What is Link Building? Absolute Guide & Strategies with Solutions

What is Link Building?

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If you have approached a website marketing company or an internet marketing company to promote your website, your service provider is likely to have spoken to you about link building. Do you know that companies spend on an average $1000 per month on link building? Link building is one of the most frequently sought after search engine marketing technique. Though link building is one of the most widely used website promotion techniques, not many people understand how link building works and the reason why search engines consider back links an important ranking factor.

Google dominates the search industry. Statistics show that Google sends over 80% of the organic traffic to websites. Such an important player in the search industry uses back links as one of the key ranking factors. Unfortunately, link building is one of the most widely misunderstood search engine marketing concepts. As a result, website owners employ wrong techniques to build links for their website and end up risking their website's online reputation. If you want to make your website a great success online, you will need to make rigorous link building efforts. Before you can make any link building efforts, you will first need to have a very clear understanding about link building even if you are planning to hire a link building company to take care of your link building needs.

Definition

Link building is the process of acquiring back links for a website or a web property so as to increase the online visibility of the website or web property and to improve the ranking in the search engines for relevant keyword searches with the ultimate aim of driving targeted traffic to the website under question.

We have just defined the term "link building" but definitions always give just a cursory understanding of the concept that is being defined and such a cursory understanding is not good enough for you as a webmaster. Link building is the key Google ranking strategies and in most cases one of the most important ways to fight the online competition. Let us delve deeper to gain better understanding of link building and thereby establish its important place in ranking websites.

When it comes to ranking websites in the search results, it is not only the SEO experts that have a tough job before them but the search engines have an even tougher role to play. The search engines need to sift through thousands of websites if not millions, before they bring out those websites that match the best for the search query that is passed. Search engines have their own reputation at stake because the quality of the results produced by the search engines will decide its success or failure. If a search engine should list websites that are inaccurate or websites that do not match well with the user's search then that particular user is not likely to use the same search engine again for his or her searches. So on the one hand the website owner is under the great pressure of getting top ranking in the search results to run a profitable business and on the other hand, the search engines are under even greater pressure of having to produce accurate search results.  

Search engines will have to make use of various advanced strategies and techniques to identify the best matching results for a given search query. One of the factors the search engines use is the link popularity of websites.  

Why have the search engines kept link popularity of websites as an important ranking factor? It is not enough only there is a textual match between the key phrases used by the internet user and the website that are listed. There is no guarantee that the user finds exactly what he or she has been looking for even if the key phrases used for the search has exact matches in the website's text or content. As a result, search engines go one-step further to gather information on user's experience in this process and thereby establish the importance of a given website for a given search. If a website is frequently mentioned in number of other online sources then such referrals are considered favorable for the respective website while ranking them.  

Moreover, in the literary traditions or in the world of books, authors quoted credible works of authoritative authors in supporting their own views. When an author is quoted frequently in the literary circles, the importance of that particular author soars high in the respective literary circles. Search engines make use of similar philosophy too as part of its ranking algorithm and consider back links as such referrals giving prime position in their ranking algorithm. Google as one of the most powerful search engines set a precedence in giving undue importance to back links in its ranking algorithm.  

When search engine marketing experts understood this search engine trend, they devised number of techniques to grow the links count through artificial link building methods. Search engines subsequently came down heavily on such manipulative link building strategies because such an approach to link building affected the quality of the results produced by the search engines like Google. As a result top search engines like Google came out with number of algorithmic updates that penalized and de-ranked websites that used such unnatural link building strategies.  

Link building has come a long way today. Today it is just not the number of links or the quantity of links that you have that will decide your website's ranking but it is the quality of your backlinks that will decide your ranking in Google and the other search engines.  

Does this mean that search engines do not want websites to link to one another? The truth is far from it; search engines like Google in fact want webmasters to link to one another but they want such linking to take place in a natural fashion.  

When we are trying to understand "What is Link Building?", it is important that we familiarize ourselves with some of the important terms used in the link building industry because you will come across these terms frequently and you should know what these terms mean.  

One-way link - This has to be understood with reference to reciprocal link. When you are not exchanging any links, when you are not linking back to any third party website but the other party places your website's link in theirs, then it is called one-way link.

Inbound Link - Links that come to your website from other sources are called inbound links for your website.

Outbound Link - When you link to another website, the link that goes out of your web page is called out bound link for your website. Outbound links are also sometimes referred as External links.

Internal Link - Links that link to the pages within the same domain or same website are called internal links. In other words, they are linking internally.

Broken Link - If the landing page of a link exists no more then it is called broken link or if your link does not take the user to the expected landing page then it is a broken link. Broken links are not good for your website; they have negative effects on your ranking.

Deep Link - Links pointing to the inner pages of a website as opposed to the home page of a website are deep links. Deep links are as important as the links to the home page to secure balanced ranking for your website.

Deep Link Ratio - This refers to the ratio of links between the home page and the inner pages of your website.

Link Juice - This can be referred to the effectiveness or the value of a particular link in helping your website rank better.

Link Profile - Link profile of a website or a web page refers to the cumulative effects of the back links on a given website. Link profile will give the complete picture of the back links including but not limited to the number of back links to a website, number of one way back links, number of reciprocal back links, PageRank of each back link, the key phrase or hypertext for each back link, total number of back links pointing to a particular page, total number of back links that use a particular key phrase, number of links that result in broken links and so on.

Link Audit - Link audit is the process of assessing a website's or web page's back links, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each back link with the intention of creating a detailed link profile.

Landing Page - Landing page is the page that opens when a link is clicked or the page to which the user is taken to by clicking a particular link.

Link Directory - Link directory is a website that lists links. Getting back links from a link directory is considered manipulative and unnatural.

Link Farm - Link farm is an online source that sells back links and such links can affect your websites reputation.

Do Follow Link - If the search engine bot can follow your link and index it then it is do follow link. If the website owner does not block such indexing through the use of 'no follow' attribute then the search engines will automatically index the links. In other words, all the links are by default 'do follow' links unless the search engines are instructed otherwise. Only do follow links are counted while ranking websites.

No Follow Link - A link may be physically present but the search engines are prevented from crawling that link through the use of "no follow" attribute. Links with no follow attribute are not counted while ranking websites.

PageRank - PageRank is Google's ranking system. Google rates each web page based on its ranking algorithm and gives them a score between 0 and 10. Higher the PageRank greater the importance of a web page.

Authority Link - Links from websites that are considered authoritative in a given field are called authority links. Authority links are considered very important by Google.

Paid Link - Backlinks for which you pay the linking party are paid links. Search engines penalize websites that get paid links.

Link Scheme - Manipulative link building efforts to boost the ranking of websites is called a link scheme. Link schemes are never welcomed by search engines.

Disavow Tool - Disavow Tool is a Google's product, which allows webmasters to tell Google that certain back links can be ignored and they need not be taken into account while ranking. Google gives chance to webmasters to protect themselves from Google penalties given to websites for unnatural links.

Unnatural Link - Any link that is not built naturally or a forced, out of context links is called unnatural link.

Contextual Link - Links that come from pages with content that is relevant to the page, products, services or the niche market to which it is linking is called contextual link.

Natural Link - A link that is placed not just for the sake of improving the search engine ranking but for some other genuine reason such as advertising in a free classifieds site or pointing the visitors to other resourceful pages on the topic, etc.

Hypertext - The clickable text while linking to another page is called hypertext. The hypertext is often a keyword or key phrase.

Link building as a search engine marketing strategy has gone through several changes. As a result how link building works also changes constantly. Google in particular has taken number of decisive steps in altering its algorithm. Many websites have even lost their ranking and top listings when Google updated its ranking algorithm and how it assessed the back links. Despite the many changes, the importance given by the search engines to back links has not changed.  

Each time a website or another web property links to your website, search engines consider it as a positive vote for your website. When the number of these votes increase, your link popularity level increases, which in turn increases your ranking. When there are number of competing websites for a given keyword or key phrase, search engines try to give priority to web pages that have higher links count when everything else being equal. This is a very simplistic understanding of how link building helps websites in getting better ranking, the reality on the other hand is far more complex. Google pays attention to numerous factors while assessing a back link such as the
 

- Hypertext

- PageRank of the linking page

- Position in the page from where the link emanates

- Number of pages that go out of the linking page

- Authority of the linking page

- Relevance of the linking page

- Content and its quality in the linking page

- Reputation of the linking page

- Ranking of the linking page for the same hypertext / keywords.

- Link building strategy

- Possibility of any link scheme

- Presence of any specific linking pattern that could indicate manipulative practices and so on.

As link building has become the lifeline for a website's success, a massive industry is built around link building. Many new natural and search engine friendly link building strategies have evolved to help websites get better search engine ranking. Just to list a few link building strategies that you can consider for building good quality back links for your website include:
 

Authority Link Building

Quality Link Pyramid

Contextual Link Building

Citation Building

Social Bookmarking

Premium Directory Listing

Article Submission

Press Release

Niche Blog Review

Article Prism

Directory Submission

There are many benefits to link building and if it were not to be so, all the leading brands will not be spending thousands of dollars every year on improving their website's link popularity.

#1 Link building will improve your website and your brand visibility on the internet.

#2 Your search engine ranking in leading search engines like Google will improve.

#3 Link building will increase the traffic rate to your website.

#4 With increased online visibility and better search engine ranking, your revenue will increase with time.

#5 You will be able to take your business to the next level.

#6 Link building will make your website more easily accessible to your target audience by increasing the number of entry points to your website.

Link Building is no rocket science but it is no child's play either. You will need to make sure that you are abiding by the industry's best practices on link building so that get the best out of your link building efforts.

#1 There are numerous link building service but not all link building strategies are equally effective. You will therefore need to identify the link building techniques that work well for your website and your niche market.

#2 Always make sure that your link building efforts are in line with Google's latest algorithm.

#3 Stay away from link building services that claim to provide you with overnight success. Such strategies are often risky and they can put your website through great risk.

#4 It is just not the quantity of links that matter but the quality of your links are even more important.

#5 Acquire as many authority links as possible for your website. Authority links can take your website a long way in terms of achieving your ranking goals.

#6 Never automate any part of your link building process. Make sure to keep your link building process 100% manual.

#7 Make use of content based strategies. If you are targeting Google, try to use as many content based link building strategies as possible. As far as Google is concerned, content is still the king.

#8 Links from relevant and contextual sources are very powerful in improving your website's keyword strength.

#9 Link building is not a onetime endeavor but an ongoing process. You will need to put in consistent efforts to continually empower your website with good quality back links. The moment you stop working on your website's link building efforts, your competitors will takeover.

#10 Never get links from irrelevant sources. If your links are from unrelated sources Google will penalize you for unnatural links.

#11 Never get links from suspicious neighborhoods. It is vital to keep your link profile clean. If there are links from any disturbing sources, make use of link disavow tool from Google to disavow unnatural links so that your website is not penalized by Google.

#12 Do not use the same keywords or key phrases for linking to the same page over and over. Try to create as many keyword variations as possible. Using the same keywords in the hypertext over and over will not strengthen your keyword strength. Many websites have lost their ranking by ignoring this factor while building links.

#13 Give equal importance to deep links too. Do not limit your link building efforts only to homepage link building. If you want your website to get balanced ranking, you will need to work on deep linking. Deep linking will help you improve your conversion rates, as it will help you get the most important pages of your website get top ranking.

#14 Hire a link building company. This will free up a lot of time for you and it will help you focus on the other core functions of your business. Moreover, when you get professional link building efforts, you can be sure that right efforts are going into the promotion of your website and that your website is getting adequate link building efforts that are required to fight your online competition effectively.

#15 When it comes to link building, plan long term. You need to take coherent efforts. Sporadic and random efforts will not yield the expected results.

Link building plays a pivotal role in improving your website's search engine ranking and you can never underestimate the importance of link building. You will need to take the right link building efforts and you will need to remain highly professional in your link building efforts. Search engines like Google continues to emphasize the importance of back links. If you want to get the fullest benefits of your link building efforts, you will need to keep your link building efforts clean. As you are required to put in consistent efforts on building links, it is best to hire a link building company to take care of your requirements. Whether you are hiring a link building company or taking care of your own link building needs, you will need to constantly be reviewing the effectiveness of the link building strategies that you are employing and if required revisit your strategies regularly to obtain optimum results.