Link Building 101: Building High-Quality Backlinks for SEO

Building high-quality backlinks is a crucial part of SEO, and it's not just about getting as many links as possible. You want links from websites that are relevant to your niche and have a good reputation.

A good starting point is to identify your target audience and understand what they're interested in. This will help you create content that resonates with them and increases the chances of getting links from relevant websites. For example, if you're running a pet store, you'll want to focus on pet-related topics.

Guest blogging is a popular link building strategy, but it's not just about writing a guest post and expecting a link. You need to find a high-quality blog that aligns with your niche and has a good following. Research shows that guest blogging can increase your website's traffic by 38% and improve your SEO rankings.

Quality over quantity is key when it comes to link building. Focus on getting a few high-quality links from authoritative websites rather than trying to get as many low-quality links as possible. This will not only improve your SEO rankings but also increase your website's credibility.

Link building is an SEO tactic that involves getting other websites to link to your website, making search engines like Google view it as more authoritative and rank it higher in unpaid search results.

Google treats certain kinds of links from other sites, backlinks, like endorsements, and the higher the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your site, the more trustworthy it can seem.

Google's search algorithm takes a strong backlink profile into account when determining whether and how high to include a site in relevant search results.

8 of the top 20 ranking factors that Google considers relate to backlinks, according to a study.

Acquiring backlinks naturally over time is possible, but proactively building links can help you gain or maintain a competitive edge in search.

Links are like votes, telling Google that your page is somehow important, which is essentially Google's PageRank algorithm in a nutshell.

The more high-quality backlinks a page has, the higher it tends to rank in Google.

Links aren't the only ranking signal that Google uses, but they have a very direct influence on your search rankings.

Google's PageRank Algorithm changed the game by looking at how many people linked to a page, and nearly 20 years later, links are still the best way to determine the quality of a webpage.

Google now focuses on link quality, not just link quantity, thanks to updates like Google Penguin.

Backlinks remain Google's go-to ranking signal, and earning links from authoritative websites is crucial for establishing authority and outranking other sites.

Link building strategies can be categorized into four fundamental ways: adding links, asking for links, buying links, and earning links. These methods are often used by digital marketers and business owners to improve their website's reputation in search engines and readers.

There are many different link building tactics and strategies out there, but some are more effective than others. According to our observations, some popular methods that tend to work well for most campaigns include expert guest posting, passive PR, and resource links.

Here are the four fundamental ways to build links, broken down into simple steps:

These methods can be used individually or in combination to achieve your link building goals.

Building a good link profile is crucial for success in link building. Focus on building white hat links to avoid Penguin penalties.

One mistake to avoid is building links with exact match anchor text, as this can raise red flags with Google.

Building shady links, regardless of anchor text, is also a no-go. You can dodge Penguin by minimizing exact match anchor text or by avoiding shady links altogether.

Another mistake is getting a manual penalty from Google. An algorithm can spot a website that's potentially gaming the system and bubble it up for a manual review.

To avoid a manual penalty, keep your link profile squeaky clean. You can recover from a manual penalty by disavowing links and filing a reconsideration request.

First-time link builders often make the mistake of wasting time on low-performing campaigns. This can delay your professional growth and reduce campaign performance.

Most popular link building strategies fall into one of these four buckets. Adding links involves manually adding your link to another website, while Asking for links involves sending emails to website owners and asking them to link to you. Buying links is similar, but you offer compensation in exchange for the link. Earning links, on the other hand, involves creating something so noteworthy that people would link to it naturally.

You can also hire a link builder or agency to do the work for you, but it's still essential to have some basic knowledge of how link building is done. This way, you can ensure the person you hired is doing a good job.

There are many different link building tactics and strategies out there, but some work better than others. According to our observations, the following methods tend to work well today:

Here are some popular methods that tend to work well for most campaigns:

Having a basic understanding of link building strategies can help you see if the person you hired is doing a good job or not.

Authority plays a crucial role in link building, and it's essential to understand how it works. The more authoritative the referring site, the more valuable the backlink. A backlink from a well-known site like bbc.co.uk will have a bigger impact on your SEO than one from an unknown blogger.

Semrush measures site authoritativeness with a metric called Authority Score, which is on a scale out of 100. It considers three main factors: link power, organic traffic, and natural profile.

A high Authority Score doesn't mean you should only focus on getting links from high-authority sites. A balanced backlink profile is what you're aiming for, which includes a mix of links from high-authority and low-authority sites.

The authority of the page linking to you matters more than any other factor. A link from an authoritative page can pass more authority (or PageRank) to your site. You can check a proxy indicator of PageRank, called PageRating, using Semrush.

A link's quality is also determined by a domain's sitewide authority. A link from a site like NYTimes.com will have a bigger impact than a link from a no-name blogger. You can check a site's Authority Score using Semrush.

There are several website authority metrics, including Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) and Moz's Domain Authority (DA). You can use Ahrefs' free Website Authority Checker tool to check the Domain Rating metric of any website.

The authority of the actual page that is linking to you is also important. It's calculated by Google with the help of the PageRank algorithm, which is based on the premise that pages with more backlinks (and better ones) of their own cast a stronger "vote."

Link building is a lot of work, but having some basic knowledge of how it's done can be super useful. You can learn about the four fundamental ways to build links: Adding links, Asking for links, Buying links, and Earning links.

Most popular link building strategies fall into one of these four buckets, and creating high-quality content that people want to link to is a key part of earning links. According to our observations, some link building tactics and strategies work really well today, while others no longer work and will just waste your time.

Here are some popular methods that tend to work well for most campaigns:

These types of content can help you earn links naturally, without having to ask for them.

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Building links is a crucial part of SEO, and there are many effective tactics to try. According to Semrush, nine of the most effective link building tactics include:

These tactics can help you build high-quality links that improve your SEO and drive more traffic to your website.

Replicating your competitor's backlinks is a great way to get started with link building. You can study who links to your competitor's homepage and see if they might be open to linking to you too.

For example, the article mentions that Ahrefs is mentioned alongside other marketing tools on certain pages that link to their homepage. This shows that asking to be mentioned alongside your competitors is a fair request.

Identify the pages on your competitor's website that have the most links. The article suggests using a report called "Best by links" to find this information. According to the article, Ahrefs' homepage, free tools, blog, and research studies are the top pages that bring in links.

Create similar resources on your own website to attract links. The article suggests that the free tools and research studies on Ahrefs' website are popular for attracting links, so you can create similar resources on your own website.

Set up a backlink alert to get notified whenever your competitors get new links. This way, you can immediately reach out to whoever linked to them and try to get yourself added to the same page.

Anchor text is the clickable text section of a link, and Google uses it as a ranking signal. This means that the words in the anchor text help Google understand what the linked page is about and what keywords it deserves to rank for.

Google ignores links with generic anchor text like "click here" or "learn more", as they give no useful context. Instead, descriptive anchor text like "basketball shoes" is more helpful. However, focus on making anchor text read naturally, rather than optimizing it solely for search engines.

If you're building links, it's better to let the author of the linking page decide how they want to reference your page, rather than trying to control the anchor text. This can help avoid penalties from Google for manipulating your site's ranking.

Anchor text is the clickable text section of a link. Google uses anchor text as a ranking signal, which helps them understand what the linked page is about.

Anchor text should be descriptive and relevant, without being spammy. If dozens of links point to a page with a variation of a word or phrase, the page has a higher likelihood of ranking well for those types of phrases.

The quality of anchor text is more important than its quantity. A single link with descriptive anchor text can be more valuable than multiple links with generic anchor text. For example, a backlink with the anchor text "basketball shoes" clearly indicates what the linked page is about.

Here are some key characteristics of good anchor text:

On the other hand, generic anchor text like "click here" gives no useful context and can be considered spammy. Google may consider your site to be engaging in spammy link building practices if you focus too much on optimizing anchor text for search engines, not users.

In fact, Google's original PageRank patent talks about using anchor text to improve search quality. So, it's essential to use anchor text that is descriptive and relevant, without being spammy.

NoFollow, Sponsored, and UGC Attributes are special tags that can be added to links to tell search engines not to count them as endorsements. These attributes can be used to identify links that were paid for or created by the linked site.

The rel="nofollow" attribute is used to identify links that the publisher doesn't want to endorse. Google is likely to respect the publisher's wishes and not pass ranking strength to the linked page.

The rel="sponsored" attribute is used to identify links that were paid for by the linked site. Google ignores these links because they aren't genuine endorsements.

The rel="ugc" attribute is used to identify links that were placed by users, such as in comments sections. Google ignores them because they're too easy to manipulate.

Here's a quick overview of these attributes:

You can see any site's ratio of nofollow to follow links with the Backlink Analytics tool. Just scroll to the "Link Attributes" chart in the "Overview" report.

Building high-quality links requires a solid understanding of the four fundamental ways to build links. These include adding links, asking for links, buying links, and earning links.

Most popular link building strategies fall into one of these four buckets. Adding links involves manually adding your link to another website, while asking for links requires sending emails to owners of relevant websites and asking them to link to you.

Buying links is similar, but you offer them money or other compensation. Earning links, on the other hand, refers to creating and promoting something so noteworthy that people would link to it naturally.

You can also hire an experienced link builder or agency to do it all for you, but it's still useful to have some basic knowledge of how link building is done.

Here are the four fundamental ways to build links:

These methods can be used in combination to create a link building strategy that matches your unique goals.

Conducting email outreach is a crucial step in link building. It's the process of reaching out to websites to persuade them to give you a backlink.

To find prospects to reach out to, use tools like Semrush's Link Building Tool. Open the tool, click "Create project", and enter your domain to get started.

You can reject prospects that aren't relevant or that you don't want to reach out to. Simply click the trash can icon next to their name.

For prospects you do want to reach out to, click the "To In Progress" button to add them to the "In Progress" tab. From there, you can contact them via a connected email account.

Here are some key things to consider when customizing your emails:

When it comes to finding the right email address, you can use tools like Hunter.io or VoilaNorbert. Hunter.io is great for small sites and one-person blogs, while VoilaNorbert is better for larger sites.

Once you've found the right email address, you can use email templates that are best suited for the technique you're using. For example, a guest posting strategy can use a standard guest posting template.

Remember to keep track of your email outreach efforts and monitor the status of your emails. This will help you see whether your email was sent, received, opened, or replied to.

Publishing content isn't enough to land you links, as it turns out certain types of content work best for link building.

Content promotion is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of link building, but letting people know about your content and convincing them to link to you is what's really going to move the needle.

To get world-class links, you need to promote your content effectively. According to our study, 8 of the top 20 ranking factors relate to backlinks, so it's essential to get links from high-quality websites.

Here are the 3 types of content promotion tactics that tend to generate the most links:

Creating more work is one of the most effective marketing techniques of all, as Ryan Holiday said in his book "Perennial Seller". That's why many SEOs claim that they never proactively build links, they just focus on doing notable "link-worthy" stuff on their websites and promoting that work to relevant audiences.

To establish authority, you need to earn links from authoritative websites, build your brand, and nurture an audience who will help amplify your content.

It's essential to keep track of your link building efforts to see what's working and what's not. Running monthly link building audits can help you stay on top of earned links, lost links, and overall backlink quality.

Use Semrush's Backlink Audit tool to do this. You can set up a recrawl schedule to run automatically every month.

Monitoring your site's Authority Score is also crucial. This score should increase as your backlink profile strengthens, but even small increases can represent a lot of work and links.

Measuring the returns on your link building investment is key to sustaining quality backlink growth over time. This means evaluating the initial performance with a count of quality links obtained from influential content creators.

You can also track the growth of total links to your site or page using Moz's Link Explorer. This tool can help you see month-over-month link growth for a specific URL, root domain, subdomain, or page.

Evaluating the messaging and how contacts are responding or not responding is also important when analyzing link building efforts.

Link building is all about getting other websites to link back to yours, and there are many tools and resources that can help.

Ahrefs is a popular tool for finding link building opportunities, it has a database of over 12 trillion web pages and can help you identify potential backlinks.

Moz's Link Explorer is another powerful tool that can help you find and analyze backlinks, it can also help you identify potential link building opportunities.

SEMrush's Backlink Analytics tool can help you track your backlinks and identify areas for improvement, it also provides recommendations for acquiring new backlinks.

Ubersuggest is a free tool that can help you find keywords and content ideas, it can also help you identify potential link building opportunities.

Ahrefs' Content Gap tool can help you identify gaps in your content and opportunities for link building, it can also help you identify potential competitors.

Moz's Keyword Explorer can help you find keywords and content ideas, it can also help you identify potential link building opportunities.

SEMrush's Technical SEO Audit tool can help you identify technical issues on your website that may be preventing you from getting backlinks, it also provides recommendations for fixing these issues.

I've published a visual about Google CTR on my site that's been linked to dozens of times, with many of these links coming from authoritative sites in the marketing niche. This is a testament to the power of creating visual assets.

A good chunk of these links (I'd estimate 75%) were created because I presented the info as a visual. Lots of my links came from people directly posting my visual on their site and linking back to me as the source.

Some of my competitors, like Julie Adams' blog Our Beautiful Planet, have struggled with link building. However, Julie was able to boost her organic traffic by a legit 194.1% using The Skyscraper Technique and email outreach.

The Skyscraper Technique is successful because it's just as much about building relationships as it is about building links. People won't link to your content unless they know it exists, and they won't know it exists unless you tell them about it.

I've also seen the effectiveness of the broken link building campaign, where I used search strings to find pages with lots of outbound links and then emailed the person in charge to give them a heads up about broken links.

To create a solid SEO strategy, you need to establish authority by earning links from trustworthy websites. This can be done by building your brand, nurturing an audience, and creating quality content that search engines can understand.

Google has confirmed that links and quality content are two of the three most important ranking factors for SEO. This means that having a link building strategy in place is crucial for improving your website's reputation in search engines.

A link building strategy is a plan to secure links as a consequence of marketing your content. It's a three-part plan consisting of analysis, guiding policy, and steps to execute the strategy.

To begin, you need to choose a method that helps you get links fast. Three effective methods include expert guest posting, passive PR, and resource links. These methods show how content creators in your industry will respond to your message.

Here are some key questions to ask yourself when developing your link building strategy:

Answering these questions will help you refine your messaging and understand the wants and needs of the content creators in your specific niche.