What is Link Building and How it Works
Having a website is not enough when it comes to getting better traffic. It is the point from where you have to get started for sure but there are several things to do other than the website.
We are going to talk about an important technique that is highly helpful in driving traffic on your website i.e. link building. We are going to start by talking about what is link building before moving on to other vital concepts. So, let us get started.
What is a link?
A link is a connection between two web pages on the internet. You can visualise the link as a pathway for directing people to a page on the internet, a PDF file, or any other component on the web.
For example, this is a link: What Are Meta Descriptions and How They Work.
So, you can see links as a means to travel from one place on the internet to another. Now that you know what a link is, it is time to understand what link building is and the way it benefits your overall SEO efforts.
What is link building?
People are talking so much about link building because it is a significant factor for Google and other search engines in deciding the rank of a website. Link building is basically a process to acquire links from different websites to yours.
Suppose there is a considerable number of high-quality links to your website from other sources, the search engine would consider your website more relevant and authoritative. As a result, the rank of your website will improve.
There are some things you should know about the quality of links i.e. quality of links matters a lot in this case. If your website is getting links from irrelevant sources, you are not getting many benefits. This is because the Google algorithms are very effective at identifying spammy links to avoid irrelevant websites from getting better ranks only on the basis of numbers.
So, you have to keep an eye on where you are getting links rather than how many links you have got. Relying on a bad link-building technique might cause the rank of your website to go down.
So, how does link building work?
There are two ways in which you can use links for the benefit of your website. There are internal links and external links. External links are the ones you get from other websites.
Though it might be a bit difficult for you to obtain those links, they are worth trying. Internal linking is something completely under your control. It not only benefits the rank of your website but manages to enhance the user experience on your website.
There is a concept called deep linking. Deep linking is nothing but a process of linking different pages of your website. Several websites have a structure that leads their visitors to the home page when the users click on some link. This might be an easy implementation for the web developers but it results in a terrible user experience.
Almost every page on your website should have some links to relevant pages/topics. You may consider linking the pages to blog posts, product pages (in case your website falls in the category of e-commerce), etc.
If you are focused on regular blogging, maintaining proper and relevant links becomes easy. Apart from that, link your website to all the social media platforms where you are active.
The qualities you should look for while getting links
Now that you are well aware of what link building is, it is time to take a look at the qualities that separate the best links from the rest. Many SEO experts are still not sure about the exact parameters that search engines use to measure the quality of links. But there are three qualities that matter the most in this case. Let us have a look at them.
Authentic
You might refer to such links as natural as well. You will need to earn these links. If you are thinking of getting links by paying the website owners or manipulating them in some way, you will end up harming your website.
Many website owners tend to cheat the Google algorithms through the use of links but that is not a good practice. Google might ignore such attempts a few times but it will ultimately demote such websites in terms of rank. Earning such links is really easy.
Relevant
In case you find it difficult to understand the meaning of Relevant in this context, here is a simple example. Suppose you run a website about minimalism and simple living. Now featuring your website in a blog post about the best pop singers in the world would be irrelevant.
Search engines have several tools and techniques to review the domains and pages in order to check the relevance of backlinks.
Reputation
After the search engines came to know about the unfair use of links by some people to get better ranks, they came up with a new idea. There are numerous dedicated Google algorithms that focus on analysing the reputation of the website that has linked back to you.
It was not so easy to do in the beginning. But now important websites have more links as compared to unimportant ones. When it comes to getting links from such websites, you have to work in that direction.
First, your website must have enough relevant resources to offer value to those websites. Once you are offering value to them, they will link back to you for sure. This is the most authentic and productive way of earning relevant links from reputable websites.
Final words
We have come a long way from knowing what link building is. Your awareness about the working and other fundamentals of link building is crucial to getting better results.
Sticking to genuine methods will help you in the long run even though the returns might not be so quick in this case.
