Link Building: A Beginner's Guide to Boost Your SEO Strategy

Have you ever wondered how people find your website in the crowds of the digital market? Of course, you have to make your website visible to your potential customers by using various SEO strategies, including link building.

In the SEO landscape, link building is crucial for driving traffic to your website and improving your search engine rankings. If you are unfamiliar with this strategy, read the article below to learn more about the fundamentals of link building.

What Is Link Building in SEO?

Link building is the process of gaining hyperlinks from other websites to your own. It can help you build a strong online presence and increase your search engine rankings, as Google considers backlinks as a ’vote of confidence’ and a sign of a high-quality website. 

Basically, Google tends to see backlinks as some kind of endorsement. So, the more high-quality links you have, the more trustworthy your site appears to search engines. This eventually helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

For example, bbc.co.uk receives more than 1 million backlinks from other domains, including reputable websites like microsoft.com, britannica.com, and cdc.gov. 

This strong backlink profile becomes one of the foundations that the Google search algorithm takes into account when determining how high the rankings of bbc.co.uk are in relevant searches. 

Of course, there are many other ranking factors that Google considers, but according to a study, 8 out of 20 most influential ranking factors are related to backlinks. Thus, backlinks remain crucial for SEO to this day.

How Link Building Benefits Your Website

Conducting link building SEO will give you several benefits that improve your website’s visibility in SERPs. Here are some of the benefits you can expect from building links.

1. Build Relationships

Local SEO link building often involves outreach to other relevant businesses in the same industry. The purpose of outreach is not only to get a link but also to build long-term relationships with the most influential websites in your industry. 

Hence, building relationships will lead your website to be regarded as trustworthy and reliable. People will eventually advocate for your brand, sharing it with others, and naturally strengthening your reputation. This kind of genuine support, where people promote your business because they truly value it, is beneficial on its own. 

2. Driving Referral Traffic

You may have heard that link building strategy is helpful to rank your website higher in search result pages. However, what about the referral traffic it brings? A link from a high-traffic website will also increase your visitor volume.

If the website that links to you is relevant to your business, then there is a higher chance that the traffic it sends to your site will turn into leads. In this case, the value of a link is not just about SEO but also about customers and conversions. 

If you can earn links from websites where the audience is your target market, they may be more likely to click through and visit your site. Well, they may not immediately buy your products, but they are now aware and familiar with your brand. 

3. Brand Building

Good link building can also help you build your brand to be regarded as an authority in your industry. There are several ways to do this, including content creation that shows your expertise in your niche, which eventually builds a strong brand presence and credibility.

That is because both search engines and potential customers are more likely to trust a website that has an established authority in the industry, which makes your site look trustworthy and knowledgeable. 

Link Building Strategy

You can naturally acquire backlinks over time, but if you want to be ahead of your competitors, you need to proactively look for opportunities to build links using the right backlink building strategy. Here are some of the most effective strategies that you can implement.

1. Perform Competitor Backlink Analysis

The very first step you can take is to do a competitor backlink analysis to find out how they get backlinks and how you can use their strategies to build your own backlinks.

To perform this analysis, you can use backlink checker tools like Ahrefs and get the backlinks report. In the report, look at the patterns of backlinks that they are getting. This can help you spot the link building strategy that is working for them and apply it to your own site.

2. Do Guest Post

The guest post refers to the practice of writing and publishing a post for another website. It is a great way to get backlinks because you can include a link in your post. By publishing high-quality content, you can attract the attention of the audience to visit your site. 

Then, how to find websites that accept guest posts? You can find them easily by using various tools available out there. In most of the tools, you just need to enter a relevant keyword and you will get a list of the websites that are ranking for that keyword. 

3. Fix Broken Link

The next strategy on how to get backlinks to your site is to fix broken links. Broken link building is a strategy that is based on the idea that if a website has a broken link, it is more likely to replace it with a link to your site. 

You can work on it by finding dead pages that still have links directed to them from other websites. Then, create your own page with the same topic as the dead pages. After that, you can reach out to people who link to the dead page, inform them about the broken link, and ask them to link to your page instead.

4. Create Linkbait Content

The goal of creating linkbait content is to write something interesting and valuable that makes people want to link to it. There is no guaranteed formula for writing linkbait content. 

However, there a strategies that you can use to come up with ideas for linkbait content, one of which is to look at what’s already working for your competitors. You can track your competitor’s successful backlinks using tools that are available online and get a report of it.

Try to figure out what topics and formats your competitors are using and create similar ones. For example, it shows that the popular topics in the SEO niche are data studies and statistics. You can try to come up with this kind of content too in order to attract links to your site.

5. Promote Your Content

Even though you have designed linkable content, you cannot expect people to automatically find your content and link to it. Therefore, you need to promote your content to make people notice it. There are several promotion strategies that you can implement, such as:

• Advertising. You can use paid advertisements to promote your content to reach thousands of relevant people.
• Influencer outreach. It is best to look up to leaders in your industry and reach out to them when you have a great piece of content that they might find interesting to share with their audience.
• Building following. You can build a following by creating an email list and being active on social media, such as X and LinkedIn. To attract more followers, you need to consistently provide valuable content that people would like to read.

6. Ask to Link Your Unlinked Brand Mentions

Chasing unlinked brand mentions is another strategy of how to create a link to a website. The main goal is to reach out to people who mention your brand on their website but haven’t linked to you.

You can start by searching for mentions of your brand using tools that you can find easily on the internet. Then, try to look through the results to find the unlinked mentions that are relevant and suitable to pitch. 

7. Use Digital PR

Last but not least, you can build links by using digital PR that will help you gain opportunities to earn links from reputable websites. It is common to utilize platforms that connect journalists who are seeking quotes and feedback to expert sources.

Conclusion

Those are the basics of link building to help you drive traffic to your website. The links will help you achieve your business goals and improve your search engine rankings. Therefore, it is important to plan a link building strategy that suits your business objectives. 

It may be difficult to implement link building strategies that align with your goals, especially if you are new to SEO. Thus, it is essential to seek professional help from an experienced SEO company to create a successful link building strategy for your website.

SEO Services by cmlabs is here to help you with all your SEO needs, from SEO link building services to content creation. Our team of experts will help you grow your business and improve your search engine rankings. 

As a trusted and reliable SEO company, we are committed to delivering high-quality SEO services to help you become the leader in your industry. Contact our marketing team today to schedule a meeting and discuss your business needs.