SEO relies heavily on link building. It helps search engines find your pages and rank them. You can write a great post, but if search engines can’t find at least one link to it, visitors won’t be able to appreciate its great content for a long time. Google needs links from other websites to find your post. Better is more linking. However, be careful; the quality of the links matters! Some links are more valuable than others. Still worse: Your website could be harmed by some links. We’ll show you how to build links in this section. If you want to learn how to do it right, we’ll also direct you to more in-depth articles.
What’s a link?
A link, or a hyperlink, is simply a link that connects two pages on the internet. You can direct people to a page, post, image, or other online object by using a link. People have links in the first place:
You can easily “travel” from one website to another by using a link.However, links also benefit search engines because search engine robots use links to locate web pages. Crawling is a term for this. You will need at least one link to your website from another website that has already been crawled in order for a robot to locate it. When you launch a brand-new website, one of the things you need to do is make sure you get that first link.
A link in HTML
In the coding language HTML, a hyperlink looks like this:<a href=”https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/”>Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress</a>The first part contains the URL you’re linking to. In this case, it’s the URL of the Yoast SEO plugin page (https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/). The second part (Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress) shows the clickable text that you’d see on the page. We call this piece of text the ‘anchor text’.
Links both internal and external
There are two types of links that are important to SEO: both internal and external links
You get backlinks from other websites that link to your pages. If, on the other hand, you link to their pages from yours, you are providing them with backlinks.Link building and internal linking are not the same thing.
Text for the anchor
The anchor text has two functions: It should entice people to click and explain what the linked page is about. There are two benefits to a link with well-crafted anchor text:
It will help search engines understand what your page is about, possibly leading to more traffic from search engines, and more people will click on it, resulting in more direct traffic.Naturally, you have no control over the anchor text that other people use to link to your website. However, you can enhance your own internal links by employing anchor text.
What exactly is link building and why do we do it?
The marketing efforts to obtain links from other websites to your website are referred to as “link building.” It is regarded as one of the most effective methods for improving search engine rankings.
In a Q&A session, Google’s Andrey Lipattsev even confirmed that backlinks are an important ranking factor.When you consider it, this makes sense. A good page should or must have a lot of high-quality backlinks. As a result, search engines will rank it higher because they will consider it to be important or popular.
Realizing that not all backlinks are created equal is helpful. In addition, since acquiring links from other websites is a significant ranking factor, this presents a problem for the SEO industry. Which is: To acquire more backlinks, websites would employ questionable link building strategies.
The quality of a link varies widely.
Some links have a significantly higher value than others. For instance, a link from a reputable website, preferably one that is relevant to your industry, is more valuable than a link from a random website that no one knows about.
Let’s say that if you own a restaurant, you would prefer to get a link from a restaurant review on The Guardian’s high-authority website than from the website of your aunt’s horseback riding school. This makes it easier to select websites from which you would like links. However, at the same time, it makes it much more difficult to obtain the desired high-quality links.
Methods that are shady Due to the difficulty of link building, numerous shady link building strategies have emerged in the past. By purchasing links from link farms, for instance, people attempted to rig the system. Because of this, link building has acquired a somewhat negative reputation.
As a direct consequence of this, Google intervened and imposed severe penalties. It is possible for a page to completely vanish from the search results if it receives a lot of backlinks from websites with a questionable reputation. Therefore, you should steer clear of these risky methods for building links. Link building, on the other hand, has a lot to offer if you approach it rationally and fairly.
How can you acquire links?
Now comes the question of the century: How can you acquire those useful links?A holistic approach to building links is what we advocate. You will need to develop a website to which people will want to link.
It seems so easy: Produce exceptional, funny, original, or high-quality content that people will want to share. But how do you accomplish this?Find out who your target audience is first and foremost. Who do you want your content to reach? Then, consider the kind of content they require.
What kind of data are they seeking, and what kinds of inquiries are they asking? Which phrases do they employ? Furthermore, what kinds of websites do they browse?
If you can answer these questions, it will be easier to create content that meets the needs of your audience (for example, by applying content design principles). Additionally, you will have a starting point for your link building efforts once you have created that page with valuable content for your audience and know which websites they visit.
Which is: You can begin contacting the owners of those websites.That, in a nutshell, is link building. Reaching out to other parties and distributing your article to those who might also be interested in sharing it is the goal. That’s why choosing the right niche is so important. This helps you get in touch with fewer people and increases your chances of actually getting a link.
Linking from their website to yours only works if it serves the interests of both their audience and themselves. If your content or product truly stands out, you won’t be able to persuade them to link to you.
They might be persuaded if you offer to let them try or use your product for free, if you have one. Additionally, personally contacting them will ensure better outcomes.