Link Building Strategies for SEO: A Complete 5-Steps Guide

Implementing SEO techniques to your site is essential for your ranking and brand visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). Yet, brand visibility is not enough because you must appear trustworthy and credible. This is why link building matters to your site.

Then, how can you implement a backlink building strategy effectively? Find the complete explanation in this article!

What Is Link Building?

Link building is the practice of gaining links from other websites to yours.  As a result, search engines like Google might consider it more reliable and give it a higher ranking in organic search results.

In simple terms, backlinks or specific types of links from other websites are treated by Google as endorsements. The greater the number and quality of backlinks referring to your website, the more reliable it may appear.

Also, a page tends to rank higher in Google if it has more high-quality backlinks. You will probably need to obtain more links than it does if you wish to outrank it with your own page.

Additionally, the most significant impact on your Google results comes from links from pertinent pages on reputable websites. However, people only link to useful and valuable sites, so if your site has not provided them with that, you will find it quite difficult to build links to your page.

5 Things Affecting Your Backlinks

Link building does not mean that you can ask for any links on the internet to be pointed to yours. For your SEO, some backlinks are more beneficial than others and some have no impact. 

Moreover, if you get spammy links, it will harm your site's reputation. Therefore, you must consider the factors affecting your backlinks below:

1. Relevance

If you plan to do link building, it is recommended to look for links from sites related to yours because it implies that professionals in the field “appreciate” you. For example, you are selling pet supplies and want to gain some backlinks. 

You have two options with you: 

• A: Link on a home supplies site in content talking about a list of must-have home supplies.
• B: Link on a veterinary site in content talking about a guide to take care of pets for beginners.

From both links, B will give you more value because It implies that your page is pertinent to the subject matter and that readers will find the link helpful. On the other hand, A does not give much value to your site since it is not related to your business. 

2. Authority

In general, a backlink's value increases with the authority of the linking website. For instance, the links from a top university site will be more impactful to your SEO efforts than links from small, unknown sites. 

3. Anchor Text

Did you know that descriptive anchor text is more valuable to SEO rather than a vague one? For example, the phrase meta title below is a descriptive anchor text should be. This kind of anchor text will help search engines understand your content better.

Thus, it is more valuable than “click here to see about meta title” form of anchor text. Then, who does it matter to your backlinks? Backlinks that are anchor texted in a descriptive way can be greater for SEO since they read naturally and give a clear context. 

However, overemphasizing anchor text optimization for search engines rather than users could lead Google to view your website using spammy link-building techniques. Thus, you must be aware of your link building to prevent getting penalised by Google. 

4. Link Placement

You must consider where you should place the backlink on your page because the backlink's potential SEO value increases with its prominence on the page. This is because a link's location may influence Google's chance that a reader would click on it.

Moreover, links below in a website's content, in footers, or sidebars can not be as valuable as those higher in the body of the page. 

5. Attributes (UGC, Nofollow, and Sponsored)

The attributes in the links also affect your backlinks since some of them, like UGC, nofollow, and sponsored. The nofollow attribute tells Google to not endorse the links, the sponsored attribute tells Google that the links were paid for by the linked site so that Google will most likely ignore it, and UGC tells the search engine that the link is placed by users and Google ignores it due to manipulation. 

These backlinks are unlikely to improve your rankings, even though they might increase brand awareness and referral traffic. If you want to build backlinks, it is suggested to use dofollow links. 

How to Create Backlinks for My Website

Creating backlinks requires some considerations to make it effective and play a role in your SEO efforts. Here are the tips on how to create a link to a website you can follow:

1. Get to Know Your Audience

As mentioned before, you must link your site to other sites that are relevant to yours. Therefore, you must know what types of audience will look for your site. To do so, you must do proper research and analyse your audiences. That way, you can grasp what kind of sites they are attracted to. 

2. Hack Your Competitor’s

Most likely, if someone is linking to your competitor, they may be willing to link to you as well. Examining who links to the real homepages of your competitors' websites is a smart tactic to start this technique. You can see which pages have the most links and replicate their link-building strategy.

3. Perform Email Outreach

The next link building strategy you can do is reach out to the website owner and convince them with your valuable content which later on, they can give you a backlink. It is crucial since people cannot link to your content without finding it, so promoting even the best goods is necessary to get links. 

4. Create the Best Content

If you want to get linked by other websites, make sure that you create relevant, valuable, and high-quality content. Through your content, you can demonstrate your subject-matter expertise and make your writing truly helpful. As more websites recognize the worth of your content, you will receive more links to your page in addition to increasing authority and trust.

5. Build a Broken Link

Last but not least, you can find broken backlinks and offer yours as a replacement to the webmaster. It is seen as an efficient strategy since you serve instant solutions for them to fix their broken backlinks. 

Conclusion

Those are the information about link building you can adhere to. Aside from optimising your content internally, it is important to enhance your authority for a better position in search results. 

If you need assistance in doing SEO strategies, SEO Service by cmlabs is here for you! We can aid you in implementing off-page, on-page, and technical SEO for your site. So, book a meeting now and tell us your SEO needs for free!