What is Link Building?
Want to get more traffic to your website? The answer is Link Building.
Building Links will help you get more relevant traffic to your website, generating more leads, which finally translates to more sales.
Contact iPower if you are Looking for Link Building Services.Don’t want to read? You can also watch this video explaining Link Building in a brief.
Link Building is a part of Search Engine Optimization(SEO).
The SEO process aims to improve the visibility of a website when a person types any query, also known as keywords on search engines. SEO and Link Building go side by side. The Link Building process comes under Off-Page SEO and involves building one-way links(called hyperlinks) pointing to your website from other authority websites in or around your niche. These hyperlinks are called Backlinks.
This LINK is a backlink from our website to Wikipedia. The text “LINK is a backlink” on which the backlink is placed is called an Anchor text.
The search engines like Google or Bing sees them as a Vote of Confidence for your website. In SERP’s terminology, they pass the Authority or the Link-Juice to your website. So, they help in improving the search engine visibility of your business.
Types of Links
Not all backlinks are equal. There are mainly two types of backlinks-
Do-follow Links
Do-follow links are the links that you should aim for. Backlinks, when created and left untouched by webmasters, will automatically turn out to be Do-Follow Backlinks. These links will act as the Vote for Confidence and will pass the authority to your website.
If you look into the Page Source of an HTML webpage, the do-follow backlink will look like this-
<a href=”http://www.website.com/”>Link Text</a>
No-follow Links
Backlinks that DON’T pass the Authority or Link Juice to a website called No-follow Backlinks. These links are created with the tag rel=”no-follow” which you can view in the webpage’s HTML view. The rel=”no-follow” tag instructs Googlebot not to endorse the website mentioned in that link.
If you look into the Page Source of an HTML webpage, the do-follow backlink will look like this-
<a href=”http://www.website.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>
Why is Link Building important for your website?
All search engines use links to identify the web pages across the internet. Higher rankings are awarded to the websites with a better Link Profile than others for a particular query. But apart from better website visibility, link building offers other advantages too.
1. Link Building also builds relationships with other content creators.
Link Building builds relationships as you try to reach others via email. Emailing to other players in your industry will provide you the opportunity to expose your business and brand to them. Meanwhile, you’ll end up creating friends that’ll always be ready to help you to help if you ever need them in the future.
2. You’ll get some Referral Traffic
When a web admin places your website link on his website, not only do you get the link juice that makes your website appear higher on Google, but it also provides some amount of traffic from the host website. So, even if a website places your link with a rel=”no-follow” tag, you still are benefitted from it with the relevant referral traffic coming to your website.
So, even if you perform the link building activity on popular Social Media and Social Bookmarking sites where the links created are nofollow, this may help your website with some relevant traffic.
3. Building Links Build a Brand
When you are constant with your Link Building efforts, you start knowing many people from in and around your industry. And sometimes they will also get benefit from the product or service you’re providing to society. All this helps in building the brand value of your business. And not only that, but you also make a personal brand along the way. People connect more with a person than a company brand. So, your Personal Brand will, in turn, create more trust among people for your business. And you may become entitled to get the power of Word of Mouth Marketing which will further drive sales to your business.
4. Get competitive advantage
If you are not active in building links to your website, your competitors will soon start ranking on SERPs for the queries that you want. So, if you don’t want to lose, you have to take the Link Building process seriously to keep yourself ahead in the game.
A brief History of Backlinks – How this all started?
If you go back in the past, before pre-Google days, the major Search Engine players in the internet market were Yahoo and Alta Vista. Their search engine results were purely based on the Content published on the web page.
Then Google came with its Page Rank Algorithm. Here, Google was going to determine the content quality of a web page with links pointing to it, apart from the Content written there. And this proved to be a game-changer. Even after 20 years from the time they released this algorithm, Google still uses this as one of the top 3 ranking factors.
And with constant algorithm updates like Google Penguin Update, Google has now become smarter in analyzing links. It now focuses more on the Quality of a Link rather than Quantity.
Know how Google works – Link Building still play an essential role
Understanding how Google works will help you to create content that aligns with its algorithm. And that also attracts high-quality links. You might be surprised knowing that when you search something on Google, you’re not searching on the web, but searching on Google’s directory(or store). Google makes a copy of your webpage and saves that on its server.
source https://theinboundly.com/how-search-engines-work/
Google works in a 3 Steps Process – Crawling – Indexing – Showing the results. It does that through its software program, which is called the Crawler or the Web-Spider. So, each time you upload a blog or a web page on the internet, the Google crawlers try to find the URL (or address) of that page. And this is where the importance of links arrives. Google spiders will reach a page much easier if it is internally well-linked. And the complete website has a good link profile. This process of finding the URL of a webpage is called Crawling.
Once Google finds your website through crawling, its automated spiders analyze the page to understand its content and then save it in its vast database – storage devices and computers. This process is called Indexing.
Finally, when you search for something on Google, it shows the Highest Quality Results from its database based on various factors like your location, language, link profile, etc. Most importantly, Google doesn’t accept payments for its organic rankings. So, this is how backlinks contribute to determining the Quality of a webpage or a website.
E-A-T this fact because it’s YMYL
Google has created Search Quality Elevator Guidelines document, which it expects to be followed by webmasters worldwide. Google and its guideline mainly want your website and its web pages to have a purpose. And that is to nothing but help users, and NOT just to make money.
And to determine the Quality of a webpage, it has created the E-A-T algorithm, which is one of the factors for page quality. E-A-T is an acronym for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.
By Expertise, Google expects the creator of the content to be an expert in his field. If the content is about marketing, then Google expects this written piece of content from a marketer. And so on with content related to other areas to be written by their respective personals.
By Authoritiveness, Google wants the Content to be presented by a person seen as Authority in his field. Meaning he is well known and is recognized by his colleagues.
And in continuation to this, the Trustworthiness factor wants you to be a source on whom people can trust to ensure complete accuracy of the information available on the internet. Not always, but a website with a good link profile tells Google that the page carries a high E-A-T.
YMYL stands for Your Money Your Life. YMYL is the category assigned to pages containing information that directly affects your health, safety, happiness, and financial stability. This category includes websites on medical advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, parenting, etc.
If a page falls in a YMYL category, Google will be rigorous with the E-A-T associated with it. In this case, it not only evaluates the link profile but goes way beyond to look at the writer’s professional details and credibility from the data present across the web.
Can you also rank without links?
Link building is a challenging and tedious task. So, are you looking to rank on Google without creating backlinks? But the chances are slim. With around 7 Million Blogs Published Per Day on the internet, it’s nearly impossible for any search engine to fetch out the best content from the webspace that its users will love to see.
Google does try to read the content available on the internet but still can’t replace humans like you and me. So, it uses Links as a Currency to determine the Quality of a web page. If a webpage has high-quality links pointing to it, it confirms Google of its high quality, and the search engine paves its way to the top result of the SERP..
How to build links?
You can do Link building in a variety of ways. But everything revolves around great content. Remember that link building is NOT a standalone activity. Instead, it’s more the byproduct of the quality of products and services you offer from your side. Nonetheless, no one will know about the highest quality products that you provide if it doesn’t reach them in the first place. For that, creating and looking for ways to get the message spread across the globe is the only way out.
Another aspect to acknowledge while link building is that it’s the process of exchange value between you and your host website. So, your content should provide enough weight to the next person giving him reasons to mention your website on his platform in return.
1. Create 10X Content
The crux of the matter lies in the content. It’s not just for any reason that it’s said Content is King. Because it’s through the Content only you create awareness and grab eye-balls towards your product and business. For that matter, your Content should be better than your competitors. And not just better, but way better than others to become a linkable asset. That way, better Content in the marketer’s slang is called the 10X Content, meaning your Content provides 10X Value or 10X ease to your customers by solving their problems.
So, How to create the 10X Content?
Do competitor’s research and look at how your competitors are doing. Look for opportunities inside their content. Then research all around the web and read books. And then come out with a better piece of content that people would love to see. If the competition is low for a query, there are chances of your Content to rank higher on Google even without any links pointing to it, given that your overall website has a good link profile.
Another reason to create the 10X Content is to make your website reach the top spot of the 1st page SERPs. Link building will help your blog to make its way on the 1st page. But after that, a lot depends on your content quality. Once a webpage reaches the 1st page for a query, Google closely analyzes the webpage’s engagement through KPIs like CTR(Click Through Rate), Bounce Rate, Average time on the page, etc. It then assigns the top 3 rankings for the best performers.
You need to make your page rank in the top 3 positions because the average CTR steeply decreases after three positions. The page ranking on the 1st position, 2nd position and the 10th position gets CTR of around 35%, 15% and 3%, in that order. So, if you’re ranking in the 10th position, you won’t get a better ROI. For that, your web page’s Title Tag should be optimized and eye-cathy, but not a clickbait also. And your content should be useful, engaging, and inspiring for the best user experience.
You can use our SEO Page Optimizer Tool to check how top performing pages for given query are performing on Google.
2. Contact other Bloggers
You have created the 10X Content. But the chances are slim that anyone is going to find that on the internet. So, you have to create awareness of your high-quality Content via email outreach to various bloggers who can link back to you. The best way to choose the target bloggers for shooting a link outreach mail is to find the people who have already given a link to the top-ranking pages for the query you want to rank. Then it’s just a matter of time that you’ll pitch your content, presenting it as a way better than the ones they have already linked to. They’ll be happier to remove their previous link and replace it with yours.
You will get the contact details of bloggers on their Contact Us page, or you can also use FREE Email Finder Tools to get email details.
3. Contribute with Guest Blogging
Guest Blogging is another way to get those juicy backlinks. Here, you offer to write a great piece of content for other bloggers that will increase their brand value along with yours. In exchange, they’ll be glad to allow you to place your website link on theirs. After all, they are also getting free content for their website.
Many guest post hosts also request your Bio to be placed in the author’s bio section. You can briefly talk about yourself and your company and place links to your social media handle. So, this will also help in establishing a personal brand around your business and the company brand.
One simple way to find websites that actively look for Guest Posts is to search on Google: Your keyword + intitle:write for us.
Also Read: 150+ Sites for Guest Posting
4. Share Infographics
Everyone loves visual data. So, you can create infographics to share and get backlinks for your site. Guest bloggers will readily welcome your visual craft if it’s informative and eye-catchy at the same time. And if your work goes viral, then it will further bring a good amount of referral traffic and links to your site.
Infographics placed on your site can alone increase your website traffic by 12% as per OneSpot. Make sure you also mention your company brand at the bottom of your infographic. To create one, you can either hire a designer or use online design tools which also provide pre-designed infographic templates for you to use.
5. Find Broken Links
The broken link method of finding a backlink opportunity is one of the best and most effortless ways to build one-way links to your site. Here, you visit a website to find broken links on it, if any. Then you contact the webmaster informing him of this link which needs to be replaced. And then, you present your created 10X content as a replacement. Since you are helping a website editor to make his website better for his readers, the chances are high that he can replace that broken link with yours if he finds your content valuable and worthy enough. You can use various broken link checker tools available online or chrome plugins for finding broken links on someone’s website.
To find the broken links on a website, you can use this FREE Broken Link Checker from Ahrefs.
6. Get links through Testimonials
Product owners look for testimonials to establish the credibility of their products in the market. So, you can provide that for a product or service that you are using. And in return, you’ll have an easy opportunity to get a link from the product’s site owner. The website owners won’t hesitate here because you’re providing them with something which they value. So, it’ll be a mutual exchange of value between you and the product’s site owner.
7. Share your own Research or Experience
People on the internet search for data and statistics to enrich their blogs. So, if you have done your research on a subject and have got promising results with reliable data, that can become your tool for generating backlinks. You can also share your experience from an event if you feel that people find it interesting to link back to you as a source.
9. High-Quality links by HARO
As we mentioned earlier, backlinks are created to promote a website and help other web admins. So, you should try to HARO or Help A Reporter Out. It’s another way to generate links pointing to your website. And if you are not using this, you are losing opportunities to get links from highly trusted sources.
HARO is a platform where journalists hang around to get information for their press. You have to subscribe to the HARO platform, and you’ll start receiving queries from journalists on your mail based upon the niche you have selected during sign-up. If you can provide a journalist the information he is looking for, then he may give you credit for this help in the form of a backlink.
9. Donation Backlinks
You might be surprised knowing that you can earn links even by donation. For that, look at websites in your niche that accept donations and provide a link back to the donor. Search – donation + contributors + your keyword. Find a suitable website where you’ll be asked to fill in your details, donation amount, and URL of your website. Donate, and you’ll have a link pointing to your website.
10. Try to get Interviewed
If you get an opportunity to be interviewed by bloggers in your industry, you’ll automatically receive a backlink without even asking for it. As we mentioned earlier, Link Building is about value exchange. If you are not perceived as an authority in your field yet, then you’ll not be getting interview invitations. So, for the initial days, try to reach out to people who conduct interviews and tell them what value you can provide to their audience through your knowledge and experience. If they accept your request, then soon you’ll have a Backlink live to your website.
Not only will this get you a Backlink, but this will also help establish your brand. And once people start knowing about you, you’ll begin getting interview invitations from others. This might seems challenging in the first place, but once you’ve overcome this, you’ll have tons of opportunities to promote your business and brand arriving at your doorstep.
11. Grab your place in Round-Up Posts
Many websites create a list of posts on a particular topic that comprises all the best blogs published on the internet. These are called roundup posts. So, Link Building through roundup posts is one of the easiest ways. To find this opportunity, type – keyword + roundup, and you’ll have a bunch of websites accepting links to the best blogs. Reach them via email and provide reasons to mention your content on their list, and you’ll have a link pointing to your site.
12. Reclaim that Link
What if someone has already mentioned your website in this blog but forgot to mention your website link? You can ask them to do that and Reclaim that Link. This is also one of the easy ways for getting a backlink to your site because the chances are high as they have already written about you.
And to find the opportunities for Link Reclamation, use can use online tools like Buzzsumo. You can set up an alert on Buzzsumo about you and whenever someone mentions you in his work. You’ll get a notification if they’ve linked you, then good enough. If not them reach out to them. First, thank them for writing about you, and then ask them to add your link. Most of the time, you’ll get a positive response, and you’ll have a new backlink for your site.
Also Read – 15 Best Link Building Tools on the internet.
High-Quality vs Spammy Links
Backlinks arriving from well-known sites or from sites that get a good amount of traffic are the High-Quality Links that help your website. On the contrary, links coming from websites that don’t produce valuable content regularly or from Link Farms are low quality or spammy links that tarnish your link profile.
Not two links created are equal. Links with high standards can help your website rank higher on Google, while the link-building process that involves creating low-quality or spammy-looking links can hurt your website’s image. The internet is filled with scammers and fraudsters who are smart enough. But Google outsmarts them with its updates that are released from time to time from their end. So, Google has become much more brilliant at analyzing links with its Penguin update released in April 2012. It can now easily differentiate between a high-quality link vs. a spammy link merely created to manipulate its ranking algorithms.
Qualities of a High-Quality Link
For a link to be deemed of high quality in the sight of Google, it should carry the following attributes –
Earned via Quality Content
You should earn a link by creating quality content. A web admin should editorially place the link on his website, if he finds your content useful and inspiring for his readers.
High Authority
Your Backlink should come from authority websites only. The authority websites have already had a Vote of Confidence, i.e., a lot of good quality pointing to their website. A link arriving at your website from trusted sources like Huffpost or Inc Magazine will carry more value than the one coming from a newly built site with very few backlinks.
Though Google doesn’t assign any number to quantify the Authority of websites, there are 3rd party tools that provide a number that helps to get an idea of the website’s strength. So, you can use Ahrefs Domain Rating Checker or Moz Domain Authority Checker to know the authority or the link profile strength of a website.
But you’ll also encounter websites that have very few backlinks but still welcome a good amount of visitors. Getting links from these websites also are valuable enough.
Slowly Built
When you’re building links to your website, make them slowly. Its pace should be constant so that search algorithms didn’t perceive it as a link explosion. Google sees a website attaining a large volume of links in a concise duration as an approach to manipulate its search algorithms. So, it may penalize your website for this.
Mixed-Backlinks
Your backlink should be a mix of both do-follow and no-follow links. So, no-follow links aren’t completely futile. You also can build some no-follow links from your side by adding your business website on popular business directories and social bookmarking sites.
Natural Anchor text
Your anchor text, i.e., the phrase or word where the link is situated, should be relevant but also not overly optimized, i.e., should not contain the exact phrase repeated across all websites. Extremely optimized anchor text also cautions Google of attempting to manipulate its search engine algorithms.
Qualities of a Low-Quality Link
On the contrary, spammy links are the ones that come from low-quality directories, are purchased, involves excessive link exchanges, and build with a flawed approach like overly optimized anchor text. You can exchange links with other websites, but you should not get involved too much in this.
The Link building Method to Avoid
Never try to outsmart Google by purchasing links if offered by webmasters or by reaching out to web admins on the internet. Google is strict in this regard, and if you are caught in any transaction process to get a link from a website, it may delete your website from its index. Trying to rank search engines by aiming to manipulate their algorithms is called the Black-Hat way of link building.
Need help in your Link Buiding?
Link Building is a tedious task if not difficult. As per one study, 75% of randomly selected 1 Million pages has zero(0) links pointing to them.
The first step in the link building process is to create content that is way better than your competitors. To create a link-worthy content, our SEO Page Optimizer Tool can help you. To make this accessible for everyone, we offer 1 FREE Analysis per day. Then you’ve to reach out to other bloggers in the hope of getting a link to your website. Keep in mind that you will not hear back from every blogger you send the email to.
If you are too occupied and out of your time for your Link Building work, and you also don’t want to bear the pain of rejection, then you may handle this tough and tedious task to a reputed agency like us.
Who are we?
We, iPower, are experts in Link Building, and Content Marketing for more than 20 years now. We have ranked many webpages on Google’s first page across various industries.
