Link Building: What an SEO Specialist Needs to Know

Recently, many SEO specialists have thought about expanding the geography of their clients. To work successfully with Google, you can’t do without a strong knowledge of link building. We collected ideas on what links will be relevant in 2021, what an SEO specialist needs to know to work productively with links, and what link building methods they should use.

What Is Link Building?

Link building is the process of getting external links to a website using a variety of methods, from crowd marketing and press releases to outreach and multi-level links. This allows you to improve your site’s position in SERP and get more organic traffic. You could hire the help of a link building agency for this task.

For an SEO specialist, knowledge of link building is a prerequisite for professional growth. In many companies, the experience of building a link profile makes it possible for an SEO specialist to apply for a higher salary and job position. In this regard, we don’t mean using only the check my links plugin, but understanding the theory and using it in practice. So, let’s find out what the experts have to say about link building.

What Links Will Be Relevant in 2021?

Traditionally, anchor links from powerful thematic sites will work best. But there are not so many such sites, and it is expensive to put links there, and it is difficult to do this quickly. Besides, the risk of falling under the search engine filter is growing. Therefore, secondary donors will still be relevant: crowd, multi-level links, non-anchor publications.

In the coming years, the following trend in link building will be relevant: the more difficult it is to get a link from a site, the more efficiently it will work. With the right approach, any link acquisition method works.

Methods such as outreach, blogs, redirects, scholarships, donations, press releases, as well as links from educational (.edu) and governmental (.gov) sites. Safe, natural, authoritative are the main characteristics of links that will always be relevant.

The Value of Links for Search Engines

There are two main reasons why links are important for search engines:

1. To search for new web pages.
2. To help determine the place of the page in the search results. Once the search engines have indexed the pages, they can extract the content from those pages and add it to their indexes. Thus, search engines conclude about the quality of the page and whether it deserves a place in the search results for certain queries.

However, search engines pay attention not only to the content but also to the number of links leading to this page, as well as their quality. In other words, the more quality resources refer to your website, the more likely you will raise your site’s position in SERP.

Links as a ranking factor is what allowed Google to grab the biggest share of the market in the late 1990s. Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, invented PageRank, which Google used to determine the quality of pages, so the number of links leading to the site was taken into account. Later, such a metric turned into a powerful signal and has already become widely used as one of the components of the general search algorithm. This method was a fairly reliable way to determine page quality.

Later on, SEO specialists found a way to manipulate PageRank and search results with keywords. This is the reason why Google changed its attitude to links in terms of SERP, so now most attention is paid to authoritative organic links. In this context, the link bait technique is exactly what is needed.

What Is Link Baiting and How to Use It?

Link baiting is a promotion method based on creating and distributing backlinks to a web resource on the initiative of Internet users. The marketers use the content as bait to attract users, so these users are motivated to share links on the material that they consider valuable. You can find some link baiting examples by following the link.

A link baiting method is an effective tool for website and online stores’ promotion. It can appear in the following forms:

•  Product reviews;
•  Online tests and various checks;
•  Free expert advice;
•  Convenient services and video materials;
•  E-books;
•  Free software.

Link baiting is widely used on social media, blogs, groups, so the post instantly spreads across the network, increasing the website traffic. Link baiting is all about getting natural links, i.e., the links that are placed voluntarily because people like the content and want to share it.

In the SEO community, there are a lot of controversial opinions regarding link baiting techniques. For example, there is a category of people who have a very negative attitude to it, but there are those who consider it as another method of promotion and even compare link baiting with spam. Meanwhile, many people still believe that that link baiting is an excellent panacea.

How Can Link Building Help Your Business?

Increasing the volume of quality links that link to your site significantly increases your chances of getting a better position in search results. However, there are other, less obvious benefits of link building for your business:

1. Building Relationships

Link building often provides coverage to other industry-specific sites and blogs. The main goal of it is to get a link, but it also helps build long-term relationships with key players in a specific industry.

2. Referral Traffic

A good link from a reputable site can also lead to more traffic. In this situation, the link is valuable not only in terms of SEO but also in terms of customer engagement. A good example of this is the so-called guest blogging. Michael Elsberg explained how valuable a guest post can be in his Forbes article.

3. Brand Building

Advances in link building can help a brand build credibility in a specific niche. For example, you can demonstrate the competence of your company through target audience content. Creating content that is based on data from a particular industry is an opportunity to gain visibility in a specific area of ​​business.

Now it is time to draft your link-building strategy. Good luck!

Link Building concept -DepositPhotos