Link Building 101: Ultimate Guide for Beginners!
Link building is an SEO strategy that encourages other websites to link to yours. The links you get from other websites are called backlinks, which Google considers “endorsements” that make your website more authoritative. According to Google’s algorithm, the more quality backlinks you have, the more trustworthy your website is.
So, why is it important to craft effective link building strategies to your SEO master plan?
To answer this, link building strategies can boost your website’s organic search and ultimately help your business increase sales and grow your brand. It is indeed promising to grow your business with the right SEO strategy and link building tools for an effective marketing campaign.
Still, before this can happen, you need to learn the nitty-gritty details of link building, so continue reading the article to equip yourself with helpful link building knowledge.
To build your link building strategies, you must learn some key terms and concepts about links.
Common Types of Links
1. Guest Blogging Backlinks
Guest blogging means submitting your blog to other blog sites with interlinks to your website.
Indeed, guest blogging is one of the most common link building SEO methods because it is easy to acquire through email outreach or buying a service from a web admin. However, since they are easy to obtain, some SEO marketers get low qualities from irrelevant or low domain authorities (unless you have a link building team that can focus on the links.)
For this reason, SEO or digital marketing professionals must do their due diligence and use SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to check a website’s authority, traffic volume, and relevance to their niche.
👉 How It Works: You need to look for guest blogging sites relevant to your niche. Once you find a blog site, you have to think of a unique blog topic, and after this, you can propose this to your host website for guest posting by crafting a professional email.
2. Infographic Links
Infographic links are visual representations that explain complex information in a picture for an easier reading process. Most often, infographics contain listicles, percentages, and tips about a specific topic. If you have graphic design skills, you can use Canva and Adobe InDesign tools to create your infographic design.
After creating high-quality infographic links, you can also share them on social media to improve your SEO performance and increase brand awareness.
👉 How It Works: Of course, you can design an infographic link based on a blog post with relevant topics about your business. After this, you can add the infographics inside a blog post, remembering that keywords should be used and the alt tags optimized for the search engine algorithm.
3. Directory Links
Directory links are links from online directories listing businesses, organizations, and other establishments. The purpose of submitting your website’s link to an online directory is to increase visibility and, eventually, increase organic search. It is also a recognized white label link building because you adhere to Google’s guidelines.
Imagine you are looking for cleaning services and use a directory book (Yellow Pages) listing such businesses. You may think the company is trustworthy because it is listed in a recognized directory book.
👉 How It Works: You must find relevant directories for your business niche. After this, you can submit your link and wait for the approval. Remember to follow the online directory’s requirements to get approval.
4. Editorial Backlinks
Your website naturally earns editorial backlinks because other online users, journalists, bloggers, or influencers find your content relevant and highly informative. Most of the time, they are blogs on your website. This is one of the most beneficial link building methods because you can earn backlinks without spending money.
Yes, it is cost-effective, but you must do your part to get there. You need to create high-quality content to naturally attract other online users to interlink your blog pages on their websites.
👉 How It Works: You need to find a qualified content writer to help you strategize for content creation. The writer must have SEO knowledge and good writing skills to produce high-quality blog posts. After publishing the blog, you can have a promotion on your social media to publicize the postings.
5. Webinar Links
Webinar links come from public events such as participating in webinars, online seminars, or workshops. They usually use video conferencing where participants can click on your website’s link through the online event. It can increase brand trustworthiness because webinar links indicate professionalism and industry expertise.
You can also create your webinar to invite your online followers or clients to share information about your niche. The event can help you engage more with your target audience.
👉 How It Works: If you sponsor a webinar, ask the organizers if they can add your website’s link on their social media or website. If you start your webinar, promote the event so you can invite interested people to join the online seminar. When attendees write an article about the webinar, they can interlink your website and obtain more backlinks.
Key Terms in Link Building
1. Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text with the hyperlink directing to your website. To do this effectively, you must do keyword research to know where to interlink your website links. Remember to include keyword research in your link building strategies for relevant keywords or phrases that can help you rank in search engines.
You can also optimize anchor text by interlinking it within your website. For instance, if you publish a blog, you can interlink relevant topics to the blog to help distribute link equity and improve your website’s crawlability.
2. Do-Follow Links
Do-follow links are acquired links that are crawlable by search engines and count as a “vote of authority” by Google. With this status, Google allows these links to direct to your website, strengthening your authority (link juice) as they show the blogs, posts, and other sites linking to your site.
Do-follow links are preferred because they can directly impact your search engine rankings and improve your overall website performance.
3. No-Follow Links
On the other hand, there are no-follow links. From the word itself, no-follow links do not allow search engines to follow the link and pass authority (link juice). These links don’t usually impact your website’s search engine performance. Still, no-follow links can also be beneficial as they can help brand recognition, increase referral traffic, and diversify your link profile.
One of the perfect link building methods for do-follow and no-follow is to have a balance between them. They can create a natural and diverse link profile to enhance the overall user experience of your website.
4. Link Juice
Link juice describes the value or the authority passed from one website to another through hyperlinks. When a high authority website links to another website, some of its authority can be passed to the other website, positively impacting your website. In doing so, you can also improve your authoritativeness in the Google search engine.
As you acquire backlinks from reputable sites, your website can also improve its search engine rankings. Remember, with higher authority, the search engines will see it as more relevant and raise your rankings.
In case you missed: Link Building & Link Juice: The Ultimate Guide for Higher Rankings!
5. Link Relevancy
Link relevancy refers to the relationship between the target and the source page. Is it relevant, or are the themes closely aligned? Remember that link building is not just about obtaining the most backlinks; you must also consider the relevancy between the two pages.
For instance, if your website is about pet services, look for blogs related to pet care. With this, you can have link relevancy, leading to more effective link building strategies.
5 Link Building Strategies You Must Know!
Now that you know the different link building types and terms, it’s time to craft your link building strategies.
1. Content Creation: Creating Link-Worthy Content
SEO professionals should know that creating quality content is the key to attracting web admins, bloggers, or journalists to naturally interlink your websites to their sites. If you have the budget, you can hire writers to produce high-quality blogs with the correct SEO elements. You can also hire graphic designers to help you design visual elements that can enhance the blog posts.
Also, don’t forget to follow SEO rules for the meta tags, alt tags, SEO titles, and blog hierarchy. When you follow all these rules, you can expect passive link building that can improve your website performance.
👉 Additional Tip: Always remember that successful link building strategies always relate to creating link-worthy content.
2. Strategize Guest Blogging with Email Outreach
To get quality backlinks, you must strategize your email outreach for the guest post sites as part of your link building methods. First, you must research and identify target websites relevant to your niche. After this, think of a unique topic that can stand out in the search engine results pages (SERP). Once you finalize the guest post sites and your blog topic, it’s time to do email outreach.
When sending your email, indicate your purpose, terms, and conditions, and most importantly, sound professional. If you don’t get a response in a day or two, you can follow up with webmasters for your email outreach.
👉 Additional Tip: Once you get a reply, you should build partnerships with relevant websites within your niche. As you successfully do all these steps, you can expect to see an improvement in your backlink performance.
3. Maintaining Links: Fix Broken Link Building
Maintaining links should also be part of your link building strategies, so use SEO tools like SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs to locate broken links on other websites.
To solve this, contact the web admins and inform them about the broken links; you can also offer a replacement for the links to make them more relevant, unique, and valuable and provide new insights. The new link can be in the form of:
- Articles or Blog posts
- Infographics
- Videos
👉 Additional Tip: Maintain a professional tone when addressing broken links with the web admins to encourage a positive relationship. Remember, building connections within your niche is like obtaining quality backlinks!
4. Using Social Media to Enhance Link Acquisition
Social media is a digital platform that increases your online visibility. So, why is social media helpful for your link building strategies? First, social media can promote engagement from your online followers, leading to sharing posts, comments, likes, and subscribing.
As a business owner, you can create social media accounts:
- TikTok
- Any other social media platforms usually used by your target audience.
👉 Additional Tip: A wider reach means more chances of acquiring backlinks. So, utilize your social media and create posts that can capture the attention of online users. Who would’ve known your posts may even get viral!
5. Using Infographics to Diversify Link Building Portfolio
Nowadays, people have a shorter attention span and like visual content, so infographics can improve the bounce rate because they are more engaging.
To give you an overview, putting infographics inside your websites or blog posts can make your content shareable. This will encourage other users to share and spread your content in the digital world, which will help you acquire backlinks!
👉 Additional Tip: Create a well-designed infographic to attract other users to share your content. To make your infographics more appealing, use designing tools like Canva, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe InDesign.
Link Building Mistakes to Avoid…
Given the link building strategies, you must also be mindful of the best practices and common mistakes to avoid to further improve your backlink practices.
1. White Hat Link Building Vs. Black Hat Techniques
✅ What to Do
As a professional SEO specialist, you must focus on white hat link building to implement ethical strategies and gain authority from search engines. Follow the recommended strategies above to prevent Google from penalizing you. Nonetheless, update yourself on the latest link building trends and rules to learn more about white hat link building.
❌ What Not to Do
Indeed, obtaining backlinks can be challenging, especially for start-up businesses starting in the industry. For this reason, some people might practice black hat techniques like buying links, link farms, and keyword stuffing. These harmful practices can harm your website’s reputation and authority, affecting your business performance.
2. How to Approach Potential Linking Partners
✅ What to Do
Your research skills are a must when looking for potential partners for your link building strategies. It would help if you listed all the target websites in an Excel sheet to track the websites where you can submit your guest post blogs. After this, create a professional and personalized email to the webmasters to let them know your intention, including the email as the topic proposal. Also, remember to send follow-up emails promptly if they don’t reply in two or three days.
❌ What Not to Do
Building a partner is about being professional, so avoid using demanding or pushy language that can offend your prospective web admins. To avoid this, you must not send spam emails or ignore follow-ups to prevent your chances of publishing your guest blogs. Finally, remember not to use automated emails as they sound less sincere.
3. Maintaining Link Quality and Avoiding Spam Practices.
✅ What to Do
Maintaining the link quality is a must for your link building strategies.
To do this:
- Regularly monitor your backlink profile and disavow toxic links affecting your website’s performance.
- As you need to focus on link quality, do not focus on quantity because you need to get backlinks from more reputable websites.
- Most importantly, avoid spammy link building practices such as excessive match anchor text, link exchanges, and low-quality directory submissions.
❌ What Not to Do
Never ignore broken links because they can harm your website’s user experience and overall link building efforts. Of course, once you find the broken links, don’t forget to offer a replacement to keep your backlink profile relevant, informative, and authoritative in search engines’ standards.
4. Building Relationships within Your Industry vs Neglecting Partnership
✅ What to Do
Building a relationship with your potential partner is essential in your link building strategies. When doing email outreach for your backlink potential, remember that you are your brand’s ambassador. Always remember that you need to foster relationships within your industry to gain trustworthiness and engage in genuine interactions.
❌ What Not to Do
Neglecting to build relationships within your industry can limit your backlink potential and opportunities. You should invest time in building activities with your partners, like collaborating on projects, to acquire high-quality backlinks while building healthy, genuine partnerships.
What Metrics Do You Need to Look at When Using Link Building Tools?
After knowing the best practices and common mistakes to avoid, it’s best to know the tools you can utilize to implement your link building methods and the metrics you need to consider.
1. Backlink Metrics
Backlink Metrics help you check the number of backlinks, domain authority, anchor text distribution, and link quality.
Here’s why they are important to track:
- Number of Backlinks – This refers to the total count of links to the other websites pointing to your website. You can see the number of sites chosen to link to your content.
- Domain Authority – Domain Authority is a metric that determines how well a website ranks in search engines. Websites with higher DA have higher authority and rank higher, which benefits backlinking opportunities.
- Anchor Text Distribution – It is the clickable text of the hyperlink. It should be diverse and natural rather than overly optimized or spammy. A healthy distribution helps search engines understand the context and relevance of your content.
- Link Quality – Authority, relevance, and trustworthiness are essential qualities of a link. You must check the link quality to know whether the backlinks came from a reputable website.
This way, you can get an idea of the link’s relevance to your website and how it can help your SEO performance. Using the right tools, you can check these metrics and gain insight into whether it’s the perfect option for your link building methods.
2. Track Link Growth and Trends
Monitor the growth of your backlinks over time and see if they are performing well to improve your SEO efforts. You can also use the tool to check new and lost links and, as such, implement link building methods to fix broken links. You can also check link velocity (Measure the rate at which new backlinks are acquired or lost) to track your link building efforts.
3. Competitor Analysis
To maximize the tools, do a competitor backlink profile analysis to identify opportunities and assess their link building strategies to develop your plan. You can also use the tools to compare your backlink performance with your competitors and think of link building strategies that can give you the most advantage.
4. Link Context and Quality
Once you have implemented your backlink strategies, you must consider three key metrics: link relevance, placement, and diversity. By looking after these metrics, you can maintain a high-quality link.
- Link Relevance – Evaluate the relevance of the linking pages to your products, services, target audience, and brand.
- Link Placement – Assess the placement of backlinks within content, such as editorial articles, guest posts, resource pages, or directories.
- Link Diversity – Look for a diverse range of linking domains and sources to ensure a natural and balanced backlink profile.
5. Link Building Campaign Performance
After setting up all the links and finishing your white hat link building strategies, you must track the campaign performance to determine whether it is helping your SEO metrics. You should measure the campaign metrics, including the outreach response rates, conversion rates, and overall success metrics. Additionally, do a risk analysis for your campaign performance, such as checking spam score and link toxicity.
SEO tools that can help identify link opportunities
| Google Search Console | Seobility |
| Google Alerts | OpenLinkProfiler |
| Hunter.io | Majestic |
| HARO | AgencyAnalytics |
| Linkody | Rankwatch |
| SEMrush | Ahrefs |
| Moz | BuzzSumo |
| URL Profiler | Whitespark |
| Ubersuggest | Linkgraph |
| Respona | Snov.io |
You must read: Top 21 Free Link Building Tools To Use For SEO
Wrapping Up!
Link building is one of the most essential SEO methods for improving business performance in this digital age. With the knowledge above, you can implement effective link building strategies to put your business on top of the game!
All in all, link building is a systematic process that can help you yield significant results by connecting with other industry professionals. The key to a successful link building campaign is to build partnerships.
Keep reading!
