What is Backlink Building?

Backlink building refers to the process of acquiring pages beyond your website to link a page back to your own site. This is among the many strategies used in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Creating backlinks could be difficult and takes time as not all links can be acquired through the same strategy.

A backlink from a credible website like New York Times or government sites will make a large impact on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) compared to a backlink from a new website. Basically, high-quality backlinks can really be a challenge to acquire. This article will guide you not only on the definition of backlink building but also its importance and how to get quality backlinks using proven strategies.

Although backlink building is a significant part of internet as a science, using effective strategies to get the expected results is really an art. It is often the most challenging part of SEO and also the most important factor to ensure success of the campaign. You need to be creative, innovative and smart in using resources especially money. Every link building campaign is unique, and the way you select to build backlinks will depend on your website and your attitude in doing the job.

The Importance of Backlink Building

Backlink Building is very crucial in SEO because it is a major factor in how search engines such as ranks websites. For example, Google noted on their site that websites can improve its rankings by building links that are high-quality.

For example, let’s imagine that you have a website that sells refurbished laptops, and you are competing other websites with similar items on the market. One of the factors that will be analyzed by Google in determining how to rank your website is through the number of Backlinks that you have acquired.

To drive traffic back to your site, it must be easily found by potential customers. Conventional advertising may work such as printing your URL on business cards, print ads, brochures, letterhead and even billboards. However 8 out of 10 of online users use search engines to seek information they need, making search engines the best place that you must concentrate your efforts in acquiring visibility and link building for your website.

During the early years of internet marketing, Google and Yahoo concentrated mainly on Meta Tags that are invisible. Most SEO experts are aware that loading their main keywords into these tags can easily force them to the top of search engine rankings. Unluckily, it is also very easy for disreputable businesses to spam these tags, thereby enticing users to websites that were not even relevant to the information that they are searching.

Hence, to avoid this kind of manipulation and to clean up the indexes, only the relevant results will be shown for a particular search. Google and other search engines updated their algorithms to concentrate on the content of the websites. The objective is to make certain that any Backlink will provide information that online users were searching to enhance the quality of the results on their websites.

Three Basic Strategies of Backlink Building

  1. Manual Outreach – You can do this by manually sending emails to bloggers for backlinks, paying for listings and submitting your websites to directories. You need to create a value proposition by persuading the website master that linking your page to their site will be beneficial. For example, if you want to start link building with an academic site, you need to convince a professor that your site will be worthy to be included in their reference sites or syllabus.
  2. Self-Created – Many websites today offer their visitors the chance for easy link building by signing up with guest books, comments, forums, and user profiles. Usually, the backlinks that you can acquire from these websites have low value, but if you pile them up, it will still have a large impact for your website. However, you must be wary because search engines often devalue these links and even penalize websites that are building backlinks that are self-created. These links may be perceived as spammy and must be used with extra care.
  3. Natural Backlinks – Natural, also known as Editorial Backlinks, are given naturally by websites and pages who want to link to your website. These links don’t need specific action, apart from the building of great content and the strategy to build awareness.

Backlink Building for Free

There are several ways to build links to the websites that you are trying to boost search engine rankings. In trying to rank a web page, there are several factors that you must consider:

  • Quality of the Backlink Building Page – Search engines allow links from top-quality and trusted pages to boost rankings compared to doubtful pages and websites.
  • Anchor Text – Among the most crucial factors that search engines take into account in ranking a page is the actual text that a linking page to discuss about your content. Hence, if someone links to your refurbished laptop website, that will help you in getting a higher rank for that particular keyword phrase.
  • External Backlinks – Make certain that the quality and content of the link page is very high. External backlink building to your website is essential, but in concentrating more of your efforts in optimizing these internal links you can create high-quality inbound links.

Tools and Tips in Effective Backlink Building

  1. Set-up a system to easily interlink your pages – First, you need to use a keyword research tool to know keywords and key phrases that are relevant and popular. Second, group the keywords strategically to create a search-friendly information network. Third, use the keyword research for smart inter-Backlinking. You can do this by linking to content using the keywords that you have discovered.
  2. Use Site Search – Using site search is easy and can be used for several purposes. You can find pages on your website for link building to a new page and you can also find a page that has been created to link back to your website. Once you build content, you need to make certain that you can search the site for mentions of similar keyword varieties that you may want to backlink to that particular page.