So you’ve heard about link building and how it is an effective way of boosting your small business’s visibility online. But the problem is that everything is always changing in the world of SEO, and it is a full time job trying to keep up on every digital marketing trend.
Despite these changes, some things are consistent within link building. Once you have these techniques mastered, you’ll be on your way to building a quality website and can easily adapt to the trends.
Here’s everything you need to know about the basics of link building and creating a diverse backlink profile.
What exactly is link building?
Simply put, link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from another website that link to your own. Link building is important, and it is considered one of the most crucial elements to a good SEO strategy.
The term “building a diverse backlink profile” means working on both the number of links you have on your website linking to other sites, and the number of links on other websites linking to yours.
Not all links are the same
Domain rating
The value of a link is determined by their domain rating (DR). This rating scale is from 0-100, and is exponential, meaning that the range from 20-30 is not nearly as powerful or influential as that of 80-90. A website’s domain rating is compiled from a bunch of different factors from their own backlink profile to the content on their website, and the higher the domain rating, the stronger the website is.
Link juice
When a link connects to a website, it passes what is known in the digital marketing world as link juice. Stronger websites — i.e websites with higher domain ratings — pass more link juice to the websites they link to, which in return tells Google crawlers that your website is not only authoritative but a relevant resource.
Relevancy
Building links isn’t as simple as getting a bunch of websites with high domain ratings to link to you. In fact, Google crawlers expect to see various websites with a wide array of domain ratings link to you. Too many websites of one range, such as a bunch of websites in the 70s, can look spammy and may even tell the bots the backlink was purchased.
Additionally, you will need to have websites link to you that are relevant to your industry or niche, or else they will look not only confusing to your readers but fishy to the Googlebots. For example, a plumber wouldn’t want a hair salon to link to them, as they are not relevant to each other!
How to build those links
Unfortunately, there is not one-size-fits-all answer to building links. However, some tips and tricks can help you pick the best links out and appeal to other website owners.
- Research your competitors. Include all businesses in your geographical and surrounding locations, and make sure to check out social media as well.
- Create a really cool piece of content. If you want others to link to your website, you’ll need to draw them in with an asset that is unique. Think quizzes, interactive how-to tutorials, or videos in a topic that hasn’t been done before.
- Outreach. A simple, to-the-point email asking whether they can post your asset is all you need. Don’t make things too complicated in your outreach email. To sweeten the deal, you can offer a link exchange — where you put a link to their site on your website, and they do the same in return.
With these tips in mind, you’ll be on your way to building a strong backlink profile for your website.