If you want to improve your organic positioning in search engines, it is time for you to know what link building is, what it is used for and what are the erroneous practices that you should avoid when implementing it .
Most web search engines, such as Google, have improved their website ranking and classification processes over the years. Through their machine learning algorithms, they constantly monitor the quality of texts and the quality of links, both internal and external, on a website.
Link building is the use of quality external links on websites to increase web positioning (SEO). If you want to learn more about this topic, keep reading! In this article we explain it in greater detail.
What is link building?
Link building is an off-page SEO practice that consists of increasing the positioning, reach and authority of a website through the generation of quality backlinks. Backlinks are links that connect one website to another.
SEO is a process of improving the features of a website so that it attracts more visitors, mainly from search engines.
There are two types of SEO: “on page” and “off page”. The first consists of implementing the following actions within your website:
Generate valuable content.
Make texts readable.
Use keywords in URLs, titles, subtitles and throughout the text.
Insert buttons to share the content.
Speed up loading time.
Configure the website for mobile devices.
Use internal links to interconnect pages on the same website.
On the other hand, off-page SEO refers to all the techniques or external factors that can be used to increase traffic to your website or web page, that is, outside of it.
For example, when a website places a hyperlink in a sentence, the link directs the user to an external page. This is exactly what link building is all about .
In this sense, when we talk about link building we refer to all the actions that are carried out to get your site or web pages linked by third parties . The objective is to increase your authority, popularity and reach in search engines. But…
What is authority in SEO?
SEO authority is the level of trust that a website has . For example, the Colombian newspaper “elespectador.com” is a website with high authority: it appears in the first search results when searching for a news item, its impact on public opinion is great, as is the traffic it receives daily.
Another variable that is important to consider is the relevance of the website. This means that, in addition to linking your website to pages with good authority, it must have a relationship with your company.
In this sense, there are various ways to generate links to your website; however, regardless of the strategies you choose to do link building , you should always keep in mind that incoming links must be of quality and come from websites, preferably, related to your company and the theme of your content.
Below we explain some of these ways:
Guest blog
It consists of publishing an article of your authorship on the website of another person or company, preferably with high authority and high traffic.
Claiming links
This involves investigating whether other websites have cited content from your blog, i.e. from your authorship, and have not given you the corresponding credits. So you contact them so that they cite you and use backlinks to your website or to the page where the content is located.
There are SEO and link building tools, such as Ahrefs , where you can find out the links that have been created to your domain, as well as the volume of links from your competitors.
Participation in forums and groups
It consists of answering or asking questions in spaces where information is exchanged related to your content, and in some of them, placing the URL of those web articles that can complement your contribution.
Avoid posting spammy comments under the belief that this may be an effective link building strategy. In reality, this is seen as bad practice.
Participation in podcasts and interviews
Another link building technique is to reach out to media outlets that are interested in learning more about your company, and invite you to interviews and podcasts to drive traffic to your website.
What is link building for?
Link building has multiple functions, advantages and benefits; among them:
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1. Improve the authority of your website
Link building is closely related to the concept of PageRank. poland number for whatsapp PageRank, or Google PageRank, is a ranking system developed by Google to measure the authority of a website based on the quantity and quality of the links pointing to it.
This means that a page with these characteristics is given a score from 0 to 10. Before March 2016, this score was publicly displayed, but now it only represents an internal indicator of the Google search engine system. In other words, Google's Page Rank is no longer public, but it is still taken into account in the indexing and classification process.
The higher your PageRank, the better your chances of appearing in the top search results organically. If the pages that link to your content also have a high PageRank, this will help improve your own score and, therefore, your authority.
But be careful! Link building in this case is only worthwhile if the page that drives traffic to your site has a higher PageRank than yours. If your website has a high PageRank and you exchange links with a page with a higher PageRank, you may lose authority.
2. Give greater credibility to your content
Link building works as a recommendation system where others legitimize your content because they consider it appropriate to link to theirs.
For example, link building is similar to when a friend recommends you content , a product and/or a service and you, trusting his opinion, follow his recommendation and become a buyer.
The same thing happens with link building: if a person is a loyal reader of a blog because it provides valuable, useful and quality content, that person will surely trust the recommendations made by that page, so they are more likely to click on the links that are present in its articles.
Working under this recommendation system gives your content greater credibility. When other websites link their articles to yours, you become a reference, so users will begin to identify you more quickly and will want to read your posts as well.
To become a reference, your content must be original, high-quality, reliable, readable and attractive to Internet readers. This way, other websites will want to use your articles as complementary to their own, thus giving your company greater credibility.
3. Attract more traffic to your website
Link building is an excellent strategy to attract traffic to your website and increase your chances of capturing leads, in case the linked content contains pop-ups or calls to actions on landing pages with subscription forms.
The more people enter your website, the more opportunities you have to include people in your conversion funnel, which aims to convert users into customers through lead nurturing and email marketing strategies.
In Google Search Console, you can find out exactly which websites are generating traffic to your website through external links. In the option called “Links”, located at the bottom of the left panel, you can see the total number of external links on your website, as well as the exact URLs where these links are located.
Bad link building practices
Bad link building practices used to achieve a website's web positioning are known as “black hat strategies” (or “Black Hat SEO”).
Read also: Classification of SEO techniques: What is Black Hat and White Hat?
These are actions that are against Google's webmaster guidelines . And how does Google know when a website is violating the rules? Thanks to its famous algorithm: Google Penguin.
Google Penguin is an algorithm that detects and penalizes websites that use “Back Hat” link building techniques; for example, commenting repeatedly (spamming) a blog by placing a link to a page to direct traffic to it.
Another way Google penalizes a website is by sending it a message through Google Search Console .
Below we explain some of the link building actions that are penalized by Google and that you should avoid:
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