Link Building
Increase your search engine ranking and reputation
Why Link Building is Important for SEO
Link building is the strategy of obtaining incoming links to a website or blog. It is a widespread SEO practice because of the impact it can have on search engine rankings. This can either have a desirable effect or, if not done correctly, it can be disastrous.
Search engines monitor which websites link to other websites. A common analogy is to think of these links as ’votes‘. Every time a website links to your website, it’s like getting a ’vote‘. These votes let search engines know how relevant your website is.
The Good and Bad of Link Building
Incoming links, also known as inbound links (more commonly backlinks) that come from a good source can improve your ranking. If they come from bad sources you run the risk of getting penalised by search engines. This could result in a demotion of your search engine position or you could be blacklisted completely. It can be extremely difficult, or in some cases completely impossible, to undo being blacklisted. It is therefore very important that your link building strategy only uses ethical methods and techniques. See Google’s guidelines for more on this.
Domain Authority
Backlinks determine the relevance of your website and, by extension, the quality of the pages being linked to. This translates into domain authority. Domain Authority is “a search engine ranking score developed by Moz”. Although Moz state on their website that “Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs”, it is still a good way to gauge the strength of a website’s search engine performance. It grades a website using a variety of factors to predict its relevance and reputation with search engines. Websites are scored from 1–100, with higher scores meaning a better ranking.
Link Building Strategies
As mentioned above, getting backlinks from other sites can have a positive or negative effect on your website. Let’s consider some link building factors and strategies and why they are good or bad.
Positive Link Building Factors
Some positive factors and methods include:
- Links from reputable websites — websites that get high quality inbound links from other reputable sites can pass on this reputation and authority to websites they link to.
- Good quality content — your copy and use of images and other media should be useful and relevant to your audience. If humans like it, search engines will like it too.
- Internal and outgoing links — the way your own site links its pages together, whether through navigational menus or from body copy, helps search engines understand individual pages as well as the theme of the whole website. Interlinking in the right way can have positive effects.
- Freshness — keeping your site updated regularly lets search engines know that you are active and relevant.
- Competitor research — a little competitor research can tell you a lot about the types of backlinks they’re getting and where they are coming from. Sometimes it’s not about copying their strategies — it could be the case of doing what they are not and getting ‘one up’ on the competition.
Link Building Strategies to Avoid
Negative methods include:
- Buying Links — paying for a specific amount of inbound links to your website or blog might sound like a good idea, but it can be a harmful practice. Search engine algorithms pick up on manipulative link building techniques that create artificial results. If your backlinks are the result of dubious practices or come from spammy websites, you may be penalised.
- Cloaking — it is a bad idea to display a page or content to search engines which is different from that presented to actual users. Trying to ‘trick’ a search engine can have negative consequences.
- Keyword stuffing — do not be tempted to fill pages with keywords in an unnatural and repetitive way and avoid using multiple keywords that have no relation to the page.
- Hiding text — there are various ways to hide text from users — however search engines will still ‘see’ it. It is poor practice to use text with the same colour as the background, hide text behind images or use code to make it unviewable.
- Displaying fraudulent information — if detected, websites that contain fraudulent content, scams or false information about a person or business will not get listed in search engines.
Receiving Good Backlinks
When developing your link building strategy you should endeavour to earn backlinks from authoritative and trustworthy websites. These websites will generate the SEO boost needed. Backlinks from low quality and spammy websites will only weaken your website’s search engine performance.
Ultimately, your website needs to be relevant, informative and appealing to get backlinks from the right sources.