Link Building – A Comprehensive Guide for SEO Professionals

Link Building is an SEO practice and a part of off-page SEO of creating hyperlinks on different authoritative domains pointing to your site. These links act as votes to search engines telling them that the site is authoritative and trustworthy based on online brand reputation for your site on the domains you have built the links.  

In this guide, you will learn link-building methods, key terms, ways to determine high-quality links, strategies, and best practices to boost SEO performance and maintain a strong online reputation.

Let’s dive in

Google travels the website as URLs and continuously looks for the better content available on search engines to store in the database as indexing. When the user performs a search query it shows the best content for them from its indexing.

The higher number of quality content and backlinks contributes to better-ranking positions on search engine result pages. Backlinks are one of the top-ranking factors Google considers when ranking them for a query.

That’s possible because of the Google Penguin update – The algorithm is based on penalizing low-quality backlinks and promoting high-quality backlinks as a link Juice.

Benefits of Link Building in SEO

1. Adds authority score and increase domain rating
2. Improve the keyword ranking positions
3. Build Brand awareness
4. Strong Online Reputation
5. Drive referral traffic to your site
6. Drive organic traffic to your site
7. Helps in building networking and business relationship

Key Terms to Know about Link Building

What are SEO backlinks?

Backlinks are the hyperlinks pointing to your domain from other domains also called referring domains. They are also known as inbound links, incoming links, or hyperlinks. High-quality links matter more than low so build links slow but on quality websites.

Referring or Linking Domains – The domains on which the link is built, together are known as referring domains.

Domain Authority (DA)– The overall authority domain, you can check it in the Moz Explorer tool. It is also called the Authority Score in SEMrush.

Page Authority (PA) – The authority of a specific web page. This helps in knowing how trustworthy a webpage is.

Citation Flow – The score is generated by a majestic tool and represents the number of backlinks built on the referring domains.

Trust Flow – The score is generated by a majestic tool and represents the quality of backlinks built on the referring domains.

Social shares – The large shares on social media help in developing trust about the content.

Link Juice – This means the authority or value passed to a page by backlinks. Google sees link juice acquired by a webpage as votes toward your site. It can be valid for internal as well as external links.

Nofollow – The tag represents that means not to pass any link juice to the linking URL

Follow – The tag represents that means pass link juice to the Linking URL.

Anchor Text – The keyword on which the hyperlink is built. You can target your keywords when linking.

How to determine High-Quality Links?

When building links, thorough research is crucial to selecting authoritative and trustworthy websites to avoid spam, time and effort.

Here are some of the key elements to look at while selecting the domain

1. Authority of the page – A page authority should be high when selecting the site. The links with high-authority pages have an impact more as compared to low-authority pages.
2. Authority of the Domain – Domain authority matters and is determined by the sitewide authority. You can check the Authority score in SEMrush
3. Relevancy – This is crucial when building links as niche-specific sites can drive relevant and sustainable traffic.
4. Link Position – The link obtained in the sidebar and footer is less worthy than the link built in the middle of the content.
5. Editorial Link – If your content is worthy, then other sites automatically share your links on their site known as editorial links or earned links. This is more authoritative than outreach links.
6. Anchor text – This is vital as it represents hyperlinks to your inbound links. Google considers them as one of the ranking signals.
7. Don’ts of Guest Posting – If you are posting content on other websites solely to obtain links then this is considered a red flag by Google. However, if you are naturally posting an article to the niche site then Google can consider it as trustworthy and authoritative. If you have added useful information and insights to the guest posting then Google promotes it based on Helpful Content Update and E-E-A-T.

Effective Link-Building Methods

1. Embrace the power of Content Marketing

Publish unique and relevant content for the audience to get featured as linkable asset on other authority domains. Ensure that it gets highly shareable on social media channels.

You can create a visual asset and listicle articles to get noticed by the users and entice clicks on the search engine result pages. In addition, you can add content based on original research and data with examples.

In-depth articles, guides, and insightful posts can attract the audience to read, like, and share.

2. Guest Posting to Build Traffic

Guest posting helps you to reach the audience related to your niche. You can google the following search operators-

1. “Guest post” keyword
2. “Write for us” Keyword
3. “Keyword” guest blog
4. Inurl: “write-for-us” KEYWORD
5. “KEYWORD” “Become a Contributor”

Browse the sites based on the above search operators and select them based on-

• Domain Authority/Domain Rating/Authority Score
• Page Authority/ Page Rating
• Overall traffic
• Organic Traffic
• Relevancy

You can check the above elements in SEO tools such as SEMrush, Moz, and Ahrefs, and maybe you will find different names so I have listed them with their various names. Select the site and 3-5 topics and pitch them to the site owner. You can also add other guest blogs for their reference and consider your site trustworthy and authoritative. You can ask ChatGPT to create an email script.

3. Resource Page Link Building

Scrap the backlinks of your competitors in SEMrush or Ahref.  Analyze the referring domains with the high Authority score and traffic. Suppose you run a Learning SEO Online site and your competitor has an SEO course as a backlink on your researched domain. Then you can add the resource page as SEO interview questions which will add value to the visitors of the original website.

In addition, you can add visual assets like the benefits of SEO as an image or infographic and ask them to mention you. Lastly, you can create an email outreach script and ask them to add the backlink.

 4. Powerful Strategy through Broken Link Building

This is a great technique in link building. Check your competitor’s link in Ahrefs or SEMrush and reclaim their lost links. You can also check your niche website in the Broken link checking tool and fix the broken link with your insightful post.

5. Link Reclamation

It is an effective technique that can strengthen your link-building efforts quickly. All you need to do is find broken or removed backlinks within your website and fix them with an updated URL. This is easy and helps in gaining your lost authority.

6. Quora Answers

Quora has a huge potential when it comes to traffic and providing answers to most of the common queries users have. Be an expert in your industry and answer the questions by adding resourceful links to your website. Here are the steps for answering on Quora

1. Join relevant discussions on Quora
2. Answer the questions and build your authority
3. Link the resource on the website by providing answers.

7. HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

This helps to build authoritative links as they establish you as an industry leader and earn links through the HARO platform. Here are the steps to build links

1. Join the HARO platform
2. Choose topics as per your expertise
3. Find answers to relevant questions
4. Send answers with backlinks as a mention.

8. Evergreen Skyscraper Technique

This SEO technique was invented by Brian Dean of Backlinko in the year 2013. It proved to be very effective and many SEO professionals adopted the strategy.

Here is the process-

1. Research a high-volume keyword with information intent and value-driven. Avoid commercial or transactional intents.
2. Type a keyword in Ahrefs and explore the search results. Analyze them for high-referring domains and backlinks. For better results explore the pages ranking high say Top 3-5 and select the topic.
3. Create highly resourceful content for the selected topic.
4. When it outperforms the current ranking content then you can ask the backlink owners to link them to you.

9. Link Building through Influencer Marketing

Influencers have a great fan following so collaborating with them can help you find potential for link-building. You can get the advantage of their social media profiles and sites. Here are the important steps in your Influencer Marketing journey –

1. Find influencers in your niche with a good follower base and within your budget.
2. Set your goals and process for implementing an effective strategy with Influencers.
3. Send pitches and convey your objectives
4. Track the performance and analyze whether it is aligned with your ROI. 

10. Leverage the power of Local Link Building

If you have a local store, then it is time to improve your online presence and spread the word about your store.  It will help you as people perform a search before shopping or dining out to reach you. Creating a Google My Business Profile can help you discover relevant keyword searches such as

• [service] in [city]     
• [product] near me
• [service] near me
• [profession] near [city]     
• Best [product] shops in [city]      
• [city] famous for [product/service]        
• [service] specials in [city] 
• Top-rated [profession] in [city]  
• [product] suppliers in [city]

Google My Business Profile Management – It is one of the local SEO factors to rank sites higher to enhance your online visibility and increase sales.

NAP+W Management – NAP stands for Name Address Phone Number and Website. It is vital to have a consistent NAP+W on the entire web and across all channels. You can get these citations in social media profiles, online directories, review sites, etc. Inconsistent citations can create confusion between users and Google. Thus, consistent citations can help you gain the trust of the visitors and make search engines understand your brand in a better way.

11. Mentions to Unlinked Brand Name

This is a quick yet effective link-building practice as it helps to identify your brand citation on the entire web and then outreach to the owner of the site to add a link to your brand mentions on their website if they have not added it already.

Type of Link-Building Strategies

White Hat – These link-building strategies are based on following ethical SEO practices not penalized by Google. 

Grey Hat – These link-building strategies fall between the white hat and the Black hat. Google can consider this if you try to avoid spammy and bulk link-building tactics solely to gain rank.

Black Hat – These link-building strategies are unethical SEO practices penalized by Google.

Risks of Black Hat Techniques

Low Reputation– Building low-quality links leads to a loss in business relationships and harms the online reputation.

Search Engine Penalties – Google starts penalizing the sites with high spam scores because the links are built just for the sake of ranking ignoring the authority, citation flow, and Trust flow of referring domains.

Unstable Rankings – Black hat techniques can lead to quick rankings for a while but once discovered for unethical practices, Google degrades them and they completely get out from the search engine rankings.

Low Domain Authority – Creating backlinks through black hat can never improve the domain authority instead it will start degrading it. Take time and effort to build links rather than quick black hat techniques.

Low Traffic – Once your online reputation gets affected even if you start sharing worthy articles later in your journey to link building then you might get a red flag and no traffic as you have broken the trust earlier. So, take time to decide your link-building strategy and practice white hat SEO techniques only.

Creating a Powerful Link-Building Strategy

Best Link Building Tools

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• Moz link explorer
• Majestic
• Buzzsumo
• Broken Link Checker
• Google Search Console
• Uber suggest

Happy Link Building!