Want to attract organic traffic and increase your online notoriety?
Have you started an SEO campaign and the results are slow in coming?
If you have completed the relevant keyword analysis for the business and solved the problems at the site level (SEO onpage) it’s time to focus on a link building campaign.
1. What is link building and why is it important?
Maybe the term link building is completely foreign to you or maybe you are already familiar with this concept.
However, our opinion is that no matter what knowledge you have about link building and the influence it can have on your website, you will find at least some useful information in this article.
What you need to know from the start of this guide is that link building has never been more important than it is now.
Imagine you have a website that is in the business of selling household appliances. You compete with another supplier of household appliances. The competitor is active in terms of getting backlinks, while you are not.
Which of you do you think is more likely to increase its position in search engines?
Of course, Google considers many factors, but the number and quality of backlinks is one of the top 3 Google ranking factors.
So, since Google places so much importance on backlinks, without effective link building campaigns, you are unlikely to rise in search engine results.
If you don’t grow in results, it will be quite hard to increase your website traffic and, therefore, the number of customers.
So, if you want to grow your business online and attract more potential customers, it is very important to know what a link building campaign is and how it can be built as effectively as possible.
Link building definition
The definition is quite simple. Link building is the process of obtaining hyperlinks from other websites to your own website.
What is a hyperlink? Usually just called “link”, it represents a way by which users can navigate to other pages on the site or outside it. For links that refer to another website, SEO specialists use the name backlink.
There are many complex and difficult issues when talking about SEO promotion, but SEO specialists tend to agree that link building is one of the most difficult parts of their work in online promotion.
Considering the fact that it is such a complex action and, at the same time, so important for Google, it goes without saying that if you master the art of link building campaigns, you significantly increase your chances of ranking ahead of your competitors.
2. Why is link building important for SEO?
2.1 Anatomy of a hyperlink
To understand why link building is important, it is important to first understand the basics of how a link is created, how search engines view links and what can be interpreted from them.
- The beginning of the link tag – called the anchor tag, opens the link tag and indicates to search engines that a link to another website or page on the site is to be inserted.
- Send link location – “href” means “send to hyperlink”, and the text in quotes indicates the URL to which the link goes. This does not always have to be a web page; it could be the address of an image or a file to download. Occasionally, you’ll see something other than a URL starting with a # sign. These are local links, which take you to another section of the page you are already on.
- Anchor text – this is the text that users see on the page and that they have to click on if they want to open the link. The text is usually formatted in some way to make it stand out, often in blue and/or underlined, signaling to users that it is a clickable link.
- Closing link tag: This indicates the end of the link tag to search engines.
2.2 What do these links mean for search engines?
There are two basic ways search engines use links, often referred to as backlinks:
- To discover new websites;
- To determine how well a page should rank in their results;
Once search engines have crawled the web pages on a site, they can extract the content of those pages and add it to their indexes.
In this way, search engines can decide how relevant a page is and whether it is of high quality. In other words, whether it deserves to rank well for relevant keywords (Google has created a short video to explain this process).
When deciding this, search engines don’t just focus on the content of the page; they also focus on the number and quality of backlinks that link to that page.
In general, the higher the quality of your backlinks, the more likely it is that your position in Google results will increase.
Links have been considered a ranking factor ever since Google began to dominate the search engine market in the late 1990s.
2.3 About PageRank
One of Google’s founders, Larry Page, invented PageRank, used in Google to measure the quality of a page based in part on the number of links pointing to it. This value was then used as part of the overall ranking algorithm and became a powerful signal because it was a very good way to determine the quality of a page.
(source: wikipedia.ro)
It was so effective because it was based on the idea that a link could be seen as a vote of confidence in a page – because you wouldn’t link to that page if it wasn’t worth it, would you?
The theory is that when someone links to another web page, they are effectively saying that page is a good resource. Otherwise, they wouldn’t link to it, in the same way that you wouldn’t refer a friend to a restaurant you disliked.
However, after the advent of PageRank, SEO specialists soon discovered how to manipulate the numbers in their favour.
As a result, Google has actively started looking for ways to discover websites that manipulate search results and has started launching regular updates specifically aimed at filtering out sites that do not deserve to rank.
This has also led to the fact that Google has begun to eliminate a number of backlink-getting techniques that were previously considered to be good, for example, getting a backlink by registering your site on web directories.
As I said, this was a technique that Google recommended at one point, but as many SEO specialists overused it, Google stopped finding as much value in this type of backlinks.
2.3.1 Google Penalties?
What’s more, Google has started actively penalising websites that use such techniques to climb the results.
Regular Penguin updates are a good example of how Google has penalized and still penalizes websites that misuse backlinks from web directories.
2.4 About the Google algorithm
We don’t know the full algorithm that Google uses to determine which websites deserve to climb to the top of the search results – it’s sort of Google’s secret recipe.
However, the general consensus in the SEO community is that backlinks obtained from link building campaigns play a crucial role in a website’s position in the results.
After all the analysis and research done by SEO specialists over the years, we can say that if all other factors are equal for top ranking websites, the volume and quality of backlinks will make the difference.
However, with recent moves from Google and the latest updates, theories have emerged that social media activities add more value to the website than backlinks do.
And yet, at the moment there is no doubt that if you carry out link building campaigns with quality backlinks to your website, they will help you rise in Google results and bring more traffic to your site.
I’ve mentioned “quality” a few times before and there’s a good reason – the emphasis on quality is increasing as Google becomes more and more careful about filtering out low quality links.
As you can see in the image above, OptinMonster emphasizes the authority and quality of backlinks respectively.
This has a direct impact on SEO specialists, as they need to ensure that their link building strategies focus primarily on the quality of backlinks they can get and not just on volume.
2.5 What you need to know about nofollow
There is an attribute that can sometimes be applied to certain links, namely the “nofollow” attribute. If you look at the source link code, you can see the differences between a nofollow link and a dofollow link:
Example of a dofollow backlink:
Example of a nofollow backlink:
What these tags actually do is tell Google to disregard that link because it is not trustworthy. Therefore, getting nofollow backlinks will not influence your site’s position in search engines very much.
The main reason why a site might use nofollow is usually because that site does not have full control over the links that are added to its pages.
In other words, those websites don’t want to give a vote of confidence when they are not sure that those websites really deserve a vote of confidence.
This is more common than you might expect.
2.5.1 The most common situations are:
• Blog Comments;
• Forums;
• Editable Wiki Pages;
• Yahoo! Answers;
Any user can freely add backlinks to their site in each of these websites and, because of their volume, it is not very practical for each individual link to be moderated.
So, to prevent spammers and spammy links from taking advantage of a site’s PageRank, the site will often choose to apply the nofollow attribute to all links posted by other users.
In terms of your SEO work, you should know that links that have the nofollow attribute inserted probably won’t help you much in trying to rise in Google results – and in no way will a nofollow backlink be worth as much as a dofollow one.
However, there are certain situations where we can say that nofollow links have their value. After all, Google users do not notice whether a link is dofollow or not and can click on it to visit it. So, a nofollow link could still attract relevant traffic to your website.
3. The importance of link building campaigns for business
As we have discussed, backlinks are a very important signal that search engines use to determine rankings. So, we know that a higher number of high quality backlinks pointing to your website can significantly increase your chances of ranking well.
However, there are other benefits that link building campaigns bring to your business – some less obvious, but still worth considering:
3.1 Link building campaigns build “relationships”
As Brian Dean of Backlinko said:
Link building campaigns can often involve access to other relevant websites and blogs in your industry. Even getting a backlink can help you get in touch with someone in your niche.
What’s even better is that if you write relevant content and provide relevant information, it’s very likely that a website in the same industry will pick up on some of the information and give you a vote of confidence.
Building long-term relationships with key influencers in your industry is an extremely important benefit. These relationships can mean that your business becomes highly valued and trusted.
This in itself is valuable, even if you forget for a moment about link building, because you create authentic online presences that really advocate for your business.
3.2 Through link building you get referral traffic
We’ve discussed the impact of backlinks on your position in Google results, but what about the impact of links on traffic? A good backlink from a highly visited website can, of course, also lead to increased traffic.
If it’s a relevant website, it’s likely that traffic will be relevant and could lead to increased sales. In this situation, the backlink not only brings a plus in terms of SEO strategy, but also in terms of customers.
If you want to do a link building campaign for your business and monitor the effects it has on your business, but you don’t have time for such an action, you can call an SEO agency. Among SEO services offered by FivePlus online marketing agency include link building campaigns.
3.3 Link building and brand image
Quality link building can help you build your brand image and establish your authority in your niche. There are some link building techniques (such as content creation) that can show people your company’s expertise – this can go a long way to building and strengthening your brand image.
For example, if you create content based on industry data and publish it, you will significantly increase your chances of getting noticed in your industry.
4. Conclusion
As we have discussed, link building campaigns have historically been an extremely important factor for Google. This hasn’t changed, and the number and quality of backlinks that link to your website is still an extremely important factor for your website’s position in search engines.
Given the benefits I’ve just outlined, there’s no doubt about it – it’s very important for your business and your online presence to take the time to build link building campaigns.
Not only will you increase your position in Google, but you will attract more traffic to your website and have a much better chance of increasing your sales.
Have we convinced you to build your first link building campaign, but you don’t want to do it yourself? Enter the contact with our specialists and let us help you!