Beginner's Link Building Guide for SEO

What Is Link Building?

Link building is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that involves acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. These hyperlinks, also known as backlinks, are essentially a way for one website to point to another. Link building is a crucial aspect of SEO because search engines like Google consider backlinks as a signal of a website's credibility, authority, and relevance.

Why Is Link Building Important?

Link building is crucial because it enhances a website's search engine visibility and credibility by acquiring quality backlinks from reputable sources. These backlinks signal to search engines that the website is a trusted and authoritative resource, leading to higher search rankings, increased organic traffic, improved brand recognition, and broader audience reach, ultimately contributing to the overall success of the site's online presence.

How To Build Links ?

1. Ask for Links :

Asking for links is a proactive link-building strategy where you reach out to other website

and ask them to link to yours.

You can ask them to link to:

Blog posts

In-depth guides

Ebooks

Visual assets (like infographics)

Case studies

Original research and data

2. Add Links :

Adding links refers to going to another website and manually adding your link there.

For example, you can manually add links to:

Social media profiles
Business directories
Forums, communities, and Q&A sites (like Quora)
Blog comments
User profile pages
And so on.

Note: Adding SEO links manually is one of the easiest and most effective ways to build links.

These types of links usually come from bad sources. The kind that Google doesn't want to give too much weight to.

Why?

Because you created them. And you really support each other.

This is not what Google is looking for when determining which websites are worth ranking.

And because these links have no modifications (no links), they carry more weight than other types of links. These links don't work to help you, but they don't hurt you either.

Your best bet is to earn your links.

3. Earn Links

Getting a link will link other websites to your website without any obligation.

And the best way to get links is to create quality content that people want to link to. Links come naturally when someone needs a link to a resource or more important information.

Here are a few different types of content people tend to link to:

Visual assets (infographics, charts, diagrams, etc.)

Original research and data (industry studies, surveys, proprietary research, etc.)

Online tools and calculators

In-depth guides and tutorials

And others.

To find more content ideas, look at your competitors’ backlink profiles.

What Makes a Good Backlink?

1. Authority

Backlinks from authoritative and reputable websites hold more value. An authoritative website is one that is trusted by search engines and users due to its high-quality content, strong domain authority, and established reputation.

2. Relevance

A backlink from a website that is relevant to your content or industry carries more weight. For example, if you have a website about fitness, a backlink from a health or wellness-related website would be more valuable than a link from a fashion blog.

3. Placement

Backlinks that are naturally integrated into the content are considered more valuable. They should make sense within the context of the content and not appear forced or manipulative.

4. Anchor Text

The anchor text (the clickable text of a hyperlink) should be relevant and descriptive. It should give users and search engines an idea of what the linked page is about without being overly stuffed with keywords.

5. Nofollow vs. Follow

Dofollow backlinks pass "link juice," which is essentially the authority and SEO value, from the linking page to the linked page. These are the type of links you generally want to focus on, as they contribute to your website's SEO.

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is an SEO strategy that involves identifying broken (non-functioning) links on other websites and then reaching out to the website owners or administrators to suggest replacing those broken links with links to your own content. This technique benefits both parties involved: the website owner gets to replace a broken link with a working one, and you gain a valuable backlink to your website.