Link building is essential for a successful SEO strategy; it involves getting other websites to link to yours. It has been proven to be one of the hardest parts of ranking a website, but truly rewarding if done right. Having inbound links tells Google that the site deserves to rank higher for the relevant keywords used. The more high-quality links you obtain for your site, the higher your chances are to rank higher on Google, which will ultimately lead to more traffic. Link building takes time and effort, and it is also hard to get it right. But if done correctly, you will see significant growth in organic traffic and revenue. You will also enjoy increased credibility and trustworthiness as a business, and you will benefit largely from the targeted referral traffic. Link building in SEO is essential; therefore, you should be aware of the links that can cause your website to decrease its visibility.
The following are some elements for a successful link building strategy.
Contextual links- Contextual links those placed in the body of the web page content as opposed to the footer or sidebar are generally higher quality links. Since links on a page that are most likely to be clicked are usually the ones that are most likely to hold high values and can have a big impact on the ranking. Google measures the value of a link with PageRank, to achieve a higher rank, make the link stand out.
Look for links with a high percentage of followed links- We all know that not all links can pass PageRank and can have an impact on the site ranking. Avoid links that have a “no follow” attribute, as it gives Google a hint not to crawl, “sponsored” attributes also indicates that a link has been paid for and cannot pass the PageRank. Another one is the “UGC” showcases links, which shows that it may be manipulative. But “followed” links have no attributes that prevent PageRank and comes from quality sources.
Editorially placed links- Google has highlighted in its guidelines that links that do not fall under editorially placed can be deemed unnatural. The most effective links are those that are editorially placed, these links are those links that a third party has linked from their website to yours. It doesn’t include links that exist because of payment, incentives, or the ones you placed to increase the ranking of your site. To acquire these editorially placed links, your content should be of great quality and original.
Focus on links from unique referring domains- It is known that a great link profile will achieve links coming from a higher number of unique referring domains rather than just from the same domain from time to time. To achieve links from unique referring domains, strategically focus on tactics so that the campaign will earn from new domains that have never linked before. Doing this will increase the number of unique linking domains. A website containing links from a higher number of the unique domain will rank in a more prominent position.
Get links from your niche- To ensure that you are not just building links, try to achieve links from websites and contents that are closely related to your site’s topic or is under the same niche. Links exist on the web to navigate users from one page to another for the related information, so a link that will take the users to an unrelated topic will be irrelevant. By doing this, you will be more exposed, increase your brand awareness and authority, and gain quality referral traffic.
Apart from these points, use a natural anchor text without using target keywords or commercial terms. These are some of the key components to achieve a successful link building.
