What is Link Building?
Link building is a way to get other websites to link to your site. Think of these links as votes of confidence. When your website gets a link from another site that is well-respected and closely related to your topic, it tells Google that your site might be trustworthy and relevant to people searching the internet.
These links from trustworthy and relevant pages are crucial in SEO as they signal both Google and users that your site is a reliable source of information.
Google heavily relies on links to decide how relevant and authoritative a web page is. A website that has many high-quality links is seen by search engines like Google as credible and relevant, which can lead to better positions on search results pages. However, the aim goes beyond just climbing the SEO ladder. It's also about attracting more visitors from various sources and enhancing your brand visibility.
The Purpose of Link Building
The purpose of link building is to enhance SEO performance, expand audience reach, foster industry relationships, and potentially open up avenues for future collaborations.
In discussions about strong backlinks, you'll often hear about "authority," referring to metrics like domain authority or domain rating. These metrics are based on the strength of a website's backlink profile.
When a website has multiple high-quality backlinks, search engines like Google interpret this as an indication of the site’s credibility and relevance to its topic or industry. This can result in higher rankings on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
It’s also about expanding your audience and getting more traffic to your website from diverse sources.
If a site has a lot of visitors and Google thinks it's a good source of information, a link from that site can be very powerful.
When you link to another site, or they link to you, it often begins a professional relationship, which can lead to further collaboration and partnership opportunities.
Search engines prioritize quality over quantity. Links from reputable and relevant websites are more beneficial than a ton of links from random websites. A backlink comes from a site in the same or similar industry, it’s typically more valuable than a link from a completely unrelated site.
What Makes a Good Backlink?
Most SEOs start this conversation by talking about “authority” and then mention terms like
domain authority
or
domain rating
.
Both domain authority and domain rating are primarily calculated based on how they gauge the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile.
There are six factors we use to evaluate the quality of a backlink. They are:
- Organic Traffic
- Relevance
- Anchor Text
- Placement
- Relation Attributes
- Destination
Organic Traffic
A better metric to use in lieu of
domain authority
is organic traffic.
If a website or webpage is getting a significant amount of organic traffic from Google, then we can reasonably conclude that Google already perceives it to be trustworthy and relevant.
Why?
Because Google wants to
deliver the most relevant and reliable information available
to people when they search for it. If they fail in that regard, people wouldn’t use Google Search. If people didn’t use Google Search, advertisers wouldn’t spend money on Google Ads. And if advertisers didn’t spend money on Google Ads, Google would lose $162.45 billion (58%) of its $279.81 billion in revenue.
If Google didn’t see a website or a particular web page as being relevant and reliable, it wouldn’t get very much of the total search traffic it has the potential to get from Google because Google wouldn’t rank it high in the search results.
Follow vs Nofollow Relation Attributes
Links can carry attributes such as "nofollow", which instruct search engines on how to treat the link. A "nofollow" link, for example, advises a search engine not to pass on the link's authority to the destination page. Yet, it’s not just “follow” links that are valuable. Even "nofollow" links can drive relevant traffic to your site, contributing to your site's visibility and are sometimes considered by search algorithms.
The value of the <span class="inline-code">rel</span> attribute can vary depending on the purpose of the link.
One common value is <span class="inline-code">nofollow</span>. And here’s what it would look like in the HTML code of a page:
These are the types of links you want most. They act as clear signals from another website that they endorse your website.
That doesn’t mean the other types of links are bad, though. They can still send relevant web traffic to your site (which is why you want to rank higher on Google in the first place) and are still used as hints by Google’s search algorithms.
Link Building Glossary
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Anchor Text
– Text within a hyperlink that describes the linked page’s content.
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Alt Tags/Attributes
– Descriptive text added to images for accessibility and SEO purposes.
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Backlinks
– Incoming hyperlinks from external websites that direct traffic to a specific webpage.
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Broken Links
– Hyperlinks that lead to non-existent or inaccessible web pages.
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Brand Mentions
– Instances where a brand or company name is mentioned on the internet, regardless of links.
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Citations
– References to a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites.
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Deep Links
– Hyperlinks that direct users to specific pages within a website, bypassing the homepage.
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Deindexed
– When a search engine removes a webpage from its index, making it unsearchable.
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Directories
– Online platforms that categorize and list websites based on specific topics or criteria.
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Dofollowed Links
– Hyperlinks that allow search engines to follow and pass link authority to the linked page.
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Domain Authority
– A metric that predicts the ranking potential of a website in search engine results.
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Domain Rating
– A proprietary metric developed by Ahrefs to measure the authority of a website’s backlink profile.
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Editorial Links
– Natural links voluntarily placed within the content of a webpage, typically based on merit and relevance.
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Evergreen Content
– Timeless content that remains valuable and relevant to readers over an extended period.
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Followed Links
– Hyperlinks that allow search engines to follow and pass link authority to the linked page.
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Footer Links
– Links placed in the footer section of a webpage, often used for navigation or site-wide references.
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Guest Posts
– Articles or content written by a guest author and published on another website or blog.
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Hidden Links
– Links that are deliberately concealed from users but can still be discovered by search engines.
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Href
– An HTML attribute that specifies the URL destination of a hyperlink.
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Image Links
– Hyperlinks that are embedded within an image, allowing users to click on the image to navigate.
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Internal Links
– Hyperlinks that connect different pages or sections within the same website.
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Link Exchange
– Reciprocal arrangement where two websites agree to link to each other, often for mutual SEO benefit.
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Linking Domains
– The number of unique domains that contain at least one hyperlink pointing to a specific website.
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Link Reclamation
– Process of finding and reclaiming lost or broken backlinks to a website.
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Link Schemes
– Manipulative tactics designed to artificially increase a website’s backlink profile for SEO purposes.
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Manual Penalty
– A punitive action imposed by search engines on a website for violating their guidelines.
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Nofollowed Links
– Hyperlinks that contain the “nofollow” attribute, instructing search engines not to pass link authority to the linked page.
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Noise Anchors
– Irrelevant anchor text that provides little context to the linked page’s content. e.g., “click here.”
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Off-Page / Off-Site
– SEO activities and factors that occur outside of the target website, such as backlinks and social signals.
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Outreach
– Proactive process of reaching out to other websites or individuals to promote content, acquire backlinks, or establish partnerships.
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Page Authority
– A metric that predicts the ranking potential of an individual webpage in search engine results.
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PageRank
– Google’s original algorithmic ranking system that evaluates the importance of webpages based on the quantity and quality of their backlinks.
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Paid Links
– Hyperlinks acquired through monetary transactions, often in violation of search engine guidelines.
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PBNs
– Private Blog Networks, a group of interlinked websites created solely for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings.
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Reciprocal Links
– Links exchanged between two websites, often in a mutual agreement for link-building purposes.
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Reconsideration Request
– A formal appeal submitted to a search engine after addressing issues that led to a manual penalty, seeking reinstatement in search results.
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Referring Domains
– The number of unique domains that contain at least one backlink pointing to a specific website.
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Rel
– An HTML attribute used to indicate the relationship between the current document and a linked document.
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Resource Pages
– Web pages that compile and provide links to relevant resources, often used for SEO and backlink acquisition.
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Second-tier Links
– Backlinks acquired from websites that are themselves linked to the target website, providing an indirect link influence.
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Sitewide Links
– Links placed on multiple or all pages of a website, typically found in headers, footers, or sidebars.
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Sponsored Posts
– Content created or promoted in collaboration with a brand or advertiser, often including paid links.
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Toxic Links
– Backlinks from low-quality or spammy websites that can harm a website’s search engine rankings.
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Unlinked Mentions
– Instances where a brand or website is mentioned on other websites but without a hyperlink.
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Unnatural Links
– Backlinks that are acquired through manipulative or deceptive practices, violating search engine guidelines.
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URL Rating
– A metric used to assess the strength and authority of a specific URL or webpage.
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Velocity
– The rate at which a website gains or loses backlinks or experiences changes in other SEO metrics over a given period.