The First-Timers Guide to Link Building

SEO is vital to the survival of many businesses these days. Particularly in highly competitive markets. One thing that will help your company thrive and even stand out in a good light is getting more traffic via search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. On-page SEO alone can get sluggish at times so it’s important to combine it with other techniques such as link building that will not only complement it but take it to another level.

Link building in promotional strategies plays an important role because it is a key factor in driving traffic to websites. Link building that takes place intending to get users to click on your website brings them back, and these types of links are referred to as "following", or backlink types. When used in conjunction with technical SEO initiatives and keyword-rich content, white-hat link building can help you garner more organic traffic from search engines like Google.

This guide is focused on getting you going in the link-building world quickly and in the right direction. So, let’s dive right in:

What is Link Building?

Getting links from other websites to yours is known as link building. When you build your brand, these are the links that will often come as a result of connection building and social media sharing. Your website links to pages on your site and also to other websites, especially those of other brands or sites that you enjoy and respect.

Web crawlers use links to navigate the Internet (back in the old day when the Internet was only one way but right now there's multi-dimensional internet; don't get confused!), because links tell them which way they should go (up, down, left, right).

Links are the backbone of any successful SEO campaign. They are important because they boost up a website’s appearance in search engines, but acquiring such links should never be an aim unto itself. The real goal is to build links that will enable you to tap into opportunities and become more popular as a result. This can only happen if you put the best way for you to do this is by focusing on creating products, services, and content that will make others want to share them across the web.

You can also build your authority using link-building techniques, which will help you rank well and increase organic search traffic. 

How a Hyperlink Works

Before you can grasp the significance of link building, you must first understand how links are created, the way search engines view them, and the benefits they can accrue.

Anchor Tag

An anchor tag gestures the browser and search engine that a link to another page is about to appear.

Referral URL

Link referral is indicated by "Href", which is short for the hyperlink; the URL within the quotation marks indicates the destination. The URL to the image or file you'd like to download can also be substituted for the website address. Some URLs begin with a # sign, rather than a URL. Clicking on these links will take you to a particular section of the website.

Link Text/Visible/Anchor Text

This is usually the first thing they see when they visit a site. You can let them know that your business exists by creating a short description of your company right on this page. It’s one of the best ways to show off your company as its brand.

Link Tag Closure

The search engines interpret this to be the closing link tag.

Search Engines and Links

A vital component in the way search engines work is the use of links. They use links in two different ways.  

To identify new web pages

When search engines cache a site’s pages on their servers, they can then refer back to them whenever necessary and extract the data from these pages to add it to their databases. When this happens, web crawlers can assess just how relevant the contents of your website are and assign you a score that determines exactly where you rank in search results.

The other thing that search engines look at when indexing your pages involves analysing the number of external links attached to each respective web page, as well as the quality of those external websites. In short, if you have high-quality websites point back at your website, this will most likely improve your ranking within SERPs because of the strong association that is created with a business or an individual.

As a ranking factor

The internet is a big deal. A type of cyberculture. Its virtual assets can be sold and bought at any given time. Any webmaster worth his salt knows that links help SEO ranking, especially those coming from reputable websites and blogs. Google uses these votes for its search engine algorithm`s functions as it goes about its daily business caking search results with relevant content fit for users' curiosities through sites, videos, readable documents (like press releases), niche experiences like photo and video sharing networks, etc...

If a site receives enough high-profile links from various sources across all corners of cyberspace a site stands a higher chance of being classified as Google proof via their algorithm which is constantly evaluating each link pointing to a domain and improving its rankings over time if consistent traffic continues to enter these domains by suggested links or genuine queries via YT/ FB or Twitter searches

There's an enormous amount of writing about link building out there, and a lot of it is focused on quantity - not quality. The problem with that is when it comes to the algorithm update recently, Google's primary concern was with low-quality links only (intentionally or otherwise gained). This is why you need to make sure our focus in this guide is on high-quality links as there aren't many other comprehensive articles across the web which propose to take such a nuanced view.

The Many Benefits of Link Building

Link building can not only boost your organic search rankings and traffic but also offer many other advantages for your business. Such as: 

1. Network Building

Link building can involve outreach to other websites and blogs in your industry. This outreach frequently involves promoting something that you've just created such as a piece of content or an infographic. A common goal among marketers is often to receive links, but there's so much more to it than this like networking with key influencers in the industry, which can help create long term relationships with those persons who may end up becoming evangelists or advocates for your business, because they genuinely become passionate about what you're doing with your brand.

In some instances, you might build relationships with writers and journalists looking to write stories about anything relevant and meaningful other times a media outlet might contact you asking for your cooperation first. As an entrepreneur, it’s important as we know to be aware of everything happening in our industry at any given time - especially when it’s tempting business models.

2. Generating Traffic Through Referrals

If a link to your website is on a highly ranked site and it’s related to your niche, that means an increase in traffic. And if the site has a stronger domain authority than you, links leading back to your site are more likely to be followed than if the link was on another similar but weaker site. In this situation, it's important to consider that links from relevant sites have different values from those from irrelevant ones.

If you can place a link to your business in front of people who are genuinely interested in what you do and have made use of appropriate keywords throughout their website then they might click through and perhaps even make purchases at some stage in time or another because now they are aware of who you are as a brand and what you do!

3. Building Your Brand

The right link building can boost your reputation and establish you as a thought leader. By creating content, for instance, your company can demonstrate its expertise, which proves to be a link-building strategy. By publishing data-driven content on your topic, for example, you will build credibility. Reaching out to other people within your industry and asking them to link to your content is a great way to show your expertise and help others see your expertise. 

Lastly, 

Getting a link is not the same as "earning" a link, so take it very seriously. Before you can go about building links, you first need to find things to develop. Links usually relate to resources such as a blog post, tool, research paper, infographic, or infographic. Most of the time when entrepreneurs begin their link-building campaign they're working on something they've already created while other times they do it with a new piece that they plan on making specifically because what Google has said is important in terms of attracting links back to your website.

Thus, we come to the concept of Link "Earning" and " deserving to rank". You see, site owners will always look at the content of your site before deciding whether or not they'll link to you. The same goes for other high-ranking websites in your niche. Bloggers for example won't be keen on linking to low-quality stuff like SPAM sites or sites with flat graphics or broken links, so it's really important to make sure that whatever you're planning works as a whole before unleashing it on the world!

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Mark Hullin

Closing the HubSpot Adoption Gap #HubSpotIsNotaStrategy