In this super brief introduction to link building, we will be taking a quick look through the meaning, usefulness, importance, relevance, and methods that define what link building is.
Table of Contents
What is Link Building?
Backlinks are hyperlinks embedded in search engine-optimized content that lead back to a landing page on the target website. Websites hosting these backlinks are called placement sites. Backlinks embedded into expert, authoritative, and trustworthy (E-A-T) placement sites are preferred by search engines and thus, they enjoy a much higher click-through rate by the people visiting the sites.
All plans, strategies, and methods involved in getting SEO optimized, backlinked content published across the various relevant placement sites is collectively known as link building. SEO optimized web content that’s created for link building and published on relevant, high-quality websites are instrumental in boosting a website’s visibility to its target audience.
What is Manual Link Building?
When link-building efforts are implemented manually by professional SEO experts, backlinks generate more relevant traffic of higher quality, with a significantly higher chance of conversion for the hyperlinked sites. Manual link building is an active effort by human SEO experts to create natural backlinks for interested, potential customers to follow. It’s a matter of quality over quantity for online businesses that are looking to convert a higher percentage of customers rather than just generating more traffic from backlinks.
What is Automated Link Building?
Automated link building refers to the use of smart software in Link building. It can be a cheaper and faster option for vloggers and social media influencers who rely more on the quantity of traffic, rather than the quality. Beware of digital marketing agencies promoting automated link building as a more premium service than manual link building because that would mean they are charging their clients more for working less, which might work for them but is poor value for you. Also, completely automating the link building process poses a high risk of your marketing content getting flagged as spam.
What are the Best Methods for Link Building?
There are several exclusive and hybrid link building strategies that we can use, but what we should use will vary widely. Therefore, the best link building method or strategy depends on what the marketing campaign is promoting, its goals, budget, target audience, and more. Nevertheless, the following are some of the most useful and effective link building strategies overall.
- Content marketing on social media sites: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, etc.
- Content marketing on websites: Guest posting with blog posts, news posts, press releases, informative pieces, etc.
- Content marketing via email, aka email marketing.
- Broken Link Building (BLB): Finding broken links on relevant sites and proposing to replace them with your own links.
- Content marketing on relevant forums: Good forums are moderated and they have strict requirements that all posts must follow, but they also generate a much higher quality of traffic.
What is an Algorithm Update, and How Does It Affect Your Link Building Strategy?
An algorithm in IT can be simplified and defined as a set of rules that must be followed. In the world of search engine optimization, an algorithm update signifies that some of the rules that govern a particular search engine’s behavior have been changed by the developers through an update.
More often than not, an algorithm update directly refers to the latest changes introduced to the Google search engine. This is a result of two facts:
- Google is the most popular search engine in the world.
- Over the years, Google has introduced more significant updates to its search engine’s algorithm than the competition.
Some of the most impactful Google algorithm updates over the years were named Florida (2003), Big Daddy (2005), Caffeine (2009) Panda (2011), Penguin (2012), Hummingbird (2013), Pigeon (2014), RankBrain (2015), Fred (2017), and SpamBrain (2018). Each major update has had a major and different impact on SERP rankings, so understanding and conforming to them quickly is of crucial importance to ensure the continuing success of any link building strategy.
What Kind of Backlinks Are Preferred by Search Engines?
The finer details may vary a bit, depending on the particular search engine. However, the following rules are valid for search engine preferences in general.
- Backlinks are placed on expert, relevant, trusted, and authoritative websites.
- Backlinks integrated into and/or surrounded by relevant keywords.
- Anchors that are closely related to the content.
- Anchors that are directly related to the landing page.
- The placement of the link, especially when the post has multiple links (Higher up/middle of the post).
- Anchors that are naturally integrated into the content’s theme.
- Backlinks integrated into content that is grammatically correct.
- Backlinks integrated into content that’s factually correct.
There is of course, a lot more to quality link building as it’s such a vast subject. Nonetheless, this introduction should be enough to get readers acquainted with the basics of search engine optimization with link building.
