The presence of high-quality external links is an important ranking factor in search results. Therefore, link building is considered one of the main methods of website promotion. In this article, I will talk about the benefits of link building, its stages and main strategies.
What is link building
Link building (eng. link building) is the process of obtaining links (backlinks) to the site. Thanks to it, the link profile of the site is gradually being built.
The main task of link building is to increase the number of quality backlinks from various sites. Authoritative resources and forums linking to a site become proof of its quality for search engines like Google.
Why do you need link building?
Google is suspicious of sites without external links. After all, when users find something useful, they recommend it to others.
There is no exact number of external links that will lead to the top of the page. Each web resource has an individual story. Therefore, during link building, you should use a comprehensive approach: study the topic and target audience of your own site, analyze competitors in the niche and choose high-quality sites from which it will be useful to receive links.
Google prohibits buying links , so link building should be organic, subtle and done gradually. If you create a new site and buy a hundred links to it, the search engine will see it and impose sanctions. There is a chance to get into a shadow ban and lose a lot in traffic.
Good and bad external links: how to tell them apart
Quality links benefit the site, and poor quality links only harm, regardless of their number.
Quality links
They come from authoritative and relevant sources, are organically generated and have the potential to drive valuable traffic to your site.
These can be natural external links , which the resource receives because other companies or users consider it appropriate to mention it. Let’s say, when the article is about the company’s email marketing using SemRush, it is logical to give a link to the service’s website.
Free links obtained thanks to:
- exchange of articles with backlinks between web resources;
- joint projects of various companies for the purpose of placing links;
- writing articles that their authors offer to other resources for free;
- placing links on thematic forums;
- writing useful guest articles that users share themselves.
Purchase links are also considered to be of high quality . In practice, most backlinks are placed precisely for money, because the owners of the sites want to get a share of the profit. There are two main ways to purchase links:
- paid outreach — contacting the site owner directly to discuss hosting conditions;
- use of the exchange (intermediary site).
The exchange’s algorithm is simple.
- The owner of site No. 1 publishes information on the exchange about the willingness to place backlinks for a certain amount.
- Site owner #2 wants to buy a link. He enters the exchange, sees the list of platforms, filters them according to his parameters and makes payment.
- The exchange earns commission from the transaction.
Spammy links
They are irrelevant, low-quality and harm the site’s search engine optimization. These are mostly backlinks from unreliable sites that host everything offered and have almost no traffic. On such resources, articles about clothing are placed next to casino advertisements.
Google considers such sites as spam and is suspicious of the resources they link to. Therefore, filter the sites well. They should inspire trust and increase traffic.
Basic metrics for evaluating link quality
Be sure to check resources of interest for collaboration using special tools like Ahrefs and Moz. I will list the main metrics.
1. DR (Domain Rating). Domain authority index in the Ahrefs service. It contains a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is the highest authority. DR is calculated based on several factors, including the number and quality of links leading to a domain.
2. DA (Domain Authority). Moz domain authority score on a scale from 0 to 100.
DR and DA can be different for the same domain.
3. Referring Domains. The number of unique domains linking to the site. A single domain is counted once, even if it is referenced twice or more. Referring domains are one of the most important ranking factors in search results.
4. Linking Domains. This is the number of domains that link to the web resource. If a domain is linked twice or more, each link will be counted.
Types of links
Pay attention to the appearance of links, because this also plays an important role in link building.
Anchor links
1. With keywords. These are links organically written into the text. For example, when the backlink to the category of mountain bikes in the article is placed under the words “mountain bikes”.
Only the color indicates the presence of a link. If you remove it, you will be left with plain organic text.
Anchor backlinks explain to the search engine what to expect after clicking on them. If the keyword is “mountain bikes” and the link opens to a bike page, search engines get a green signal.
The selection of keywords for links should be entrusted to an SEO specialist.
2. Brand anchors – links with the name of a brand, company or product. For example, a link to the website of the Yakovenko Agency company with the anchor “Yakovenko Agency”.
3. Commercial with direct entry – indicate that the information can be found elsewhere: “go to the site”, “read here”, “here is the link”, etc.
Unanchored links
URL links are “naked” backlinks, when the URL of the page is not covered with keywords, but is placed in the middle of the text.
Image link
These are images that, after clicking on them, the user will go to the link:
- advertising banners , links under which are active only for the duration of the advertising campaign;
- quality graphs or statistics in articles – they are clicked to get more information;
- logos on the partner listing page leading to their sites.
Basic strategies and methods of getting links
There are many ways to get links. I will tell you about the popular ones.
Outreach
An important method of link building, which consists in directly contacting the owners of web resources with a request to place a backlink. It involves a discussion of one of the possible types of accommodation.
- Buying links. For example, you can write an article and offer it to the site for a certain amount. Or agree on a longread special project, when the editors of a site with an authoritative domain write the article themselves.
- Rent links. It consists in placing backlinks in an already published article for a certain period of time: half a year, a year, etc.
- Exchange links. It is a mutually beneficial cooperation when platforms publish each other’s articles. It is important to choose authoritative domains for exchange.
- Content marketing. The method is to create such high-quality content that platforms want to host it for free. These can be articles, videos, webinars, research, infographics, etc.
Crowd (Crowd)
Crowd is an auxiliary method of creating an organic link profile for search engines. It consists of creating comments, replies and reviews on forums for posting links. It’s very cheap, even free, if you post the links yourself.
There are a huge number of forums with various discussions. Search them for relevant topics where links will look organic, or create your own discussion threads.
If the online store sells smartphones, find a forum where a user is asking for advice on where to buy a phone. Leave a detailed comment with a backlink to the smartphone category.
Forums constantly clean their cache, so you should not thoughtlessly post comments and spam. It is more efficient to create useful posts, so that the links will last longer on the forum. Moreover, a high-quality crowd helps to attract CAs to the site and earn additional income.
PBN (Private Blog Network)
PBN is a network of web resources created by one owner to promote a certain site. These are mostly general web resources with articles about everything in the world. And in each of them there is a link to the site promoted by the owner.
PBNs are quite effective, but their use is risky. There is a chance that search networks will detect patterns and impose sanctions.
Drops
Drops are specialized sites for selling links. They contain articles on various topics and are not particularly concerned with the quality of the materials. Search engines consider drops to be spam, so their use often leads to sanctions.
Stages of work during link building
There is a clear sequence of steps in the link building process. I will tell about each one.
Step 1. Analysis of your own site
First of all, analyze the parameters of your own site and the authority of the domain to choose donors of approximately the same level.
A donor is a web resource that places a link.
Study the topic of the site, its target audience and know the priority region for promotion. For example, it is desirable to refer to the online store of musical instruments in Ukraine from articles in Ukrainian thematic music publications. In addition, such sites are visited by a target audience that will be interested in the posted link.
Step 2. Analysis of competitors
Find the site’s main competitors, then download and analyze the link profiles of their donors. This will give an understanding of the competitors’ strategy: how many links they have, which countries they are from, how many sites they are on, etc.
Build your own link building strategy based on this data. In it, use competitors’ donors, but add better sites to them to make the link profile more effective.
Step 3. Collection of the donor base
To be sure of the quality of a potential donor, first evaluate the appearance of the site and answer a few questions.
- What content is published?
- Is this resource thematic?
- Is the theme of the site suitable?
- Does the site have a target audience?
- Does the site publish spam, advertising and off-topic content?
- How much advertising is on the site?
After that, use tools like Serpstat and Ahrefs to get a general idea of the site’s quality using their metrics.
Step 4. Selection of the required sites
After collecting the base, check each potential donor for inflammation. To do this, pay attention to several important points.
- Traffic. If the site receives less than 300 unique visitors per month, it is not popular and ranks poorly. But the parameter is not exact and depends on the promotion region.
- Number of incoming links. It must be greater than the number of days off.
- Sudden changes in traffic figures. If the donor does not have a steady increase in traffic, there is a chance that he is under sanctions or manipulating the promotion.
- Poor indexing. If only 20-30% of the site is indexed, this is a red flag.
- Poor ranking. If a donor is ranking for a small number of keywords, this is a sign of low-quality content that does not meet the needs of users.
- Inorganic growth of reference mass. This is indicated by sharp jumps in indicators in the link profile.
Step 5. Placement
At this stage, offer the selected sites cooperation and agree on the publication of the article, its purchase or exchange.
Processplacement of backlinksit differs in different countries. It is difficult to get in touch with the owners of the sites in Canada . Donors are few, compared to the USA, and they are quite expensive.
The price per link varies in different countries. In one region, there will be a huge number of quality donors who respond quickly and are willing to post links from $10 to $50. And in the rest, there are only a few outdated web resources that ask for a link from $500.
It is convenient when individual specialists work with sites in different countries. They know how to write a letter so that the interlocutor understands what they want from him.
In most countries, it is more appropriate to use Gmail e-mail for communication. But in some regions, for example, in Ukraine, site owners often respond through various messengers.
Useful tools for link building
Link building tools show approximate parameters. Only resource owners know the exact numbers, because they have Google Search Console and Google Analytics. I will list popular tools that show a picture similar to reality.
- Serpstat is an analytical tool with which it is convenient to download the donors of competitors in a niche and study their link profiles.
- Ahrefs is the main link builder tool for analyzing the link profile of your own site and the profiles of competitors, analyzing keywords and finding potential donors. The service helps to weed out low-quality sites. It shows quite accurately the DR (Domain Rating), the amount of traffic and the countries it is coming from.
- SimilarWeb — helps to filter out donors according to the necessary parameters: it shows the amount and sources of traffic, the country from which the majority of visitors come, etc.
- Moz – shows if the donor is spammy.
You should not focus on the indicators of only one of these tools. Neither one guarantees the accuracy of the results, so it is more effective to use them in symbiosis.
Useful practices
- Check your overall donor quality score with tools like Serpstat and Ahrefs.
- Focus on the country of promotion. If it is Ukraine, the site does not need backlinks from America or Portugal. Be sure to check where the majority of visitors to the donor site come from.
- For better ranking, it is a priority to use eternal dofollow links – they are open for the transition of Google robots and further indexing.
- Inbound links should be more than outbound. A site that refers to many resources, but almost no one, gives away its authority and loses weight.
- All news sites, when publishing news with a source, specify the nofollow tag in the link. This gives a signal to search bots not to follow this link.
- More partners is better. If two sites are constantly exchanging links, it will not lead to anything.
- Constantly increase the number of links. Start with a few a month, then there should be five , ten, fifteen and more. Links disappear over time: articles are deleted, sites stop working, publications are resold, etc.
- Buying a lot of links on very authoritative domains will not work because of their cost. It is more appropriate to get more links to slightly better (from your site) ranked resources corresponding to the subject of the domain.
FAQ
What is link building in simple words?
This is the constant building up of a network of quality links to the site from other web resources.
What is link building for?
The number of backlinks from quality resources tells search engines about the authority of the web resource. That’s why link building is an important ranking method.
Why is link building important for website promotion?
There are many important aspects to promote — design, usability, content quality, etc. Link building is one of them. The site’s position in search engines depends on its quality.
