What is Link Building: The Beginner’s Guide To SEO (2022 Update)

Want to increase the number of authoritative backlinks to your website?

You’ve come to the right place.

Link building is important in SEO as it helps to drive organic traffic via search engines, especially in competitive industries. 

When combined with strong technical SEO foundations, excellent content, great on-page SEO, and a good user experience, link building can be extremely effective at driving more organic traffic. 

Moreover, If you are struggling with your site’s ranking, then you must focus on what is SEO to perform the SEO on-page and off-page activities in the right direction to boost your ranking on Google’s first page. 

This new guide to actionable link-building strategies will be fun to try. In this blog, you will get to learn the basics of link building and the proven strategies that are both effective and simple to implement on your own website.

Keep reading to learn more about link building, why it matters, what types of links to build and how to build them, and which tools can help you increase efficiency and earn more backlinks in 2022.

Part 1-  What Is Link Building?

Link building is the practice of acquiring hyperlinks (backlinks) from other relevant and authoritative websites to your own.

Getting backlinks from high-quality sites can pass authority to your site and help you rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

(The goal is to tell Google that your website is a trustworthy source of information and ensure that your web pages rank well on the search results pages for relevant keywords.)

According to Google, a crucial part of identifying what pages are relevant and trustworthy is “understanding if other prominent websites link to or refer to the content.”

As a result, link building should be considered when developing an SEO strategy. If you don’t have enough time to begin and continue your advanced off-page activities the way we are guiding you to do so then you must seek the help of the top SEO experts in Ghaziabad. 

However, not all links are created on purpose by SEOs or marketers. Many will be created for various reasons, such as a journalist covering a news story and linking to a source, or a blogger who is so enamoured with the new coffee machine that they link to the retailer who sold it to them.

Along with this long-term strategy, you can use a variety of link-building techniques to increase your authority and improve your chances of ranking well and receiving organic search traffic.

Part 2-  Why Is Link Building Important?

Let’s say you have a pretty great piece of content, but your website is still relatively new and lacks authority. Obtaining links from other reputable websites is a great way to increase Google’s perception of your site’s authority. The quality and authority of the pages where you build links are important factors in determining how high you’ll rank in search engine results.

This is where blogging comes into the picture. When you blog on a regular basis, you’ll get 434% more indexed pages and 97% more inbound links. There are other proven ways to build the best links and improve your ranking in the SERPs besides blogging. 

And if you don’t have your own website and looking forward to creating your business site, blog, or online store, Bluehost can get you started with a hosting plan tailored to your specific needs with 24/7 technical support. And this Bluehost review will help you to understand deeply about the best hosting companies and how it can help you.

Backlinks are essentially votes of confidence for your site.

Because pages with more backlinks are more likely to rank higher, it’s essential to:

• Make high-quality content that people will want to link to, and
• Use link-building strategies to help you get more backlinks.

Since link building takes time and effort, getting started sooner rather than later will give you an advantage over your competitors and provide significant long-term benefits for your website.

Part 3-  How Does Link Building Work?

Earning backlinks from credible, high-quality websites is the best way to increase your authority through link building. If you have a lot of backlinks from spammy, irrelevant sites, they aren’t going to help you rank higher.

Search engines use links in two basic ways:

• To find new web pages that they can use in their search results.
• To help determine where a page should appear in their search results

Search engines can extract content from web pages and add it to their indexes once they have crawled them. This allows them to determine whether a page is of sufficient quality to rank well for relevant keywords.

The higher your blog posts and sales pages rank in search results, the more high-quality and trustworthy sites link to your site.

Search engines consider not only the page’s content but also the number of links pointing to it from other websites, as well as the quality of those external websites. And to get the high DA PA backlinks, you must have an optimized website for your business. Get high-quality website design services in Delhi at a very affordable cost, along with our best 24/7 customer support.

Backlinks can be obtained in a variety of ways, including:

• Guest blogging
• Social media promotion
• Pursuing competitors’ backlinks
• Manual outreach

However, keep in mind that backlinks aren’t everything; you should prioritise creating useful, high-quality content first.

Link building can be a challenge for both beginners and experienced professionals when looking for ways to improve their ranking. It can, however, be one of your most effective tools for organic success.

Part 4-  Three Types of Links

It’s essential to understand the various types of links when developing a link-building strategy.

The most important types of links to know are below.

1-  Nofollow vs. Follow 

When you want to link to another website but don’t want Google to crawl it, you should use “nofollow” links.

To make a link a nofollow link, you must include the rel=”nofollow” attribute in the link’s code. Nofollow links tell Google that the link isn’t supposed to pass PageRank. 

The nofollow link is helpful for two reasons:

• When you have to link to a website but don’t want to endorse it,
• When the link is profitable, Google added rel=”sponsored” (along with rel=”ugc”) as a new type of backlink attribute, recommending that users use rel=”sponsored” instead of rel=”nofollow” for paid or profitable links (such as paid ads, banner ads, affiliate links, and sponsored content).

Remember that nofollow links don’t pass authority directly. They can, however, help you build brand awareness and referral traffic. And if you are looking for the most reliable and high-quality PPC services in Delhi, then you are in the right place. Reach out to Marketing Fundas who can provide you with top-notch Google Ads PPC services.

The following are some examples of website types that frequently use nofollow on external links:

• Quora
• Yahoo! Answers
• Guest post signatures
• Forum posts
• Blog comments
• Guest book comments
• Editable Wiki pages (e.g. Wikipedia)

Regular links with attributes that tell Google that the link should pass PageRank are called “follow links.” Also, reach out to top SEO service providers in India who can help you to build your on-page as well as off-page SEO strategies and boost your site’s ranking effectively by acquiring high-quality backlinks.

You would use the “follow” link if you wanted to:

• Transfer authority to a reputable website.
• Help search engine bots comprehend the content.

In a nutshell, follow links tell Google that a website is worth crawling, whereas nofollow links don’t. PageRank is a metric that Google uses to determine whether or not a link is giving another website points. 

2-  User-generated links

While this isn’t always the case, these types of links are frequently from low-quality sources or ones Google doesn’t want to count.

This is because they were created by you, and you’re effectively endorsing yourself, which isn’t what Google looks for when determining which websites should be ranked first. If you’re having trouble building and acquiring high-quality backlinks for your website, you must seek help from the best digital marketing company in Gurugram to do your off-page activities effectively.

It’s not the best path to take if you want to improve your SEO strategy. They’ve been useful for some SEOs working on specific websites in the past, but you should use extreme caution when implementing them now.

Many of these techniques have been targeted by Google over the years, and websites have been penalised for using them excessively.

A few examples may be:

• Blog comments that are not moderated
• Infographic embeds
• User profile pages
• Directories that are not moderated
• Guestbooks
• Press releases with over-optimized anchor text
• Article directories
• Forum signatures
• Guest post signatures with over-optimized anchor text
• Advertorials
• Embeddable widgets

Links from these sources won’t hurt your site, but it’s generally not a good idea to spend time on this strategy since these types of links probably won’t pass any authority.

3-  Natural Links

The vast majority of online links are created without anyone asking for them.

Readers who come across your website and include a link on their blog or website without being asked are more likely to create natural links. They’re usually inserted into the content of another blogger or webmaster in order to provide value to their readers.

Natural links are one of the most effective and efficient methods of promoting your blog or website

It’s beneficial when it comes to SEO, as we all want to get high-quality links that we didn’t ask for. However, it is difficult to achieve.

But it’s relatively simple for big brands to do. To give an extreme example, when Apple releases a new iPhone, it does not need to ask for links. Because, of course, it’s the iPhone, journalists, writers, and bloggers will write about it and link to Apple. 

And just like the SEO activities, you can also boost your social media engagements, and conversions and generate more quality leads easily with the help of our top-quality Facebook ads course and build other social media marketing strategies under the guidance of industry experts.

A natural link back to your website is regarded as a “good link” and is regarded as one of the safest link-building techniques. 

They are more likely to appear in a website’s videos, blog posts, images, and other product listings.

Part 5-  Most Effective Link Building Strategies for 2022

Now comes the exciting part. There are many techniques for building quality links quickly, but some will be more effective than others.

A variety of methods for obtaining healthy backlinks from high-quality websites are listed below.

1]  Leverage Guest Blogging

Guest posting is one of the most widely used link-building techniques.

Source: Semrush

Guest blogging is the process of approaching other websites to see if they’ll publish content you’ve written on their blogs.

To get a backlink, never post a blog on a site that is irrelevant to your niche and has no authority. 

You must be strategic and authentic if you want to reap the benefits of guest blogging. Make sure you’re writing something unique for the other site (like a case study) and that it’s relevant, authoritative, and appealing to your target audience. Also, get to know the types of blogging to improve your blogging strategies more effectively and reach out to your target audience.

If you want to get high-quality backlinks, higher search rankings, more organic and referral traffic, and more qualified leads, you should do the following:

• Select your guest posting websites carefully. Make sure they’re niche-relevant and have a high domain authority (DA).
• Choose topics that are relevant to the website’s audience, haven’t been covered on the site before, and are related to your area of expertise.
• Make a one-of-a-kind piece of content that can help people do something better. Share your personal experiences as well as tried-and-true methods with data.
• Include a link to a resource that adds to the topic’s value. Don’t put too much emphasis on link building. Concentrate on delivering value through your content.

Your guest post links may be considered spammy if:

• You pay the publisher to post your blog with a link to your website.
• The post includes anchor text that is an exact match for a page on your website.
• The website has nothing to do with your niche.

2]  Do Directory Submissions

Online directories should be included in your link-building strategy. However, for white-hat link building, only use relevant and targeted online directory submissions. Also, get to know what are the recent updates on the scope of digital marketing so that you can build your digital career in the right direction with the right guidance.

To gain backlinks, improve search visibility and reach, and improve rankings, you should list your business in high-authority directories.

Here are some pointers to keep in mind when registering your business in online directories:

• Choose directories that are relevant to your niche and target market.
• Consider listing your business on directories with high-domain-authority directories (DA).
• Make a detailed listing by utilising all of the features available in the directory submission system. Some directories only require NAP (name, address, and phone number) information, while others also include photos, customer reviews, and ratings.
• Maintain consistency in the information you provide to various directories about your business. At least the NAP information should be consistent across the web.

3]  Send Emails to Bloggers and Publishers for Link Building

If you want to build white-hat links from top publications in your niche, you’ll need to use link-building email outreach tactics.

To do so, start by looking for opportunities to build links and identifying people or publications that are likely to link to you. After you’ve identified your link-building prospects, look for their email addresses and send them a personalised email. And if you are wondering how to email perfectly then go through this complete tutorial guild on what is email marketing to understand the campaign strategies properly. 

4]  Comment on Relevant Blog Posts

Another effective link-building strategy is to start commenting on other relevant websites’ blog posts. You’ll need to include a backlink in your comment in a subtle manner. 

The comment should not appear forced. While you’re doing it to build links, your main goal should be to establish a positive relationship with the post’s author by leaving a thoughtful comment. Moreover, get to know how to generate quality leads from your blog on regular basis with less effort. 

You can:

• Appreciate the author and make their day.
• Include a useful point of view on the subject and a link to a resource that will enhance the post’s value.
• Start a discussion by asking a question or expressing your opinion on a point raised in the author’s post.
• Blog commenting is an excellent way to establish and maintain relationships with other bloggers, authors, and publishers.

5]  Create and Distribute Infographics

Infographics are still effective today, and they can be an important part of your link-building strategy. Presenting original research in a graphical representation is a great approach.

Infographics (also known as linkable assets) are 30 times more likely to be read than a full article, so creating accompanying infographics can bridge the gap for those who don’t want to read your full piece of content.

The benefit of infographics is that they will continue to drive organic traffic to your blog and earn you quality links without you having to ask for them. To create linkable assets, you don’t need to be a professional graphic designer.

You can use customizable templates from sites like PicMonkey or Canva even if you’re just starting out or don’t have the budget for creativity.

When shared on social media, linkable assets can also serve as a referral traffic gateway, allowing your content to reach a wider audience. And if you want to build your digital career then Marketing Fundas is there for you, it provides the best digital marketing course in Delhi, with advanced practical modules covering everything like SEO, SEM, SMM, E-commerce, affiliate marketing, Shopify, Content marketing, and all the other digital activities more. Let’s move on to social media as a link-building strategy.

6]  Get Active on Social Media

Social media networks have revolutionised marketing and can be a huge boon for your link building plan and guest posting efforts. 

Posting your valuable content on social media is a simple way to start building backlinks. Your chances of earning backlinks are likely to improve once you have graphics and linkable assets.

However, don’t forget to use social media for more than just sharing new content; otherwise, you’ll be missing out on a slew of opportunities to raise brand awareness. And this complete guide to what is social media marketing will help you to understand everything you need to know to boost your social media engagement.

Even if you’re new to social media, it’s simple to get started:

• Post news and updates about your brand
• Use polls to know the opinion
• Engage with your audience in your comments
• Respond to brand mentions
• Participate in social media conversations within your niche

Even if you’re new to social media, getting involved can help you increase engagement.

As a result, more people will be exposed to your brand and site, and they will be more likely to share your best posts with their target audience. This will boost your overall visibility and improve your link profile.

Another useful strategy is to make sure you mention brands and people of influence in your content. Also, get to know what is digital marketing which can help you to build the perfect strategy in a consistent manner to boost audience engagement. 

Another useful strategy is to mention brands and people of influence in your content. If they practise social listening, there’s a good chance they’ll share your post or link on social media, allowing you to get a backlink from a profile other than your own.

7]  Reclaim Lost and Broken Links

For a variety of reasons, links break or become lost over time. It’s possible that the author accidentally removed a link while updating a post, or that the page to which the link was directed has been removed.

Broken link building is one of the most popular link building strategies.

Wondering why?

Instead of asking for links, you’re actually assisting someone in repairing broken links on their website.

You’ll need to find pages in your industry that are relevant to your resources and can link to them. Look for any broken outbound links and reach out to them to update their broken link by pointing to a relevant resource on your website. Also, if you are wondering how to become an affiliate for the top brands then reach out to this complete tutorial regarding what is affiliate marketing to get started easily.

Monitoring your competitor’s backlink profile and looking for broken links is an easy way to do this. Then ask the site editors to replace them with the links to your resources provided by the site editors. 

8]  Develop Useful Tools Relevant to Your Industry

Other than case studies, statistics, and visual assets, tools also attract links from dozens of sources in a natural way.

If you introduce a useful tool for your industry, there’s a good chance that brands and industry experts will use it and talk about it. As a result, you’ll receive more backlinks. And here are the best digital marketing tools for you that will not only help you to create perfect marketing goals but will also help you to analyse the outcomes effectively so that you can improve and boost your campaign.

Consider the following example:

In 2017, Neil Patel acquired Ubersuggest, a keyword research tool, and revamped its user interface, adding new features like CPC data. He basically gave users more information for free, which helped Ubersuggest grow in popularity.

9]  Link Reclamation

Look for mentions of your brand or website that don’t include a link online. Kindly ask the webmaster for a link.

10]  Publish Listicles

According to a Semrush study, listicles receive 2x more traffic and 1.5x more backlinks than other blog post formats.

Wondering why?

Because listicles divide content into small chunks, they make it easier for readers to consume more information in a short time.

Consider making listicles like these:

• 7 tips to do [something] better
• 12 tools that can help you do [something] quickly and efficiently.
• Tips from 15 [your industry] experts about [topic relevant to your industry]

11]  Create In-Depth Guides

According to the above-mentioned Semrush Content Marketing study, articles with over 7000 words generate 4x the traffic and 1.5x the shares (links) than articles of average length (900–1200 words).

“How-to” articles and in-depth guides, such as this one, get 1.5x the number of shares (links). Also, get to know the LinkedIn marketing strategies to spread your relevant content to brands and professions to boost your brand community value and loyal audience base. 

That’s because long-form content gives readers a lot of information in one place, making it the go-to resource for that topic.

12]  Content Promotion With Rich Visuals

It is easier for external websites to link to you if you create high-quality content on your website and then promote it with stunning visual images. They can quickly create a blog post using your images. This is frequently paired with high-quality mid-tier bloggers. 

For best results, get to know the top proven content marketing strategy which can assist you in the right direction without any confusion and will help you to spread your rich content effectively. 

13]  Integrate Your Digital PR and Link Building Strategy

It’s a way of using data studies, breaking news, and other related content to promote your content to high-traffic sites of top-tier news outlets.

Blending your online PR strategy with your link-building strategy is the best way to build high-quality links. Through press releases, journalist stories, and other media outlets, it can help you earn a significant number of high-authority editorial links.

14]  Get Interviewed on Podcasts

Writing guest posts is a common way to gain links, but creating unique content takes a lot of time and effort.

On the other hand, you can simply make a topic outline, discuss it with a podcast host, and boom! They’ll give you a backlink too.

Podcasting is gaining a lot of traction these days because you can listen to them while on the go and learn new things. There’s also a podcast for almost every topic you could think of.

15]  Perform Reverse Image Searches to Reclaim Links

If you’ve created infographics or any other shareable visual assets related to your niche, there is a possibility that many sites are using your image or infographic.

But have they credited you with a link?

You can use Google Images to do a reverse image search to find URLs that use your image or graphic. 

If they haven’t given you credit, send them an email and request that they include a link to your original resource. Most publishers will gladly do it with little effort. Reach out to the top social media marketing companies in India to boost your audience engagement and increase conversion at an affordable price. 

Part 6-  What Kind of Backlinks Should You Avoid to Prevent Penalties?

This link building strategic guide would be incomplete without talking about black-hat link building strategies. 

In this section, you will get to know what you SHOULD NOT do when building backlinks.

While black hat link building is a simple option, it comes with a huge risk. If Google detects spammy link-building techniques (which it almost certainly will), you will be subjected to severe penalties.

If you want to avoid Google penalties, stay away from the following activities:

• Paid links
• Excessive link exchanges
• Links from hacked websites
• Links built using automated services
• Too many sidebar links
• Exact match anchor text
• Keyword-rich anchor text
• Blog comment spamming for link building
• Link farm – a cluster of websites developed solely for the purpose of link building
• Private blog network (PBN) for link building
• Links from low-quality directories

Part 7-  How Can You Measure Your Link Building Campaign ROI?

By now, you must have understood the importance of link building and how to get high-quality backlinks for your website.

But most marketers don’t know how to track or monitor the performance of link building strategies. Are the strategies worth their time and effort?

You can measure your link building campaign’s ROI to evaluate the effectiveness of your link building campaign. 

Wondering how to do that?

Here are some pointers to help you track and measure the ROI of your link-building efforts:

• Perform backlink analysis.
• Track changes in search rankings and organic traffic over a period of time.
• Track the number of brand mentions and social shares you have.
• Track your referral traffic.

And learning what is google analytics 4  from the beginning will help you to understand, track and measure the overall audience and campaign performance.

Part 8-  The Link Building Tools You Need To Know

Link building not only helps you boost your search rankings and organic traffic but also skyrockets the visibility of your brand. However, putting the above link-building strategies into action takes a lot of time and effort.

What if you could automate your link-building tasks and processes?

It will undoubtedly help you save time and increase efficiency. You’ll get more high-quality backlinks in less time.

Wondering if that’s even possible?

That’s right. Because there are numerous powerful free and paid tools that can automate everything from analysing your backlink profile to filtering out spammy links, sending personalised outreach emails, and finding broken links.

Let me share a few link building tools that can make your life easier and let you accomplish more in less time:

• Backlink analysis tools such as Semrush, Moz’s Link Explorer, Ahrefs, Google Alerts and Linkody
• Content syndication platforms such as YouTube, Medium, LinkedIn, and Quora
• Email marketing automation tools such as Mailchimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact

Conclusion: Ready to Build High-Quality Links for Your Website?

Using the right link building strategies helps you improve your link profile and search rankings.

The more relevant and authoritative sources that link to your website, the higher Google will rank your page in search results. As a result, you’ll be able to attract more targeted traffic to your website, increasing conversions and sales.

Make sure you aren’t using any black-hat link-building tactics, such as buying links or exchanging links excessively. Otherwise, Google may penalise you for building links in an unnatural manner, which will harm your website’s search ranking even more.

Which of the above-mentioned link-building strategies would you like to try first? Or do you have a question about any of the strategies?

Either way, drop a quick comment below to discuss. If you’re looking for fully-managed link building services or a digital marketing agency in Delhi, feel free to reach out to the Marketing Fundas team anytime.

Happy Learning! 🙂

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