What Is Website Link Building​​?

Link building for SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an important step to get a high Google rank and get web traffic. Having a website does not ensure online success. Your website needs good traffic and for this, it is essential that you come up on page #1 when someone types a relevant keyword. Effective link building can help you immensely in this.

What Is Link Building and How Does It Work?

Link building is the process of making other websites to link to the various pages on your website. You must have surely seen links on web pages that when clicked sends you to another relevant website. They are called hyperlinks and the text on which you clicked is called anchor tag. These inbound links are very important for web success.

In SEO language, link building refers to approaching other websites to link to yours. You can do this by finding relevant websites in your niche and approach them for a backlink. Or, you can use a SEO software program that will automatically scan the web to find such websites and approach their webmasters for the link.

Why is the link building process so important? Search engines like Google use these links to deep crawl and visit various websites. It makes it easier for the search engines to scan the web. Logically speaking, a website will link to you only when it finds useful information on your website or a product that can solve a problem. So, when you get a backlink, to Google, it means that you are offering something valuable. A link is thus one positive vote for you. Google will then know that you are a legitimate website that is offering good service to the people. Google also openly discloses that good quality incoming links are very valuable.

The higher the number of links to your website, the higher the number of votes you get. The best websites that achieve high search engine ranks are usually those that have many incoming links to them.

What Are Links On Websites?

A link or a hyperlink can be a button or a work that points the web traffic to another website. Sometimes it can also be an image. But most often, these links are in the anchor text format. When someone clicks on the link, the person will be sent to the target website URL, which can be an online document like a PDF or a webpage. Links building improves your domain authority and helps you get organic traffic through better search engine ranks.

A Link in HTML

What is a link in HTML? This is the code behind the anchor tag or the hyperlink text. When you move the mouse over the link, the arrow of your mouse will turn into a small hand.

Here is an example;

Here, this section between <a> and </a> will appear as the link;

Anchor Text

Anchor text or anchor tag is the visible and clickable part in a link. It will appear in a different color than the surrounding text. The color is usually blue. The text will also be underlined. Many SEO gurus believe that the anchor text should contain an important keyword. Others feel that it should contain the keywords that are present in the landing page.

Link Context

Also called a contextual link, this is the clickable text that points to a domain name where the content and idea are relevant to what was present in the original website or the one from where the link was directed. This is an excellent SEO link building strategy to keep the target audience interested even when they have exited the parent website and visited another.

For example, let us assume that the original article was on social media marketing best practices and that, the link takes the visitor to a page that is publishing information on the latest social media trends. The article section with information on the trends would offer an opportunity to add a contextual link. Such links improve your SEO and also gives your business exposure. It increases trustworthiness and improves brand awareness too.

What is Link Building in SEO?

What is the definition of link building? Link building is the process in which you will approach other websites to link to you. You can do link building organically through content marketing, guest posting, PR, and email outreach. There are linkbuilding software products too that can help you do this.

Explained in a simple way, a hyperlink is the connection between two web pages. The link refers and sends people to another page that can have informative content or even products or services. These are not the internal links within the same website. Link building refers to bringing people to your website from another place on the web. It helps people because they can travel from one website to another easily.

It is good for search engine ranking. The search engine robots follow the links to discover pages on the web. Backlinks to your website also improves your domain ‘authority’. It makes your web page more authoritative.

How Do You Create a Link Building Strategy?

There are many ways to get links to point to your website. The simplest technique is asking a webmaster to link a portion of the copy to you. Another option is publishing guest posts. Here, you will write the article that will be published in another website. You won’t get paid for this. The article will have a hyperlink to your website. Many webmasters may ask for money to publish such an article with the link.

Other options include submitting the link of your website with a short copy to business directories and industry forums.

Internal And External Links

Internal links are those that take visitors to various pages within your website for easy navigation. External links are those that take them to another website. External link building is one of the best off-site SEO techniques.

Where The Link Comes From

You can get the incoming link from anywhere. But for best results, it should come from a relevant website in your niche and a website with good domain authority. In other words, it should be a good website with reputation.

What Is The Point Of Link Building?

The point of link building is to get other websites to point to yours, or in other words, make these websites publish hyperlinks that will bring visitors to your website and make it more search engine friendly. Here are some key important elements – 

Building Relationships

It is about building relationships with the webmasters of various websites to help each other. For example, you can send an outgoing link to website A, which links to B, which links back to your website. This is a good example of digital PR.

Global Popularity

This refers to the websites that are popular throughout the world. Wikipedia is a great example because many informative websites link to them. You can try to get an incoming link from the ‘external’ section of Wikipedia. It also helps in brand building.

Local Popularity

Local popularity, on the other hand, refers to the links from websites in the same niche, or similar sites. For this, you will have to do local SEO link building. Getting links from local businesses in the same area may also be difficult.

Sending Referral Traffic

Apart from SEO gains, incoming links can also give you a lot of referral traffic, especially if the publishing website is very popular and gets a lot of unique visitors.

What Links Mean For Search Engines

Links are an important ranking factor. Each incoming link means to a vote to your website for the search engine. The search engine robot will calculate the total number of links to your website, so the higher the number of votes you get, the better your chance of a good rank. SEO without link building is very difficult.

Link Quality

This means the quality of the website that is linking to you. A link from a really good website has a higher value.

What Should You Do To Get Links?

How to do link building for SEO is a common question. Here are some things you can do – 

• Approach webmasters for a link back
• Write guest posts
• Publish your link in business directories and industry forums
• Use a software

White Hat Links

white hat SEO link building is the legal or Google-approved way of getting backlinks from trustworthy and authoritative websites that comply with Google’s guidelines.

Shady Techniques

Desperate to get backlinks, many websites use shady techniques. This includes the use of link farms and purchasing bulk links. It never works in the long-term. Best, go for advanced link building to do it in a way that Google will accept and also ensure that there are no broken links.