Link building is a fundamental strategy for your blog. Understand how to link building in this full text on the topic!
Working SEO to perfection requires a lot of effort, dedication and a lot of studies.
One of the most talked-about points, when a team starts planning an SEO strategy, is Link Building.
If you don’t know anything about this technique or want to know more about it, this post is made for you!
What is Link Building?
Link building is an art. It is undoubtedly the hardest job in SEO, but it is also the most rewarding. And there is no definition by itself, as defining would decrease the value of Link Building.
To put it roughly, Link Building is the work/effort/commitment/tactic of acquiring links from other sites. It gets complicated to talk like that because it is very important for all people who work in marketing and goes beyond a simple definition. Let’s explain why.
Since its inception, all search engines have always placed great importance on links. It is through them that they find the most diverse types of websites and are able to add them to their index. There was a time when they were the only factor in ranking a site, but it’s been over 12 years. Today they are very important, but they are not the only ranking factors.
Search engines treat links like votes and use them to measure the popularity and relevance of a website on the Internet.
It’s like in real life: If someone you don’t know is introduced to you by many different people and they all introduce you by saying, “This person is excellent at photography,” you will believe that this unknown person is really excellent at photography.
Now imagine the following situation: instead of random people Barack Obama publicly says that this same person is excellent at photography. You would give this reference much more credit because it has more authority.
It works the same way with search engines: They assign values through various algorithms to all internet sites to know their relevance and popularity. And a site without these concepts can’t rank well in Google, which prevents it from gaining considerable traffic.
Link building should be a concept assimilated by every digital marketer. When this happens, no opportunity to earn a good link will be lost and more traffic will be generated.
Link building requires creativity and analytical skills.
Why are links important?
As stated earlier, they are responsible for dictating the popularity and relevance of a website. A site without links cannot rank well in search engines and consequently receives little or no organic traffic.
Every 2 years Moz conducts research with top SEO professionals around the world to develop the most reputable and accepted search engine ranking factors in the industry. The last one was in 2013 and links are present in 40% of the ranking factors mentioned in the survey.
The value of a link
Not every link is the same. Definitely. Each has its own way of being rated by Google and assigning a positive or negative value to your site. Yes, some links can harm your site and even cause severe punishment on Google, so be very careful.
At a time when links were solely responsible for ranking a site, search engines were not good at defining the quality of a link, they simply considered quantity and anchor text as the main reference on the subject of the linked page. As a result, spammers created a variety of tools that could generate thousands of links a day to low-quality sites with accurate anchor text.
As search engines evolved, they began to distinguish the value of each link and its importance to rankings decreased, but not to the point of extinction.
Nowadays you need a good link profile. This means that you must have quality and varied links. You need to worry about factors beyond the link itself, such as having the keyword in the anchor text. That kind of detail still counts a lot. Let’s dig a little deeper into what a good backlink profile is.
There are two essential things to a good link profile: quantity and quality.
Quantity :
Having lots of links involves having:
- diversity of domains that link to you
- diversity of link domain types for you
Diversity of domains that link to you: Each domain has strength for search engines, and the more strength your domain receives, the better.
Diversity of link types for you: It’s no use having multiple news sites linking to your site and not having any other types of sites. Diversifying the domain type refers to getting links from various types of sites.
Profile links have various types of websites such as blogs, news, directories, companies and etc., and a good balance between domains and amount of links. Not a good link profile A site that has 1000 links from a single domain, for example.
Quality:
Measuring the quality of a link involves several factors. The anchor text of a link is one of the main factors that tell search engines what the linked site is about. As much as after the Google Update, called Penguin, the exact anchor text has come to be considered a strong spam factor, containing the keyword somewhere in the anchor text is quite valid.
For search engines, the best links are the natural ones and any link we try to get should sound as natural as possible to the search engines. Having thousands of links with the same anchor text is unnatural, so it is punitive.
The best links are from domains with high metrics, sites with a lot of authority. The more relevant a site is in your niche, the better the link it sends you.
Elements of a page that affect link quality
As stated earlier, search engines do not simply look at the total number of links pointing to your site. They consider a number of factors and try to attribute the quality of a link and the strength it should give to the linked page. Let’s delve into the key elements of link value:
Number of links pointing off-page
If the page you are trying to link to already links to several other sites, it is best to skip it and look for another page to get a link. Each page has a strength or value. The more links coming out of it the less value it gives to each.
The quality of the sites being linked on the page
It is the concept of a bad neighbourhood. If a page only links to porn sites, your link in the middle becomes low and almost negative.
Number of links to that page
Quite simply, the more links a page has, the more value it has. And with that more value, your link will have on that page.
Number of links to that domain
The same concept as before but now at the domain level. Each page has a value and each domain has value. They are different and need to be analyzed as well. The more outbound links you get from sites that have many domain-level links, the more force you will receive.
Domain Age
It is not common sense among SEO professionals, but what is known is that with age comes authority. Old domains tend to be more powerful, so getting links from them is valuable.
The page be accessible to search engines
If search engines can’t index the page, a link to it is worth nothing. This goes for Flash sites, iframes, and some other types of pages that prevent search engines from crawling.
Elements of a link that affect its quality
Before analyzing this, let’s understand the anatomy of a link.
This will look at the elements of a link that can make it more valuable to search engines.
URL :
Be sure to link to a URL that is accessible to search engines and does not redirect, as this decreases the value received from a link. This includes avoiding getting parameterized links in the URL.
Link Position :
A user tends to click more links in the middle of content than links in the footer, for example. Search engines can determine the placement of a link and assign a lower or higher value to it. Moz wrote a very good post about this and other facts linked to a link.
A link in the middle of content passes more value than a link in the sidebar and footer.
Nofollow vs Dofollow :
Nofollow is an attribute that can be added to a link, as we saw in the anatomy of a link, which was adopted by all search engines in 2005. The term Dofollow is slang created for links that do not have the Nofollow attribute.
If a link has the Nofollow attribute it should not pass any value to the linked site and make no difference to the organic results.
Nofollow is used in blog comment links (some) and can be attributed to sites you don’t trust to link to.
Whenever you get a link, make sure it has nofollow and if you have it, do your best to remove it, but if it doesn’t work well, the final link is a backlink.
Text Link vs Image Link :
Search engines can’t read images, they can only read alt text that the site owner puts. This makes it easy to understand: Text links are worth much more than image links. This also goes for your internal links.
Anchor Text :
Search engines always consider link anchor text to identify what the linked page is about. Today you need to have links with exact and varied anchor texts. A balance must be sought between various anchors.
Text around the link :
There is a certain belief (based on some testing by SEO professionals around the world) that text around the link can influence its quality.
Link Building Tools
There are numerous Link Building tools to help you do a good job. It’s something that really needs help, after all, it’s a pretty complicated job and it can’t be done without some good tools.
What you need to keep in mind is that you cannot generate a 100% quality link with tools alone. The best link building tool is still and always will be your brain.
Let’s list the tools we think are currently the most important and that work for you reasonably.
Link Analysis
What it does: Majestic has its own crawler, the system for finding and indexing new sites. This has the largest link database making it an essential tool for any link builder. Majestic’s main use is to analyze links to your site.
You can see the new links, the Lost links, which domains are linking to you, how many domains are linking to you, and so on.
Majestic is also responsible for creating two very important metrics when evaluating a website: Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
Its update speed and a large number of links in its index make it one of the best SEO tools in the world.
Cost: Plans starting at $ 49.99
What it does: Like Majestic, OSE is a great outbound link analysis tool, but the number of links they find is well below other tools. The biggest use of OSE for me is the metrics it has about a site: Domain Authority and Page Authority.
The OSE interface is superior to Majestic’s and so many still prefer OSE.
Cost: Free with a data limit. OSE is part of Moz’s toolkit that has a 30 day Trial plan and then the initial plan is $ 99.00.
What it does: It is the latest link analysis tool but its ease of use has made it a good place in the market. Ahrefs does not have as many links as Majestic does, but it is far superior to Open Site Explorer.
Like the other tools, it serves to analyze the links you have and has released new features but these still do not work very well for the Brazilian market.
Cost: Free with a data limit. Plans at Ahrefs start at $ 79.00.
What she does: saves you an absurd time! Without excel you can’t do a good link building job. You will always need to export a CSV and analyze many links and without Excel, it is impossible to do so.
Cost: The live version of Excel is free but the desktop version is $ 319 for a PC only.
Google Search Console (Google Webmaster Tools)
What it does: Search Console, formerly Google Webmasters Tools, is a Google tool for webmasters. It has several functions and among them one specific for external links. You can find out which links Google considers to your site.
Cost: Free.
Browser Plugins
If you need to know the key metrics for a domain or the number of links it has, browser plugins are designed to make this task easier.
Imagine you’re looking for new sites to get a link to and each site you discover you need to check the metrics to measure in each tool.
Pretty boring, isn’t it? With plugins, you get access to numbers much faster and save a lot of time with it.
Majestic Toolbar:
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/majestic-seo-backlink-ana/pnmjaflneibolacpepklokkjnakmikmg
Browser: Chrome
What it does: gives you access to key metrics for the page you’re browsing
Cost: Free.
Moz Toolbar
Link: https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar
Browser: Chrome and Firefox
What it does: It’s a mini version of Moz’s tool suite and it’s free. With it installed you have access to various data about the page you are browsing and when you are searching for something on Google you have access to valuable information about the sites and the keyword searched.
Cost: Free.
5 Powerful Link Building Techniques
Backlinks are a topmost ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. Links play a very important role in Google’s Reputation Management Tool.
So take link building activity seriously and do it in the right manner to rank your website higher in Google search. It also helps to reach your content to the right audience.
We are listing the most valuable link building techniques below which will help your website to get a better place in Google SERP.
1- Guest Post
Definition: It is the process of writing and posting a post to another blog. Generally, other blogs accept that you place a link in the content or at least in the author’s description.
Google recently spoke through its webspam team worker Matt Cutts that this technique should be abolished by everyone because it has become a common spam practice and any blog that does so is at risk of being considered spam. So be careful, do it but don’t overdo it.
Types of links you can: A great benefit of guest posting is that you can choose the link anchor for your site and which page you want to link to.
Another benefit is being able to focus only on high-quality sites and get links that will really make a difference to your authority and placement.
The Process: The hardest thing about guest posting is choosing the sites you want to link to. Defining these sites requires good use of Link Building tools but much more of your brain.
The process itself is quite simple:
- Discover new blogs
- Get owner contacts
- Prioritize the best domains
- Send an Approach Email
- If yes, write a post
- Send content to another blog
- Share the guest post on social networks
2- Competitor Links
Definition: This technique consists of running an analysis of your competitors’ links and finding opportunities that they have already linked and you haven’t. When you do this always use Excel to see the domains with the largest Trust Flow and Domain Authority.
Types of links you can: It depends a lot on how your competitors are doing, but you should only focus on links from important domains. One tip is to only get links from domains with metrics higher than yours.
The Process: It’s a simple process, but it can take a long time to analyze the links your competitors have that are of real quality.
- Analyze your competitors’ links and the ones that are best positioned for your keyword.
- Use Excel to filter out Trust Flow and Domain Authority domains larger than yours.
- Browse the sites you found and see if you can get a link there too.
3- Links from your clients
Definition: This technique is very simple, your customers are potential sites to link to you because they already trust you. What you need to do is figure out the customer sites with the best metrics and figure out a way to link them. Many agencies do this when developing a new website and so they have very good domains.
Types of links you can: Depending on your market, you can get high-quality links with high metrics. These links tend to be easier to get.
The Process: It’s simple, but if you have a lot of customers it can take a long time.
- Put all your customer sites in an Excel spreadsheet
- Use Bulk Trust Flow and Citation Flow to check domain metrics
- Find domains with high metrics
- Browse the sites you define and think of a way to link there
4- Brand Mentions without Links
Definition: It is very common for people to quote the brands or even the name of the business owner or a famous employee without making any links to the company. This very simple technique is to monitor all these mentions and get in touch with anyone who mentions and doesn’t link to the company.
Types of links you can: It varies greatly, as it may happen that authoritative blogs mention you, as well as low-quality blogs. Always filter when you contact us, taking into account the metrics of the sites that mentioned the brand.
Another opportunity is to create a page for each employee who lectures or writes for other blogs. So every time you quote these employees, you can request a link to their pages.
The Process:
- Set up an alert on Google for each keyword you want to monitor
- When you receive alerts in your email, go to the website you mentioned and view domain metrics with browser plugins.
- If there is no link, please contact the owner requesting the same
5- Translate content from other languages
Definition: In some markets, it is complicated to find good ideas and guidelines in Portuguese and the best references are in other languages. We usually use these base references for our articles but what if we contact the author instead and ask permission to translate into our language? If he authorizes you can ask him later to add a link to the Portuguese version.
Types of links you can get: These are usually very high-quality links because they are the main references in your niche. Domains will have good metrics and will be in the same niche as your site.
The Process: It’s very simple and takes little time:
- Get in touch with blogs you consider to be your niche references in other languages
- Contact us requesting permission to translate some specific posts
- If accepted, after posting on your blog contact us again notifying you published and ask for a link to your post, stating that the post has a version in another language.
I hope you have understood all about Link Building and are now ready to play your own strategy! If you have any questions or suggestions, use the comments tab below!