How do you gain Google’s trust?
The #1 way is through link-building, which is the process of ‘building’ links from other websites that ‘point back’ to your content. A link from an external site that points back to yours is called a backlink.
Google’s algorithm examines the number and quality level of backlinks for each web page when ranking search results.
The page that has the highest number of links coming from relevant, high-quality websites is most likely the one that will rank in the #1 organic spot (which generates the lion’s share of user clicks).
The proof?
According to research conducted by Backlinko, the #1 spot on Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2 – #10.
Moreover, the #1 organic position has the highest click-through rate by far, meaning users actually ‘click-through’ to the content.
You can likely attest to this if you’re a frequent Google user. Going with the top-ranked result is the quickest and easiest option since it appears at the top of the page, and it’s the result Google feels best matches your query.
Therefore, if you want your content to rank as high as possible, learning the fundamentals of link-building is a must, which is what we’re here to teach you today.
Ready to learn? Let’s begin!
Contents
- What is link building
- Why is Link-Building Important?
- What are the Benefits of Link-Building for My Business?
- B2B and Customer Relationships
- Thought Leadership
- Referral Traffic
- Brand-Building
- Faster Indexing
- Build Site Authority
- Gain a Competitive Advantage
- Find New Marketing Opportunities
- Key Concepts in Link-Building
- Not all Links are Equal
- Link-Building vs. Link-Earning
- Should You Buy Links?
- The Importance of Internal Linking
- Nofollow and Follow
- How to Find Link-Building Opportunities
- Check Your Competitors
- Use Search Operators
- Find Guest Posting Opportunities
- Advanced Search Operators
- Use Tools
- Link-Building Techniques
- Building Links the White-Hat Way
- Broken Link-Building
- Create Linkable Assets
- Guest Posts
- Connect With Influencers
- HARO
- Skyscraper Technique
- Unlinked Brand Mentions
- Summary
Why is Link-Building Important?
There are countless data-backed studies and experiments online that prove the effectiveness of link-building for ranking higher on Google.
Google remains tight-lipped about its ranking systems in order to deter spammers (who aim to manipulate the search results). For this reason, they tend to ‘bend’ the truth when delivering public statements about SEO.
One of their favorite go-to lines is that backlinks aren’t a top ranking factor, or at least aren’t in the top 3.
SEOs and marketers have always found this suspicious, as link-building is often what moves the needle for our clients the most. If our client sites don’t have lots of high-quality backlinks on par with the competition, getting to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) is nearly impossible.
Recently, a leak from Google spilled the beans on their internal ranking systems, and it turns out that backlinks ARE a major ranking factor (which we knew all along).
But why are backlinks such a big deal to Google’s search algorithm?
The reason dates back to Google’s inception and its ‘unique differentiator’ as a search engine.
When Larry Page was still at Stanford, he noticed that search engines at the time had no way of gauging the quality and reliability of websites. That’s when he developed PageRank, which gauges the quality and reliability of a web page based on the number of backlinks it has from other high-quality websites.
The concept is similar to citing sources for a term paper, which is where Page got the idea.
Just as an academic cites trusted journals and publications to back up their claims, so too should websites through backlinks.
As a result, backlinks serve as ‘credibility votes’ for the quality of your website.
Let’s consider a simple example.
The Wall Street Times is a major website from a massive news publication that Google trusts. Therefore, if a web page on The Wall Street Times links to a piece of your content (such as a blog covering a relevant news story in great detail), it signals to Google that your content is accurate and high-quality.
You can think of it as ‘trust by association.’
Since Google trusts websites that have relevant, high-quality backlinks, SEOs have an incentive to ‘build’ backlinks from other websites in their industry. Techniques vary, such as conducting outreach, writing guest posts, and replacing broken links, but we’ll dive into specific tactics later on.
Backlinks must hold topical or contextual relevance
Before we go any further, it’s crucial to know that backlinks have to be relevant to positively affect your performance on search engines.
In other words, a backlink from the gaming website Steam won’t do much for a blog about knitting. The two industries are completely unrelated, and a link from one site to the other adds no value to users (and will likely only lead to confusion/frustration).
This is why relevance is a big deal for backlinks. Instead of targeting a backlink from Steam, the knitting blog would be much better off reaching out to:
- Other knitting blogs
- E-commerce websites that sell knitting products
- Forums and social media groups dedicated to knitting
These websites are directly related to the blog’s topic, and linking to and from them will provide value and additional resources to readers.
Relevance can also take several forms, including:
- Topical relevance. If another website deals with the same topic, such as knitting, then it holds topical relevance.
- Contextual relevance. It’s also important to remember that relevance can be contextual. For instance, normally, a link from The Wall Street Times to a knitting blog wouldn’t be relevant at all. However, if the page linking to the blog is called ‘New Knitting Craze Takes Over the Country,’ then the backlink makes perfect sense.
Whenever you start targeting websites for backlinks, ensure that they hold some type of relevance to your content. Otherwise, you’re likely wasting your time, and the link may even get flagged as spam by Google.
The difference between backlinks and referring domains
It’s very easy to confuse the terms backlink and referring domains, so let’s distinguish the two before moving on.
As stated previously, a backlink is a link from another website that points back to yours.
A referring domain is a website that has linked back to your website at least once.
However, there’s no limit on how many times a website (referring domain) can link back to your content. Sticking with the knitting example, let’s say our knitting blog forms a solid relationship with an e-commerce website that sells knitting products.
As a result, the e-commerce store links back to the knitting blog numerous times.
This means the knitting blog has multiple backlinks from one referring domain.
However, to get the most bang for your SEO back, you need backlinks coming from lots of referring domains, as they’ll have the most impact on your rankings.
If Google’s algorithm only considered the number of backlinks and not referring domains, then websites with thousands of links from one referring domain would dominate the web – which isn’t the case.
Another study from Backlinko confirmed that more referring domains equals higher rankings.
While link partnerships are great, it’s essential to keep targeting backlinks from other referring domains to have the strongest effect on your search rankings.
It’s pretty easy to understand why Google prefers more referring domains than just the number of backlinks.
If lots of individual websites choose to link to your content, that’s a strong sign that you’re a trustworthy and reliable source of information.
What Are The Benefits of Link Building for My Business?
When it comes to business growth, it may be hard to see the benefit of something like link-building.
After all, what will building links do for your business?
The answer is:
A TON!
Valuable backlinks will:
- Improve your SERP rankings
- Expose your content to new audiences
- Build trust and authority
- Get your content indexed faster
- Help you find new marketing opportunities
- Give you an edge over your competitors
As you can see, the perks stretch beyond achieving higher search engine rankings.
These are pretty significant benefits, so let’s take a closer look at each one.
Improve your SERP ranking
The #1 benefit of link-building is the impact it will have on your search engine rankings.
As we’ve stated before, if you want to generate the most traffic and leads, you need your content to rank in the #1 spot for keywords related to your products and services.
On-page and technical SEO factors can only inch you toward the #1 spot so far, but backlinks are what will drive you over the edge.
Virtually every website worth its salt (or at least ones in contention for #1 rankings) will make proper use of keywords, have fast loading speed, and work on both desktop and mobile devices. These are all SEO best practices that savvy websites employ unanimously.
The differentiator pretty much always comes down to the number, relevance, and quality of a web page’s backlinks.
If you have more relevant, high-quality links than your competitors, you’ll gain an edge in the rankings.
An example would be a landscaping page acquiring backlinks from popular gardening blogs. These links signal authority to Google, which translates into higher rankings.
Building B2B and customer relationships
At its base level, link-building is a form of networking.
You’ll be reaching out to journalists, website owners, and bloggers in your niche, which can provide other benefits to your business in addition to backlinks.
Connecting with key players in your industry helps establish your business as a respected and trusted source of information, which is a huge plus.
Not only that, but the relationships you forge will lead to more guest posts, link placements, and collaboration opportunities in the future.
To summarize, the networking brought on by link-building will provide far-reaching and long-lasting benefits for your business.
Become a thought leader in your industry
This benefit builds off the last one, and it doesn’t always involve working with link partners.
Link-building also involves creating linkable assets, which usually take the form of high-quality content like:
- Infographics
- Videos
- Informative blog posts (how-to’s, guides, etc.)
These content types are excellent for link-building because they naturally attract links.
By that, we mean online users will link back to your content simply because it’s amazing and they want others to see it. No outreach is required!
In fact, this is the type of link-building that Google prefers the most, since it’s entirely based on content quality (which is good news for their reputation).
An added bonus is producing enough of this type of content will help you achieve coveted thought leader status. This is where prospects, bloggers, and other businesses in your industry view you as THE source of information. Whenever a new development happens in your industry, they’ll turn to you first – which is an incredibly advantageous position to have.
Referral traffic
Where there are backlinks, referral traffic follows suit.
What’s that?
Referral traffic refers (excuse the pun) to the visitors who were directed to your content by clicking on a backlink on an external website.
An example would be users viewing one of your blogs because their favorite news website had a backlink pointing at it.
It’s beneficial to generate referral traffic because:
- It typically comes from users not yet familiar with your brand
- It’s qualified traffic since they clicked on the link out of sheer interest
Also, a lot of these benefits are linked (excuse this pun, too) together. For instance, whenever you achieve thought leadership status, referral traffic will start rolling in like crazy.
Brand building
Brand building is a notable challenge for new businesses, especially if they’re working with a fresh domain.
Link-building is a real savior here, as the process will expose your brand to many new audiences.
Guest posts and link placements on blogs and relevant media outlets/news websites will get the word out about what you do. Also, the referral traffic generated by your backlinks will expose these audiences to your website.
Faster indexing
Search engine optimizations don’t take effect overnight.
Instead, you have to wait for Google to reindex your content to see the impact of your SEO tactics, and this is especially true for any links you build.
Complicating things further is the fact that Google uses priority indexing. This means that they reindex popular, frequently visited websites the most – while other websites have to wait several weeks or months to get crawled again.
The advantage of building lots of backlinks is it encourages Google to go back and reindex your website, which speeds up the process.
Faster indexing means faster SEO results!
Build site authority
Authority matters to Google, and it’s based on valuable content and quality backlinks.
Domain authority is a metric developed by Moz that SEOs use to gauge the ranking power of a website. If a website has flawless on-page SEO and a top-tier backlink profile, they’ll have a high domain authority score.
Google has claimed for years that they don’t calculate domain authority, but the recently leaked documents proved that this wasn’t true.
siteAuthority is the official metric Google uses to gauge the ranking strength of a domain.
The more reputable backlinks you build, the more authority your site will have (which means higher rankings).
Gain an advantage against your competitors
Who’s outranking you on the SERPs right now?
If your SEO is on point, then it’s likely due to a stronger backlink profile on their part.
By using a tool like our free backlink checker, you can discover how many backlinks a competitor has. If there’s a significant gap (i.e., they have 20 more links than you), you’ll need to close the gap (and eventually exceed it) to outrank them.
Once you’ve outdone their backlink profile, you’ll gain a competitive edge that’ll be tough for them to break.
Translation?
Long-term SERP dominance!
Find new marketing opportunities
Building off the B2B/customer relationships benefit, you can also discover new marketing opportunities through your outreach.
Examples include:
- Joint promotions
- Guest posting opportunities
- Affiliate programs
- Sharing content ideas and formats
- Discovering new marketing tools
These will help you promote your business in new ways that you may not have considered otherwise.
Section 2: Key Concepts In Link-Building
Before we dive into some link-building techniques, let’s cover some key concepts.
Understanding these is essential for mastering link-building, so it’s important that we cover these first.
Understanding Google guidelines
Every link-builder needs to have an intimate understanding of Google’s guidelines, whether they intend to follow them or not.
However, violating these guidelines can lead to manual penalties on your website and content, which is the equivalent of getting blacklisted (until you resolve the problem, that is).
The Google Search Essentials page covers all the guidelines in great detail, but here’s what you should know for link-building specifically:
- Relevance is paramount.
- Google wants you to earn links, not manufacture them through manipulation. This means creating great content worthy of shares.
- Hidden links and overly optimized anchor text are considered sneaky tactics that don’t add any value to users. Focus on providing an excellent user experience above all else.
- Whenever you generate sponsored, media, or paid links, you should mark them with nofollow or sponsored tags.
Not all links are of equal quality
Targeting every backlink you can find isn’t a wise strategy.
That’s because not all backlinks are of the same caliber, so to speak.
Certain factors determine the strength of a backlink, including:
- The authority of the referring domain and referring web page
- The relevance of the backlink (on both sides)
- The anchor text (the text housing the hyperlink)
For this reason, you should only target backlinks from quality websites. They don’t have to have phenomenal authority scores as long as they provide some sort of value to users.
| Pro tip: Using our free backlink tool (linked earlier) is a great way to gauge the strength of a potential backlink.
Enter their URL into our tool, and check to see their authority rating. While targeting websites with authority ratings of 90 and above is nearly impossible, scores ranging anywhere from 30 – 80 are fair game. If you need to bridge a large gap between you and a competitor, it’s okay to build lots of links with average authority (as long as they’re real websites). |
Link building vs. link earning
There’s a difference between building a link through outreach and earning one based on the quality of your content.
Link-building involves reaching out to key players in your industry to target relevant link opportunities. An example would be reaching out to a website that accepts guest posts in order to pick up a backlink. Uploading your website to business directories is another example of link-building.
Link earning would be a blogger stumbling upon one of your infographics that contains statistics relating to an article they’re writing. Since it’s the perfect piece of content they need, they decide to link to it in their post.
In this instance, you earned a backlink through the sheer strength of your content.
Ideally, you should employ a strategy that involves both link-building and link-earning, since link-earning isn’t something you can count on 100% of the time.
Should you buy links?
Buying backlinks is a direct violation of Google’s search guidelines, and they penalize websites that they find violating this rule.
Yet, that doesn’t stop many SEOs from buying backlinks, even so-called ‘white-hat SEOs.’
The fact is that buying backlinks gets results when done properly, and it won’t raise suspicion from Google.
The key is to know how many links you need to buy, then purchase them from a reputable provider (make sure they sell REAL links first).
From there, don’t release all your backlinks at once. Instead, roll them out slowly. Since Google’s algorithm can’t tell the difference between a paid backlink and a natural one, this method tends to work well for most SEOs.
Buying spammy links isn’t a good idea and will likely land you a manual penalty, something which is very difficult to recover from.
The importance of internal links
Backlinks aren’t the only links that matter to your SEO. Internal links, which are hyperlinks from and to pages on your own website, also play a significant role.
You should make a habit of linking to relevant pages on your website whenever you create a new blog post.
This creates a loop of content on your website that can keep readers engaged for longer than they would otherwise.
Let’s say a reader starts their experience on your site by reading a blog. That blog then links to one of your videos that breaks down a product. They watch the video and then click another internal link that takes them to a product page.
See the value of internal links now?
If these web pages didn’t link to one another, you wouldn’t be able to make the sale.
It’s crucial to note the UX benefit here in addition to search rankings. Internal links make navigating your site easier, and they keep your bounce rates (when a user only visits one page and leaves) low.
SEO-wise, internal links help Google’s algorithm better understand your website’s structure. They also lead to enhanced crawling and indexing, making it more likely that your web pages appear in Google’s SERPs.
Lastly, internal links spread ‘link juice’ (a fancy term for a web page’s authority) from one page to another.
This means if you have a rockstar page that accrues tons of backlinks, linking to and from it will pass the link juice around!
Nofollow and Follow
Nofollow and follow are two HTML tags related to backlinks. The follow tag signals to Google to count the backlink towards your search rankings.
Conversely, the nofollow tag signals to Google to ignore the backlink, effectively negating its impact on your rankings.
However, it’s been discovered that nofollow links still retain some of their SEO impact, just not all of it.
Also, nofollow tags can still benefit your brand by spreading awareness. An example would be PR press release links, which Google requires to be hit with nofollow tags.
Regardless of this, a journalist may see your release and decide to link to it, earning you a valuable dofollow link from a news outlet or media site.
Section 3: How To Find Link Building Opportunities
Check your competitors
Your competitors can do more than steal your business; they can guide your brand toward success.
How is that?
By analyzing and copying what works for them, of course!
Our backlink tool lets you analyze the link profile of any website. Therefore, you could simply plug the URLs of the websites currently outranking you to ‘peek under the hood’ of their strategy.
You may discover:
- Websites in your niche that accept guest posts
- Business directories you didn’t know about
- News sites and media outlets to target
- Link placements that you can outdo with better content
Speaking on that last point, outdoing competitor content to poach their links is a classic SEO strategy (it’s called the skyscraper technique and was penned by Backlinko’s Brian Dean).
Use search operators
Next, you should make use of search operators when hunting for link-building opportunities.
No, these aren’t special forces operators specializing in SEO (although that would be super cool).
Instead, they’re specific strings of characters that help narrow your search. Using search operators will help you pinpoint link-building opportunities online.
The most basic type of search operator is to surround a keyword in quotations. This will tell Google to only include results that contain those specific strings of words (i.e., “guitars”).
Find Guest Posting Opportunities
Using the basic formula, here are a few examples you can use to find guest posting opportunities:
- “Your industry keyword” + “write for us”
- “Your industry keyword” + “contribute”
- “Your industry keyword” + “submit an article”
- “Your industry keyword” + “guest post”
These operators will narrow your search results to only include websites that contain your industry keyword plus words that indicate they accept guest posts.
Does it actually work?
Let’s find out!
Here’s what happens when we use the search operator “gardening” + “write for us” on Google.
As you can see, it works like a charm. The first three results are all online gardening publications that are open to guest posting. If you ran a gardening blog, you’d already be drafting outreach emails right now. That’s the power of search operators, so don’t forget to use them!
Advanced Search Operators for Refining Results
There are also advanced operators that go beyond the basics and help further refine searches. These are the Navy SEALs of search operators, and they can help you locate things like:
- Pages with specific keywords in the title (intitle:”keyword”)
- Specific types of pages like listicles or roundups (filetype:”keyword”)
- Pages that have certain keywords in the URL (allinurl:”keyword”)
Search operators transform Google into a link-building machine when used properly. If your business lacks the budget to invest in fancy SEO software tools, you can simply use Google to find your link-building opportunities.
Use tools
We have a suite of free SEO tools that you can use for link-building on our website, which certainly come in handy.
Other tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Ahrefs are great for SEO.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what they do:
- Google Search Console gives you an inside look into how its algorithms view your website. You can upload your sitemap for better indexing, monitor position rankings, and address any crawling/indexing errors.
- Google Analytics provides deep insights into your audience, including demographics, UX metrics (like bounce rate and dwell time), and more.
- Ahrefs and SEMrush are both subscription-based SEO platforms that provide unique insights into search performance.
Section 4: Link Building Techniques
Alright, now it’s time to crack our knuckles and dig into some effective link-building techniques.
There are tons of ways to acquire backlinks, but some techniques are undeniably more effective (and safer) than others.
Speaking of that, it’s important to address the white-hat/black-hat dichotomy before we get started. White-hat SEO refers to link-building tactics that don’t violate Google’s guidelines. Black-hat SEO, on the other hand, isn’t concerned with guidelines and engages in manipulative and spammy tactics.
Here’s a look at some link-building techniques that you can start using today.
Building links the white-hat way
There are two fundamentals of white-hat link-building that you should familiarize yourself with, which are:
- Creating outstanding content. If you put energy and effort into creating valuable content for your audience, you’ll naturally attract backlinks, which is what Google wants you to do.
- Leverage targeted outreach. Connecting with relevant websites to post guest blogs and target link placements is considered good practice (as long as you don’t offer money or other perks in exchange for links).
Broken Link Building
Link rot occurs whenever a link no longer points to its original destination, most likely directing to a 404 Not Found error.
Broken link-building is the process of finding broken links online and replacing them with backlinks to your content.
How can you find broken links?
There are two methods.
One involves using a website crawler like Screaming Frog. You can run a targeted crawl to identify all the broken links on a website. From there, examine each link to see if you have a suitable replacement for it (or if you can create one).
For example, let’s say you find a website that has a broken link directing to a blog post about gardening. You already have a blog post covering the topic, so you could reach out to the site owner and request that they replace the broken link with your content.
This does a helpful service by eliminating a broken link, which is bad for SEO. The outreach involved with broken links isn’t too difficult, as site owners are often eager to get rid of broken links anyway.
You can also use Ahrefs (if you have a subscription).
Using the Site Explorer tool, enter a website’s URL.
Next, navigate to the Broken Backlinks report under the Backlinks section on the left-hand side of the screen.
Once there, you’ll see a complete breakdown of the broken backlinks on a particular website.
Create linkable assets
This applies to the first fundamental of link-building: creating outstanding content.
In particular, you’ll want to create content that generates lots of shares, also known as ‘linkable assets.’
Here are the most common types of content that naturally attract links:
- Infographics with fun graphics and statistics
- Videos
- How-to guides
- Research papers
- Surveys
- Tutorials
- Guides
Also, make it as easy as possible for other websites to share your linkable assets, such as including social share buttons and embed codes for your infographics.
Guest posts
Guest posts are a classic link-building technique that continues to provide great results to this day.
It’s also a notoriously time-consuming and difficult process.
The outreach involved with guest posting is time-intensive and requires a lot of effort, especially in today’s age. The era of email blasting generic outreach templates is over.
Instead, your best bet is to personalize each email and provide an offer they can’t refuse.
Make it clear that you’ve consumed their content and are a fan of their work. Beyond that, cut straight to the chase of how adding one of your backlinks will benefit them, such as:
- Updating an old post with fresh insights (and a link to your content)
- Providing additional helpful resources for readers
- Cross-promotion for your brands
Link outreach is definitely a tiring process, so why not let our experts handle it for you instead?
Connect with influencers
Influencer outreach has become an increasingly popular method for building links, especially with the rise of short-form platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
There are influencers in virtually every field that help shape industry trends, and they’re valuable allies for your link-building campaigns.
For instance, you could reach out to an influencer for:
- A guest post
- A link insertion
- Promoting your products
- A sponsorship
Also, you don’t have to target mega influencers to find success. Instead of sending Logan Paul countless emails, stick with smaller, niche-specific influencers instead.
HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
Using HARO is a great way to build backlinks and generate online buzz about your brand. HARO connects journalists with industry experts to act as sources for stories, and it’s a goldmine for link-building.
Subscribing to the service will opt you in HARO’s emailing list, which consists of three messages per day outlining journalist queries.
Responding to these queries gives you a chance to get featured in the journalist’s story, and they’ll likely add a link back to your content.
Competition on HARO is fierce, and timing is the name of the game. The quicker you are at responding to queries, the more likely it’ll be that you’ll land a featured spot.
Skyscraper technique
As mentioned before, the skyscraper technique is when you outdo a competitor’s piece of content in order to steal its backlink.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how the process works:
- Analyze your competitor’s backlink profiles and look for the cream of the crop (i.e., relevant links with high DA scores).
- Look over the content with a fine-toothed comb. While doing so, identify ways that you can outdo the content (adding a video, providing further insights, updating outdated information, etc).
- Reach out to the website owner and let them know that your content is 10x better and that they should link to you instead.
Obviously, this technique lives and dies by the strength of your replacement content, so ensure that it truly is 10x better.
Unlinked Brand Mentions
The last technique we’ll go over is targeting unlinked brand mentions. These occur whenever another website mentions your brand but fails to provide a backlink.
These are great opportunities because it’s likely that the site owner meant to include a link but just forgot.
Here’s how you can find unlinked brand mentions using Ahrefs.
Navigate to the Content Explorer and enter your brand name in quotations. After that, exclude your domain from the search using this formula:
-site:yourdomain.com
Here’s what it looks like when we do it for our website:
Next, select the filter Highlight Unlinked and enter your domain. This will let Ahrefs know to only show pages that mention your brand but don’t link to it.
Voila, now you can see all your unlinked brand mentions!
Link Building Practices to AVOID
Lastly, let’s take a brief look at the link-building tactics you should avoid at all costs. These techniques scream spam to Google and will likely land you a manual penalty.
In other words, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.
- Excessive link exchanges (“I’ll link to you if you link to me”): While some reciprocal linking can be natural, excessive or obvious link exchanges are frowned upon.
- Keyword-stuffing anchor text: Over-optimizing the clickable text of links with exact match keywords is a red flag for search engines. Check out this guide on how to achieve an ideal anchor text ratio.
- Private Blog Networks (PBNs): Setting up networks of sites solely to control backlinks is a risky strategy that Google easily detects. Also, these websites only exist to link to one another, so they’re junk sites that have no value (and often repost the exact same content over and over).
- Hidden links: This refers to trying to sneak in links that users can’t see, such as with white text on a white background.
- Links from irrelevant sites: Backlinks from websites that have absolutely nothing to do with your industry offer little value and might raise suspicion.
- Spammy sites and directories: Getting links from low-quality sites full of spam or irrelevant content can hurt your own site’s reputation.
In Summary: Why is Link-Building Important?
We’ve covered A LOT so far, so here’s a quick recap of the major points:
- Link-building is a major aspect of SEO since backlinks are how you build trust with search engines.
- Building links will provide numerous benefits to your business, including better SERP rankings and new marketing opportunities.
- It’s crucial to understand link-building fundamentals like Google’s search guidelines before trying to build links.
- Link-building techniques like guest posting and creating linkable assets will help you develop a stellar backlink profile.
- You should avoid spammy and manipulative link-building tactics at all costs.
Link-building yields amazing results, but there’s no denying it’s time-intensive, complicated, and evolves all the time.
That’s why so many businesses choose to let us handle their link-building for them. We’ll take the entire process off your hands to simplify your SEO success – so schedule a call now or sign up for free!
P.S. Don’t forget about our amazing SEO Learning Hub!
