There’s no question that a web link is one of the most useful and powerful elements of the digital marketing world. You probably already know what a hyperlink is, and that building up a backlink profile is an essential part of your SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy. But… why? What functions do links serve, and how can you get more of them? These are the questions we will be covering in this article.
In brief – yes, link building is an incredibly powerful SEO tool. According to some marketing professionals, it may even represent the most important factor in page ranking (Search Engine Land).
As a full-service agency delivering industry-best SEO campaigns, The Brains in London possess a nuanced understanding of link building’s intrinsic value, and the way it fits into an effective and visibility-boosting SEO strategy. Drawing on that expertise, this article will look at link building in more detail – including the different types of links businesses can acquire – before illustrating its importance to SEO, and recommending ways you can bolster your backlink profile.
Just What is Link Building?
Not to over-complicate matters, link building, essentially, means getting other websites to link to your website. Any experienced online marketer should prioritise link building as an important way of building authority and generating increased referral traffic.
Though not strictly part of a link building strategy, it’s worth mentioning the process of internal linking, as it’s much faster and easier to execute than external link building. Internal linking means peppering pages full of links to other site pages – basically, bouncing users around your site. The relevance of your anchor text, the quality of the linking page, and the quality of the linked page all affect how effectively your internal linking strategy performs.
When it comes to external linking, things are a little slower-burning, though it does represent an internet-spanning opportunity to boost traffic and develop thought leadership within your niche. External link building involves getting well-respected, authoritative websites to host a link to your site. As more web users encounter these links on high-quality sites, your inbound traffic grows. That’s the basic premise.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Types of Link
There’s a maxim in SEO marketing that says, not all links are created equal. This speaks to the truth that, the more well-respected or roundly-recognised a linking website is, the more valuable the link will be. Links from spammy or disreputable sites don’t carry the same weight, and may even do more harm than good. So, although it takes some time to build up an authoritative backlink profile, it’ll pay dividends.
Of course, there is a dark side to all this – black hat SEO. This refers to the most deceptive, manipulative, misleading or otherwise underhand SEO practises a domain owner can use to deviously boost traffic. As it pertains to link building, this might involve buying links, or using dishonest tactics to acquire them.
Why is Link Building Important for SEO?
In some of the most competitive industries (like finance, casino or healthcare), one good quality link can represent a cost to your marketing budget of $1500 or more (Linkbuilder.io). So why do companies invest so heavily in link building?
Well, receiving a good link is like being given a seal of approval from an instantly-recognisable, widely-respected brand name. During the 1990s, Larry Page (one of Google’s founders) created PageRank, and ever since, Google has been using this scoring system to measure a page’s quality based on its backlink profile.
And this is the crux of the issue. Despite regular updates, Google’s algorithms are all about serving human users with quality digital content. And, in a sea of search results, one of the primary methods for it to determine ‘good quality’ is to analyse how many links a page holds, and where those links come from.
To put it in a nutshell: pages with lots of links from good quality websites (such as academic institutes, government bodies or multinational industry leaders) score well with the Google algorithm, and the search engine ranks them accordingly.
How to Improve Your Backlink Profile
This leads many marketers to wonder: how to get these well-respected sites to host those much-needed links? Well, the truth is, it takes a fair amount of time and effort to get right. With that said, there are a few techniques you can use to start building up your backlink profile and boosting your SEO rankings:
- Create quality content
‘Content is king’ – it’s as true as it ever was. Success online is all about delivering content that people can find value in. So, a large portion of your marketing budget should be dedicated to crafting original and quality content that’ll push you above and beyond the competition. After all, that’s the type of content that the highest-authority sites will be keen to share – a specialist content marketing team can help you there.
- Use your existing network
Consider friends, family and professional contacts that operate in the digital space – there’s a good chance that a few of them will be willing to publish some content linking to your site, and boost your SEO efforts in that way. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, of course, and you might find that sooner or later you can return the favour; this can be an excellent way of developing a robust network of connections.
- Lean into social media and influencer marketing
In this day and age, some of the most listened-to voices across all industries operate on social media. Provided their voice and values are broadly aligned with your own, it’s always worth reaching out to people with a large following, to see if they’d be interested in giving a review or mention of your site or product.
Link Building: An SEO Cornerstone
When it comes to SEO, there’s ‘powerful,’ in the one-time, instant-payoff sense of the word… and then there’s the long-term, deep impact, difference-making kind of ‘powerful.’ Link building sits firmly within that second definition. It does take some work, and a fair amount of time to get it right, but in terms of SERP (search engine results page) gains, there aren’t many strategies that can compete with it.
If you’re interested in enlisting data-driven, results-backed link building services, your best bet is to hire the services of a full-service agency with a proven SEO record. The Brains’ unrivalled SEO team is available now to consult on your link building strategy and help take your business straight to the top of Google. Get in touch now to discuss the future of your search engine marketing.
