Link building: what it is and how to do it right
In the world of SEO, where search engines are constantly improving their algorithms, quality links remain one of the most important currencies. That is why the link buildingprocess is becoming a key tool for successful website promotion on the Internet.
Why do you need link building?
Link building is the process of obtaining external links to a website from other sources in order to increase the authority of its link profile.
The main goal of link building is to increase the number of high-quality links from various sources. Links from reputable resources add a lot of weight to websites in the eyes of search engines like Google.
Google perceives websites without external links as suspicious, so link building is a key process. However, it is important that this process is organic, discrete, and gradual, as link buying is prohibited and can lead to penalties from search engines.
There is no definite number of links that is guaranteed to bring a website to the top positions in search results. Each website has its own unique history, so it is important to conduct a comprehensive analysis and choose high-quality sources for obtaining links.
How to distinguish good links from bad?
High-quality links bring significant benefits to a website, while low-quality links can be harmful, regardless of their number.
High-quality links that come from reputable and relevant sources are usually obtained naturally and can drive valuable traffic that will help your site. Such links can be natural external links that a resource receives as a result of being mentioned by other companies or users.
Natural links can also be obtained through various means, such as sharing articles with external links, joint projects between companies, writing a guest article that will be useful, and working on forums on various topics to post links.
If you buy links carefully, they will be of high quality. Most links are actually placed for money, but it is important to choose reliable sources for their placement.
On the contrary, spammy links that are irrelevant and of low quality can harm search engine optimization. They are usually hosted on unreliable sites and often lead to penalties from search engines. Google treats such sites as spam nurseries and does not trust the resources they link to. Therefore, it is important to carefully filter sites and choose only those that are trustworthy and bring traffic growth.
How is the quality of links assessed?
Evaluating potential partner resources often requires the use of specialized tools such as Ahrefs and Moz. There are several key indicators to consider:
- DR (Domain Rating ) is a metric from Ahrefs that reflects the level of search engine trust in a domain in the range from 0 to 100. A high DR indicates the authority of the resource based on the analysis of the number and quality of incoming links.
- DA (Domain Authority ) is a similar indicator to DR, but calculated using the Moz methodology. It also evaluates the “strength” of a domain on a scale of 0-100 based on the link profile.
- Referring Domains – the number of unique websites that contain inbound links to the target website. This factor is one of the key ones for ranking in search engines.
- Linking Domains – the total number of sites from which links are received, including duplicate links from an identical source.
These metrics provide valuable information about the authority of a web resource, its influence, and link profile on the Internet.
What types of links are there?
When analyzing link building, it is important to take into account not only the number of links but also their appearance, as this is of great importance for the effectiveness of the strategy. Here are the types of anchor links:
- Anchor links with keywords: They are embedded organically in the text and point to a specific category or product. This helps search engines better understand the context of the link.
- Brand anchors: They contain the name of a brand or company, which strengthens its identity and recognition.
- Commercial anchors with direct entry: These anchors provide specific instructions on what to expect after clicking on the link.
Among anchor links, it is worth distinguishing between anchorless links, which use just page URLs without embedding keywords.
It is also important to pay attention to the image links used in advertising banners, graphics, or partner logos to stimulate click-through rates.
All of these types of links have their own advantages and are used depending on the specific goal of the link building strategy.
What methods and strategies allow you to get more links?
Obtaining external links plays an important role in promoting web resources in search engines. There are many methods of link building, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. Here is a detailed description of different link building strategies:
- Establishing connections and cooperation (Outreach): This approach involves establishing direct contact with the owners of other web resources to discuss opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation. This can include guest posting, sharing useful content, or other forms of partnerships that lead to a natural exchange of links.
- Paid link placement: This method involves paying for the placement of links on third-party websites, for example, in the form of sponsored articles, banners, or other forms of advertising. However, you should be careful, as unreasonable link buying can lead to sanctions from search engines.
- Mutual link exchange: This approach involves the conclusion of partnership agreements between web resources on the mutual placement of useful content and links. Such cooperation can be beneficial for both parties, as it provides additional traffic and increases the authority of websites.
- Creating quality content: Developing high-quality, valuable, and relevant content that will be attractive to other web resources. Such content can be shared and cited, which naturally leads to external links.
- Presence in communities: Active participation in thematic forums, social networks and other online communities. This allows you to leave useful comments and feedback that may contain a link to your website.
- Private blog network (PBN): Creating a network of your own blogs and websites in order to control the flow of links to the main web resource. However, this approach is considered risky and may result in search engine sanctions.
- Paid link building services: There are specialized services that offer link placement on various web resources for a fee. However, you should be careful when using such services, as the quality of the links may be low and their placement may be illegitimate.
It is worth noting that the link building strategy should be based on White Hat principles, i.e., comply with the recommendations and rules of search engines. This will ensure a long-term positive impact on the rating of the website and minimize the risks of sanctions.
What are the stages of link building?
In the process of link building, there is a sequence of steps that helps to effectively build a link acquisition strategy. Here is a description of each of these steps:
- Analyze your own website: Start with a detailed analysis of your own website. It is important to evaluate its parameters, such as domain authority, thematic focus, users who are interested in this direction, and priority regions of promotion. This makes it easier to select potential pages that match your criteria.
- Competitor analysis: Study the strategies of your main competitors, including link profiles. This way, you will understand how many links they have, from which sources they receive links, and on which sites they are published.
- Gathering a donor base: First, evaluate potential donors, paying attention to parameters such as website theme, target audience, and content quality. Use tools such as Serpstat and Ahrefs to assess the quality of your website.
- Select the right sites: Once you’ve built your donor database, check each site for quality and relevance. Look at metrics such as traffic, inbound links, rankings, and indexing.
- Placement: Offer selected donors cooperation and sign an agreement with them to place a link on their websites.
- Study the peculiarities of different countries: If you need to get links from websites in different countries, learn how to communicate and communicate with those who own websites in those regions. Use local languages and messengers to communicate conveniently.
These steps will help you build an effective link building strategy and get quality links to your website.
Online tools that allow for link building
Link building tools provide only an approximate picture of the situation, as the exact figures are available only to resource owners who have access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Here are some popular tools that provide convenient analytics:
- Serpstat: This analytical tool allows you to get data on competitors’ donors in your niche and analyze their link profiles.
- Ahrefs: This is one of the main link building tools that helps to analyze the link profiles of both your own website and competitors. Ahrefs also provides information on keywords, traffic, and geographic distribution of visitors.
- SimilarWeb: This tool helps to filter out donors by various parameters, such as the amount and sources of traffic, as well as the geographical distribution of visitors.
- Moz: Provides information about whether a donor is spammy.
It is important to note that there is no tool that is guaranteed to provide 100% reliability of the result. For this reason, it is recommended to use several tools simultaneously. For example, if Ahrefs demonstrated ten clicks within a month, while SimilarWeb demonstrated 100,000, this act may be a signal to check the site using other available tools.
Additional tips
To assess the overall quality of donor sites, you can use tools such as Serpstat and Ahrefs. It is important to take into account the country of promotion. For example, if it is Ukraine, then links from America or Portugal may not be relevant. You should also check where those who visit the donor’s website mostly come from.
For better rankings, use dofollow permalinks, which allow Google crawlers to index them. It is important to have more inbound links than outbound ones, as sites that link to many pages on the web may lose their credibility.
It should also be noted that all online news platforms usually use the nofollow tag when referring to a news source. This is a signal to search bots not to click on these links.
Develop a link building strategy that will allow you to attract more partners, but avoid constant link exchange between the two sites, as this may not have a significant impact.
Remember to constantly increase the number of links. Start with a few a month and gradually increase the number. This is important because links can disappear over time for a variety of reasons, such as articles being deleted or websites being shut down.
Buying a lot of links on very authoritative domains can be expensive, so it’s better to get more links on slightly better-ranked resources that match your site’s theme.