One of the pillars and foundations of SEO or web positioning is link building. Through it, it is intended to increase the authority of a site by generating links to it. Therefore, it is necessary to do it with a correctly studied strategy. Everything you need to know about her is explained below.
What is link building?
It is an SEO strategy through which external links have obtained that point to a blog, web, or electronic commerce, which will increase your positioning in search engines. These links must be of quality, which is the essential requirement for the page to have more authority and search engines to position it better.
The algorithms of search engines such as Bing or Google are based on the factors of off-site SEO and on-site SEO. The former is related to the relevance of a website and its main indicator is the links that point to it. It is also necessary to remember that there are other relevant factors such as the anchor text, whether it is following or no-follow, those generated in social networks …
This digital marketing strategy aims to improve the positioning with the backlinks or inbound links to a website. But it is also a good strategy to get more quality visits (for this, the inbound links must be from sites related to the brand) and the more visits, the more likely it is to sell a service or product.
On the other hand, it is important to know that good content tends to be linked naturally and the fact of getting links happens organically and with less effort. This technique must be taken into account in any type of website, although it is also essential to know that not everything goes for SEO and that it is not based only on quality content and link building.
How does the link-building strategy work?
To know how this strategy works, you must first make it clear what PageRank is. This is a classification that is made from 0 to 10 and that Google assigns to each web page, depending on the number of links from other pages that point to it and the value they have for the search engine.
In other words, it is the importance of a page. The more quality links that point to a site, the better it will be positioned, as it will be considered more important.
To also make the concept of quality clear, it must be borne in mind that the links should be few and come from pages with a very high PageRank, instead of being many and coming from pages with a PageRank of zero. This means that the PageRank that Google will assign to a website will be related to that of the pages that link to it.
What are the advantages of link building?
The link building has many advantages, and make proactive increases the authority of a site. Some of these advantages are:
- The attraction of traffic to a web page.
- Improvement of online reputation, which helps in SEO positioning.
- Increase in the authority of the website.
- Improving the presence of a brand, making it position itself as an expert on specific issues. Therefore, your articles and pages will rank earlier in search engines.
A while ago, one of the essential requirements to position a website was to have a great SEO authority. For this reason, many companies bought or sold links to their website, being something lucrative (many businesses lived on it). However, Google noticed and began to penalize these actions, so to have good results with the link-building strategy, these links must be obtained naturally through collaborations that are profitable for the business.
Currently, for search engine positioning, the architecture of the web, the loading speed, its usability, different taxonomies or folksonomies, the choice of suitable keywords are taken into account … How does link building fit here? Well, because it is also a key factor in having a large number of visits to the website. If a page does not have a good inbound link profile, it will be more difficult for it to be among the first positions for the keywords relevant to your business.
Essential link building techniques
Here are some techniques to artificially link to a blog or website. It is only necessary to remember that quality must be above quantity.
1. Write as Guest Blogger
It consists of writing articles on someone else’s blog with links to your website. It is usually done on a topic in which you are an expert, but for another authority source in the sector, writing as a guest author.
In that article that is written, the usual thing is that the name of the author appears, a small review of who he is, and a link to his blog or website.
2. Solve doubts in forums
Entering forums related to the sector of the company in question and answering questions from the audience is always a good idea to position yourself as an expert. It is one of the most used techniques. If there are articles in the blog of the same that can help to solve those doubts, they can be inserted in the comments and thus get a backlink (if the forum does not have the links as no-follow ).
3. Conduct interviews about yourself or your brand
It can be done in the media, on social networks, other blogs … If you have interesting things to say, you can try to get another blogger to do an interview and link the article to your site.
4. Write opinions and testimonials
Some websites do reviews of services and products. Writing opinions and testimonials there can be another good strategy. Of course, it must be done on pages related to the company’s sector and always with elements that have been truly tested.
5. Share on social networks
Sharing content on social networks is one of the simplest techniques to get links to a website. The goal is for followers to share such content with theirs. It is essential to always place buttons so that it is easy for the audience to share them and encourage them to do so.
6. Send press releases to the media and blogs
Preparing and sending press releases to the media for publication guarantees good quality links.
7. Share articles in news aggregators
News aggregators are websites that bring together articles from different blogs on a specific topic. By sharing the posts in them, it is easy to get quality links.
8. Comment on other blogs
It is also possible to comment on other blogs to add value. If both the author and his readers find the contributions interesting, they may click on the provided link to find out more about who wrote it.
9. Create an RSS feed
On platforms like WordPress, you don’t have to worry about installing it, as it is predetermined. In this way, readers will read the articles without having to access the blog daily and it will be easier for the content to be shared and for links to be generated that point to the web.
10. Create internal links on the website
The best way to get links is to create them within the website itself. In this way, not only the navigation of the readers is facilitated, but the number of links on a site is increased (it must be taken into account that these links do not have the same value as if they come from a different website, but already is something).
Google likes a page to have internal links, so you can create links that go from one article to another or from one page to another. One of the most recurrent actions is to place a link to the contact page at the end of the articles.
11. Create relationships with other bloggers in the sector
The networking is not new, as it always has been needed to establish relations with professionals in the sector in which you work. By applying it here, it is possible to get articles to be shared.
The point is to establish a lasting relationship so that links can be made when deemed appropriate. Although it must be said that this type of link is not one of those that Google likes the most.
12. Look for links that point to the competition
Tools like Ahrefs or Open Site Explorer are very useful to know which links point to the competition. In this way, you can do an investigation on which media or blogs link to them, get in touch with those companies to see if they might also be interested in linking the desired web page because they are from the same sector, and offer products that can be similar or even better.
In short, it is important to remember that in link building the links must appear natural, so the anchor text of all of them must be different and not come from the same domain.
