms of trade. That way, besides to having new Backlinks, you will gradually expand your broadcast system and the effective reach of your brand on the Internet.
Be careful with Google Penalties: What You Should Consider When Making Link Building to Avoid Penalties
So much to defend their interests and to keep up the quality of service, Google has a number of rules gathered in the Statute of Webmasters who seek to control the practice of Link Building. Below we will see the points said regulation that you must take into account to avoid penalties:
- Do not abuse the Anchor Text-Based Keywords: Since Anchor Texts are susceptible to manipulation; many people link their content to various external sites using only keywords that they seek to position. This behavior, especially when dealing with a large number of anchor texts with the same keyword, all of which lead to the same site, is often quickly sanctioned by Google.
- Within the Link Building strategy, there are two kinds of links: the organic, which are those that other users spontaneously place, and the forced, which are those that you place yourself. In that context, Google “rewards” organic links and tends to disadvantage forced links, marking them as SPAM. The goal of the search engine is to reward high-quality content that includes added value and have earned in good law their Inbound Links. Consequently, we recommend that you make your links as organic as possible … Or use Guest Posting.
- The more your backlinks are unmarked as SPAM by Google, the more favored you will be in the Searcher Ranking and the more traffic you will get for your site. This may not work as fast as placing forced links on different Internet sites, but it will favor the reputation of your site in the long term and will avoid sanctions from Google.
- If a link is manipulative, Google will take it with SPAM. That’s why we advise you to use Anchor Texts not misleading but really refer to the content they direct.
- Posting very poor or poor quality content within the framework of a Guest posting strategy is also taken as SPAM by the search engine.
How To Make Link Building From Zero?
Now that you are aware of what this strategy of SEO and Off-Site positioning proposes, we share with you the best recommendations to make Link Building from scratch and make the most of it.
Remember that if you have a website and want to gain organic traffic, the best you can do is to get good links from relevant sites (in other words, to “exist” on the Internet, you must do Link Building!). Here are some tips on how to get it right from the start:
1- Ask for Backlinks
This is a good way to get started, especially if you are a beginner in terms of SEO and Inbound Marketing. Basically, it is a question of asking your friends, colleagues, family and the general public to add a link to your site on your web pages.
In this regard and to achieve better results, we recommend asking them to place the link in the body of an article or in the middle of the content, and not as a footer that may go unnoticed. You must also ensure that they are sites that are related to your industrial sector, in order to avoid penalties.
2- Build Solid Relationships
For your Link Building strategy to work, you need to be based on solid relationships. In this regard, there is an infinite number of opportunities to make new contacts with relevant actors in your sector. For this, it is advisable to start by examining communities related to your niche.
So, for example, we suggest you research on blogs, forums, Facebook groups and other Social Networks. It is also advisable to take the first step, contributing interesting content relevant to the conversation. You can also make comments and posts that add value to the discussion.
The idea is that through these interactions you gain Backlinks in the most organic way possible and that as far as possible you connect with influencers and referents of your sector, who can help you in future collaborations of Guest Posting.
3- Take Advantage of Testimonial Posts
Many brands on the Internet offer you the opportunity to say a few words about your experience using some of their products, which is an excellent opportunity to do Link Building with sites that already have a good positioning.
So we recommend you to connect with some of these brands, give your testimonial and add some Backlink in your content. That way everyone wins: the brand gets another reference to build credibility with their customers, and you earn an Inbound Link and potential traffic to your site.
You can start by giving a testimonial about the products of this site, whose administrators ensure that in return they will link your site with pleasure.
4- Start a Blog
While this is an excellent way to boost your Link Building strategy, the truth is that for it to work you must do it well. In other words, it’s no use opening a blog if you only post once. At this point, the idea is to write articles with periodicity frequent (e.g. two or more times a week).
We also recommend that your content is focused on your industry and the needs of your customers. If you maintain the quality of your content (that is, if you research and connect with reliable sources, add value and offer interesting and well-written texts) you will gain mastery authority over time.
The idea is that your blog becomes a site of reference for your sector, with which people want to link their content. This will make it much easier and more sustainable to carry out a Guest Posting strategy.
5- Add your Site to Reliable Directories
There are numerous directories on the Internet dedicated to specific niches, in which you can include links to your website, along with a brief description. The function of these directories is to facilitate to the users the discovery of businesses and brands, within the different sectors of the industry.
That way you not only generate backlinks to your site but also inform your potential customers about your products and services. Besides of being part of a directory increases the chances that users find you when they need services related to your area.
In this sense and before adding your site to a directory, we recommend doing an investigation with Google, to see which of them are the most popular and best positioned in the search engine.
6- Dedicate yourself to Quality Guest Posting
As we have said many times in this blog post, Guest Posting is one of the most effective strategies in terms of Link Building. This is so for several reasons. Firstly it allows you to add backlinks to relevant sites, with quality content linked to your industry.
Besides, it is an excellent opportunity to expose your proposals to new audiences and relate to influencers in your niche, which can further increase the reach of your proposals and the authority of your brand.
Here are some essential tips at the moment to do Guest Posting:
- Before accepting to do Guest Posting with someone, make sure that your site or blog is relevant to your topic.
- At the time of writing, focus on the quality of the content (make sure it is well written, interesting and brings something real to the reader).
- Remember that the article should not be about how incredible your brand or business is, but should be a genuine contribution to the niche.
- Keep in mind that a poor or poorly written article can bring you a bad reputation.
7- Take Advantage of Online SEO Tools
Finally, there are tools that can help you in the task of doing Link Building. Particularly we will talk about two of them, which serve to know the Domain Authority of a particular site, so that you can evaluate based on your score if it suits you or not for your Link Building strategy.
One of them is MOZ; the creative app of the “Domain Authority” indicator that we talked about. This tool allows you, among other functions, to enter any URL to know what your score for that indicator. Note that requires registration for use.
The other application is Website Authority Checker, a simple online application that does not require registration, through which you can enter a web address to know both the authority of the entire domain and a specific page of the site in question.
In conclusion, we can say that Link Building is a fundamental aspect of any SEO strategy. That is why any site that wishes to positively position itself in Google and other search engines, must resort to its techniques to achieve effective results, and always taking care not to violate Google’s rules.
That’s all for today! We hope this information has been useful. To expand the knowledge transmitted here, we recommend the following readings of our blog:
- SEO for Blogs 101: the Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
- SEO for Beginners PART 2 -> How to Improve SEO Ranking on Google: How to Increase Page Rank
- 8 newest SEO techniques that will take your business further on Google
- How Can Social Media Content Help SEO Positioning
Did you like this article? Did you already know the strategy of the Link Building? What is your opinion about it? Tell us what you think! And please remember to share this article with all your contacts.
See you soon!