Link building is the practice of building one-way hyperlinks (also known as backlinks to a website to improve search engine visibility. Common hyperlink building strategies consist of content advertising building beneficial tools, email outreach, broken link building, and public relations.
In 2024, link building still plays a strong role as a ranking factor for search engines. Search engines see backlinks as a “vote” for the authenticity and authority of your website. However, certain links are better than others. Nofollow links recently changed; instead of not passing page rank to a site, Google will treat nofollow links as a hint. From an SEO perspective, links take a considerable amount of time and effort to build. Let’s take a look at some tips to help you acquire high-quality links that help you conserve your SEO budget.
Getting High Quality Links To Your Website
- The Role of Anchor Text
Anchor text highlighting a link to your website plays a considerable role in the quality of that link. Google reads that anchor text and if the target page of that link is optimized for the anchor text keyword, that target page has a higher chance of ranking better. Many SEOs spend a considerable amount of time acquiring backlinks with anchor text such as “click here,” “website,” or the URL of the target website itself.
Use keyword-rich anchor text whenever possible when trying to acquire links for your website. Make sure that the target page is also optimized for the keyword used in the anchor text. This will create a stronger signal for search engines.
- Link Bait and Quora
Many SEOs spend a considerable amount of time answering questions on Quora to acquire links. While Quora is a great platform, any link from Quora is nofollow by nature. Instead of answering as many questions on Quora as possible to acquire links, spend time answering specific questions that relate to your niché. An infographic, a blog article, or another piece of high-quality content linked from a very detailed Quora answer will likely indirectly result in your website being used as a citation by other websites, resulting in links to your website.
- Understand That Most Links Are Earned Or Editorially Placed
Many SEOs spend a tremendous amount of time on blog comments and directories. This is often a waste of time because many blog comments will sit for some time before a moderator will approve of them. Sometimes, a moderator will never approve of them. While there are many good directory websites out there, these links often take some time to get approved or require a reciprocal link.
The most effective backlinks are ones that are placed in the actual text of an article. According to Neil Patel, links that are placed in the text of a blog article drive the most power in organic ranking. Spend time building these types of links, as footer links, comment links, and sidebar links don’t provide that strong of a ranking signal.
- Work With Your Partners to Acquire Links
Are you a B2B niché business? Maybe your e-commerce store has products that some of your customers love! Work with your partners to create links that target your website. These are often some of the lowest hanging fruits when it comes to link building. If you are a wholesaler of a particular product, ask your manufacturer to provide a link to you. Logos with an alt attribute linking to a page on your website are just as good as a text link and work well without being spammy.
- Infographics Drive Traffic
Infographics are a great way to conserve your link building budget. When authoring guest blogs, you often have to create a new article every time you respond to an outreach effort. With an infographic, you can frequently reuse it in your link building campaigns. Many webmasters will often use an infographic in their content, resulting in a high-quality link to your website. You can also place your infographics on Pinterest and Quora for other people to find without you having to reach out to them.
- Use Google’s New Link Attributes When Appropriate
Use rel=” sponsored” to help search engines identify links created for compensation agreements and advertisements. Use rel=” UGC” whenever users can create content on your websites, such as in a blog comment or a forum. Continue to use rel=”nofollow” when you want to link to another website, but do not want to pass page rank.
Google has not identified how and when they will treat the Nofollow attribute as a hint to search engines. It is likely that if a site is “hot,” meaning it gets a lot of traffic, it may use that nofollow link as a signal for higher rankings.
- Good Backlinks depend on Good Content
Reddit has one simple rule: “Remember the human.” this is often an honest rule to follow when link building, too. Whenever you craft a link on another website, confirm that the content you provide links back to related content on your website. If you’re trying to urge a link on an internet site, concentrate on the usability, content, and usefulness of the web site in question. If you’re building on a directory, for instance, and therefore the directory website is tough to use, that probably isn’t a really good website to urge a link. Another great example is whether or not or not the linking website in question has an SSL. Your guest blog or infographic should be created for the human and not search engines. Treat content on a third-party website as you’d your own and make your content thereupon think about the mind.
- Vet Your Link Building Service
Link building services are often excellent. However, some link building services may result during a penalty on your website. Many link building services have spent tons of your time building PBNs, which are private blog networks. They often use article spinners to make voluminous amounts of automated content on these blog networks. When hiring a link building service, ask them for an example of previous work. If they can’t provide good examples, the link building service in question is perhaps not an honest fit for you.
- Keep Your Link Building In House If in the least Possible
Work on link building on your own, if possible. Your internal team knows your audience and therefore the content that they love. Also, an indoor link builder can be an envoy for your brand. Many link building services will use an automatic tool to succeed in bent webmasters and use an automatic email. Human-to-human outreach from someone on your staff will end in a far better outreach effort.
- Understand Past Google Updates, Especially Panda
While Google updates from the first 2010s could seem outdated, you ought to read abreast of these and understand them. To date, Panda remains the foremost significant Google update that impacts link building as a sign in SEO. Also, take a while to know Google’s patent that involves backlinks. If you understand how Google indexes online, you’ll understand how links work.
