This article was originally published on September 21st, 2020, and was last updated February 2022.
Did you know, link building is one of the most important factors crucial to the SEO process? When it’s done right, a good link building campaign helps improve your content’s rankings and can build brand awareness. However, when it’s done wrong, it can result in penalties from Google. In this article, we will discuss what link building is, why it’s crucial to SEO, link diversification and quality, and different strategies to help other websites link back to yours. Let’s get started!
What is Link Building?
Link building is the act of increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage. These links, also known as hyperlinks, help users navigate between pages on the internet. They also help drive attention and traffic to increase your site’s authority. When link building, always remember to add value to end users and follow Google’s terms of service for best results.
Why is Link Building Important to SEO?
In some cases, links are considered a citation. When you have good information on your website, you can end up getting more links. Individuals can find your information valuable and use it in their own pieces of content. When they do this, they should create a link back to the source of where the information was first used. When individuals do this, it creates a link structure for users and search engines to see where the source originated from. The more individuals link back to a certain article or webpage with this information, the more credible that source becomes. It also makes the content that the link was included in more valuable in search engines eyes too because they used and viewed a credible source.
The more credible sources you include in your articles, the higher chances you have of ranking higher in SERPs. This doesn’t mean you should stuff your content with lots of backlinks. However, use them where they are needed and applicable. Links remain an important ranking factor for search engines, such as Google, to consider. If you were to compare an article that had no internal or backlinks versus an article that had a few of them, if the backlinks were valuable, the article with links would probably end up ranking higher. Including links that have higher domain authority helps improve your article’s SEO rankings as well.
Internal linking also benefits both your website and the users that come to your website. For your website, the more internal linking strategies you implement, the more you can direct users throughout the different resources within your website. This results in more traffic and better user experience on your end. For users, internal linking is a great way for individuals to understand certain questions they might have or help them learn more about topics they might need additional assistance with. For example, if you have an informative article that links to a term within another article, you can create an internal link that way. It helps the user learn more if they decide to click on it and make your information more valuable to search engines.
Boostability’s Approach to Link Building
At Boostability, we work with our partners to help implement a strong link building SEO campaign that delivers results and maximizes success in higher SERP rankings. When it comes to link building here at two factors that we have found to be valuable for improving the quality of your links:
Relevance
We relate relevance to onsite work (which includes link building). The more your website shows relevant and credible information to users and search engines, the more domain authority you have against others. This means boosting your content, keywords, meta descriptions, and the code of your site through onsite recommendations. Doing this helps give your site a platform to show your services and products the value in them. It also gives support and credibility to what may be said offsite.
It’s important to make your internal linking structure relevant to what you’re linking to and up-to-date. If something becomes out of date or not applicable to your intent, it’s important to update your relevance. That includes the people who link back to your site as well.
Trust
Trust and offsite work tend to go hand in hand. The more trust you have with other sites, the more you’ll be recognized for keeping and maintaining that trust. A website’s trust can be based on the number of other websites that link back to your own. As a result, the more backlinks your site connects with (that are relevant and not spammy) gives search engines an “approval of trust”. It tells the bots that crawl your website that users can reliably visit for your services and products. Consider it a digital vote of confidence for your website.
Link Diversification
It’s important for your business to stay active and connected within your industry. And just like we’ve mentioned, link building is one of the best ways to do it! The more links you have, the more your site builds relevance and trust on search engine’s rankings.
There are 5 different types of link diversification that your business should keep in mind for successful quality links:
1) Link Location
Having a variety of links related to other sources helps spread your business online for others to find and notice you. When your links are spread in different locations, the more opportunities your links have of being discovered.
2) Link Type
Links are made to be instinctive and organic for the purpose of administering the appropriate equitable mix of no-follow and do-follow links. No-follow links are links with a tag that tells the search engine not to pass the juice or authority. Do-follow links are links that can benefit your website to get a higher page rank.
3) Link Quantity
You should always make sure your small business doesn’t have a multitude of links. Too many links can come off as suspicious and odd to search engines such as Google. Giving your business the right amount of links in a professional light gives your business the tools it needs to succeed.
4) Content Type
Creating an assortment of content associated with your links helps to build relevance and trust. These forms of content can range from blog posts, articles, article engagement, infographics, and other web content. Users like to have options in reading content. Giving them various types of content can help build your businesses trust while also gaining credibility.
5) Link Scheduling
Some links can be fabricated and be easier to spot. This can be due to their content being posted sporadically, all at once, or by how consistent that pattern can appear to users. Having organic links that are posted and scheduled randomly at any time, can appear more credible. For example, if users know when you consistently post new content over time, they will be looking forward to seeing it. If a small business posts a large amount of content at random times, it can come off less genuine and unprofessional for the business.
Link Quality
Link building should aim to create backlinks that come off as natural, organic, and as though you were creating them yourself from a small business point of view.
There are multiple factors that an SEO expert can go off of when analyzing what is true “quality” in SEO. “Quality” can be biased to the individual and there are numerous strategies proven to work for SEO. With all of these different SEO impressions, there is never one proven method for all industries to use for their benefit.
SEO is complex and brings a wide variety of techniques and options that are rewarding to each link and site. Because search engines like Google update their algorithms frequently, it can give businesses the opportunity to gain a variety of avenues that could be proven to work effectively through their industry.
Many of these impressions are just that of opinions. At Boostability, we’ve been doing this for a long time and know our strategies work. We know that building relevance and trust through link building improves the success of SEO for our partners. By having links relate to others on your website, content becomes far more impactful than links with a high domain authority. Thus, creating more quality links.
Rising in Rankings
Learning about successful link building strategies and SEO takes time and can sometimes be too much to undertake while running your business. At Boostability, we want your business to succeed. With our white label SEO programs, you can learn more about the different ways in which your business can grow with SEO. If you still have questions that need answering, speak with a Partner Success Team member for more information!
