Link building guide for advanced

If you want to rank well in organic results, you need links. Google has revealed that backlinks are one of the top 3 ranking factors.

Quality backlinks increase the authority and trust of the website they link to.

Backlinks regularly obtained to multiple pages and pieces of content from the website can increase the website’s position in organic results.

Not so long ago, link building went through some darker episodes, when almost every backlink built was boring and seemed spammy. No personalized emails, no emphasis on content marketing – a little content next to the brand name was enough for link building.

So, previously, link building was more about quantity than quality. However, the term link building has started to change, taking on a different form.

New terms such as link earning, link giving, link acquisition, and relationship building have begun to appear.

Gaining connections is about building relationships with those in your industry, being part of a community and developing content ideas that are worth “sharing”.

The focus on quality, meaning and engagement has restored balance in the link building universe. However, now comes the hard part – you also need a diverse link profile.

As a result, we decided to write this link building guide to find out all the information you need, whether it includes technical notions, the importance of link building for SEO or link building strategies you could apply to your business.

So let’s not waste any more time. Good reading!

1. Fundamentals of link building

First of all, let’s start with some crucial questions when talking about link building:

•  What happens when we start link building campaigns for a website that is not SEO or UX optimized?
•  Can a website rank well in the organic results only through well-designed link building campaigns?

Even if the answers to these questions will disappoint you, you should know that, in fact, they are: Nothing and No.

Websites in Google results are becoming more and more friendly and well optimized, both from an SEO and functional point of view.

If you have an unoptimized website that is not responsive or user friendly, link building campaigns do not make much difference to its position in search engines.

So, what you need to know from the beginning is that if you find link building as a first step in SEO promotion, you are wrong.

When we talk about SEO promotion the first steps should be done On-Page, and only then Off-Page.

So, if you’re serious about SEO for your business and website, you need to start with the technical SEO actions before worrying about backlinks. Or at least do them in parallel.

It seems much more likely that a webmaster will link to your website if it is technically sound and represents a good user experience, right?

2. Regular link building actions

2.1 Quarterly link building actions

This would be a link building task list that should be done every few months:

Backlink Audit

Export a complete list of your backlinks from Google Search Console and review them manually. For websites that are irrelevant to your website or have very poor quality, Google Search Console has a disavow option. This way, you can keep only the backlinks that give you a plus and get rid of those that can drag down the quality and relevance of your website.

Update your disavow list

The disavow file should be updated periodically. This gives you the chance to remove websites or add others to the list.

Analyze competitors’ backlinks

Every 3 months, you should extract backlink data for your competitors – i.e. those who rank in the top 3 Google positions. This way you can find opportunities for your own website.

2.2 Monthly link building actions

These are the link building activities you should plan monthly:

Reviews and testimonials

Reviews and testimonials are an easy link building activity. If you are satisfied with the services/products on another website, you can provide a review with a backlink and, as a result, you too can get a backlink on that website.

Broken Link Building

It’s an old activity, but it still bears fruit – so, current. Building broken links is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get backlinks. Finding a broken link from your competitor is like finding a burrito with your name on it.

Content

As we all know, content is another crucial aspect of online promotion. However, when it comes to content, it is very important that it is quality content. It is important that when you write your content, you approach it in such a way that it is useful for both users and search engines. In other words, you need to anticipate that quality content that provides new information could be picked up by other websites – with this in mind you should write your articles.

2.3 Link building activities per weeks

Weeks 1 and 2

In SEO, it all starts with an audit. Building a link building campaign is no exception and starts with an internal SEO audit and an analysis of your competitors’ backlink profile.

Competitor analysis helps you firstly to figure out where you stand with your backlink profile compared to your competitors, and secondly, it helps you to identify new topics you could tackle.

Week 3

In the 3rd week a plan for the content should be established. Basically, what you need to do is to plan in advance the topics you want to address in your link building campaign so that you can send them for editing.

Whether you write your own articles or outsource them, it’s important to have a plan in place beforehand – it will make your work easier and more efficient.

If we address SEO agencies, the most important aspect to point out here is the communication with the client. When the plan is made, it is very important that it reaches the client and the client gives feedback on the headlines.

The same goes for the finalization of articles – customer feedback before publication is very important.

Week 4

In the 4th week, the main activity is to find opportunities:

• Potential sites where you could publish your articles
• Potential websites you could exchange links with
• Potential websites that could use the information you provide and from which you could get a quote

Week 5

If you write your own articles, it is very important to consult a specialist before publishing or submitting articles for publication. A specialist could give you constructive feedback on keywords, meta title and meta description.

If we are addressing agencies, we must again point out that in the context of link building campaigns it is very important to communicate with the client and get feedback from them before publication.

3. Why and how to approach technical SEO before building a link building campaign

When you consider building a link building campaign, you may not realize all the benefits you could have, so your plan may not reach its full potential either.

Often, business people tend to separate link building from technical SEO, which is wrong. In order to reach the full potential of a link building campaign, it is important to consider all aspects of the website’s SEO:

• Technical SEO
• Content
• Links

In fact, there are often situations where you need to address technical SEO before you think about approaching a link building campaign.

If you don’t have a technically well-optimized website, the steps you take for backlink profiling and link building campaigns may not help you much.

It’s important to make sure you have a website that is optimised for both search engines and user experience.

Through technical SEO you need to make sure that:

• The site can be easily accessed with search engine crawlers.
• The site loads quickly from both desktop and mobile devices.
• WordPress plugin implementations are done efficiently.
• There are no problems or errors with the Google Analytics code.

These 4 aspects illustrate why it is important to address the technical side of SEO before building a link building campaign.

If your site cannot be crawled or has other errors and problems, your Off-Page SEO efforts may be in vain, because your site’s performance is poor.

3.1 Make your website easily accessible with search engine crawlers

Implement HTTPS

If you have recently made the switch from HTTP to HTTPS you may not have had time to do an SEO audit of your site to identify any issues with your SSL certificate installation.

A small SEO audit, audit, even at a superficial level, could help you to start by detecting if there are any problems with the transition to HTTPS.

You must remember that when you purchase the SSL certificate it must cover all subdomains of the website.

Otherwise, there may be errors, for example: URL redirection problems.

Content on HTTP and HTTPS URLs should not be loaded at the same time

At the HTTP and HTTPS level the correct implementation is only for one of the URLs, not both.

If both pages load at the same time something is wrong with the secure version of the website.

Try testing both versions of the site in your browser. So, enter both http:// and https:// separately in your browser.

If both URLs load, two versions of your content will be displayed and duplicate URLs can cause duplicate content problems.

To make sure you don’t encounter this problem again, you have 2 options:

• Creates a complete redirection model in HTACCESS.
• Use a redirect plugin in WordPress to force redirects from http://.

If you’ve never had an audit before and need help, you can turn to a SEO agency to help you with this.

3.2 URL structure does not need to be very complex

The structure of URLs is an important aspect when doing the technical SEO for your website.

You have to be very careful about things like randomly generating dynamic parameters that are indexed and URLs that are not easily accessible. These are important factors as they can lead to problems that could affect the performance of your website.

3.2.1 URLs must be friendly

Some website owners prefer to let URLs create themselves automatically based on content.

However, this can damage the performance of websites.

The reason is that automatically generated URLs can follow certain formats, none of which are very user-friendly.

For example:

content/category/date/hour/parameters
content/date/hour/keyword
content/date/hour/sir-of-numbers

None of the formats mentioned seem too friendly, do they?

The most important reason to have optimized and friendly URLs is that the URL communicates some of the content that exists on the page.

Behind the URL there is a great deal of user intent, and in this age of technological evolution and SEO development, the most important aspect is accessibility.

The easier URLs are to read, the better for:

Search engines can use URLs to determine what type of users resonate with those URLs and what type of users do not.
When users see a URL in search engine results, they are more likely to click on it if it is shorter and better represents the content of the page. In short: think about users’ search intent and have already secured a new customer.
SEO audit – when performing an SEO audit, we focus on the quality of the URLs.

Many sites even now use confusing or outdated URL structures, leading to poor user engagement.

Identifying and optimizing URLs that are not friendly can generate higher user engagement on your website.

3.2.2 Duplicate URLs

An important aspect of technical SEO before any link building campaign is built is the elimination of duplicate URLs.

When talking about duplicate content issues, there are 3 big problems:

• Content that is significantly duplicated in several sections of the site.
• Content copied to your website from other websites or vice versa.
• Duplicate URLs

3.2.3 Avoid using dynamic parameters

Although dynamic parameters are not, in themselves, an SEO issue, if you can’t manage their creation, it can become a significant problem later on.

The parameters are used for the following purposes:

Follow
Reordering
Filter
Identify
Page
Search
Translation

Once you conclude that the dynamic URL parameters are actually causing the problem, you need to be careful how you handle the situation.

You need to bring the dynamic parameters to a manageable level, to avoid duplicate content problems.

3.2 Make sure you have a responsive and fast website

There can be a lot of problems with the site if it is not written correctly.

These errors can result from div tags leading to the wrong layout. Code with bad syntax can make certain elements of the page disappear and make it difficult to manage the site.

Because of poorly written code, cross-platform compatibility and website speed can be affected, resulting in very poor performance and long-term user disengagement.

This is an issue that needs to be considered before thinking about your link building strategy and plans.

Many of these technical SEO issues boil down to a poorly managed and coded site.

The more you address technical SEO issues from the start, the more likely you are to increase the effectiveness of your link building campaigns.

A properly optimized website will attract the attention of the users who enter your website, even making them spend more time on the site.

4. Ways to build link building campaigns through content marketing

We have to admit that getting backlinks is quite difficult and it is getting harder and harder.

However, backlink profile is one of the top 3 ranking factors for Google. If you want to rank higher than your competitors, you need a great backlink profile.

However, sometimes it’s hard to know where to focus your efforts, especially if link building campaigns become more complex.

4.2 It’s time for content marketing

Regardless of the industry, for those running SEO campaigns the best approach to getting backlinks is content marketing.

However, content marketing can refer to many things. For some it can mean publishing advertorials, for others it means case studies, and for others content marketing can be about infographics.

What’s the good news?

You can approach content marketing in a lot of different ways in terms of building effective link building campaigns.

Depending on the industry, SEO specialists recommend different ways to approach content marketing.

4.2 Case studies

If you do good work in your field, why not share it with others?

Many people like to hear how their peers do their jobs and there is a lot to be learned from a well-designed case study.

Once you start sharing a case study (well put together, as mentioned above) on social media, you are quite likely to attract the attention of blogs that will want to use the information from it.

Also, once you have concrete material, you can go straight to the target – namely, websites of publications that target this kind of content.

4.3 Expert contributions

Every business has at least one expert who could help create relevant and informative content. Many businesses have even more than one expert to call on.

Experts are one of the most valuable assets that can be used in content marketing.
Marketers and online marketing agencies often choose the perspective of infographics or images and often the usefulness of experts is forgotten – content writers can use information directly from the source to create the most original content.

4.4 Opinions of several people in the field

We talked about how important the contribution of a single expert would be. But what about the contribution of several experts in the niche?

If you can get 10, 15, 20 experts to share their niche advice and opinions with the public, there’s a good chance they’ll give you a backlink – which will help both you and them.

4.5 Guidelines

Educational guides have been and will continue to be a top content, especially for link building campaigns.

People are interested in how they can undertake certain actions (such as promotion) and will be looking for a comprehensive guide that includes all the information that could help them.

Whether we’re talking about content on your website that might attract the attention of those in your niche and inspire them by giving you a reference on your own blog or whether we’re talking about content posted on a paid backlink – the guides will help you increase your traffic and build your image in your industry.

How many times to write and publish such content?
Monthly! It’s very important that once you start content marketing and link building campaigns to be consistent – that way you will always evolve and the results will keep coming.

After how long will the results be seen?
As a rule, results appear after 2 months. Depending on your efforts, it can take up to 6 months. However, the results will be seen, even if later.

What tools could you use to monitor the performance of your link building campaigns and content marketing activities?
Well, the most important tool you should use constantly, no matter what steps you take in promoting and SEO optimization is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is one of the top tools when it comes to monitoring the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. You can also use Google Trends to find potential topics to tackle.