Create a Powerful Link Building Campaign is Part 1 of a 3-Part Blog Series. The purpose of this series is to provide you with more information on link building and to walk you through the steps necessary to launch a successful campaign.
In this first installment of a multipart series, we’ll discuss the basics of link building, including its definition, process, and value.
Link building
Getting other webmasters, journalists, and bloggers to feature a “link” (also called a hyperlink or backlink) on their website that leads to your webpage is the primary purpose of link building. (also called a linkable asset).
Building links isn’t supposed to be an excuse to flood the web with useless links. The goal of link building is to increase traffic to your website so that search engines will rank your content higher.
You need to ask these questions before reaching out to a website in hopes of securing a backlink:
How would our contributions improve this online piece?
Is this a page worth spending time linking to? (Can I rely on this website? Does it include reliable information?)
Is it reasonable to pitch our material on this article?
Link building is a good idea if you can demonstrate that their website or page is relevant and triggers the essential “E-A-T” signals.
The letters E.A.T. stand for “expertise,” “authority,” and “trustworthiness,” respectively.
What is the process of link building?
Getting other websites to link back to yours is how link building actually works. The procedure has two stages. The first step is to provide your website with helpful content that other people will want to share and link back to. Second, you’ll need to reach out to other websites and ask them to link to your material. The second section amounts to an impersonal favour request. That’s why it’s crucial to design your link building initiatives in a way that highlights the benefits to the webmaster.
Why Do We Need to Build Links?
The purpose of link building is to increase the number of high-quality backlinks pointing to your site, which in turn increases its “link juice” (also known as link equity or authority). Your website’s SEO will benefit from these links in the long run. (SERPs). Even though there are many factors that contribute to a site’s position in the search engine results pages (SERPs), links are among the most important. Other key indicators of ranking are:
Content
Put forth excellent material that readers will enjoy. The content here needs to be SEO-optimized with appropriate keywords and page structure so that Google (and other search engines) can read it and understand it. (and the site as a whole).
Accessibility and Usability on Mobile Devices (UX)
More people are searching on their phones than on their computers, thus it’s crucial that your site is optimised for mobile use. (i.e., compatible with smartphones). Users may have trouble accessing and navigating your site on mobile devices if it is not optimised for mobile use. Google reports that 94% of smartphone owners look up local information via their devices, with 77% of those searches happening at home or at the office. This suggests that even if these people have access to desktop computers, they still prefer to conduct their searches via their mobile devices.
When designing a mobile-friendly website, Google recommends paying special attention to these three areas:
Facilitate the actions your visitors wish to take, be it perusing an article, viewing a map, or making a purchase.
Check how simple it is for mobile users to accomplish goals on your site.
Take use of responsive web design to have a single URL and code base for both mobile and desktop viewing.
Websites that are mobile-friendly that put the needs of mobile users first will rank higher in search engine results pages.
On-Page Optimization (SEO) Techniques
Making your site easily crawlable is the primary focus of technical SEO. All technical barriers have been removed, making it easy for search engine spiders to index all of your site’s pages.
For what reasons should you plan your link-building strategy carefully?
When it comes to link building, the basic rule of thumb is that links are equivalent to votes. Whoever receives the most votes is likely to be ranked highest. The idea of quality over quantity underlies our use of the word “strongest.” Adding a thousand connections to your domain from a brand new website with no rankings or traffic will have little to no effect on your search engine results since Google will penalise you for engaging in unethical link building.
One link from a blogger site with a DA of 30 is fantastic, two links are fine, but beyond that, Google starts to devalue these backlinks because of the law of diminishing returns.
However, the quality of the backlinks is still a consideration, and so we would still want at least five of them to come from a reputable source like the New York Times. When a very credible and authoritative source like The New York Times chooses to link to one of our articles, it sends a strong E-A-T signal to Google, proving that even if we’re getting a lot of links from this domain, they’re all pertinent to the story.
In a nutshell, your site’s credibility and authority will grow over time provided you maintain its compliance with the E-A-T criteria.
