The process of getting other websites to link to pages on your own website is known as link building. The goal of link building is to increase the “authority” of your pages in Google’s eyes, allowing them to rank higher and attract more search traffic.
Most link-building tactics may be boiled down to two simple steps:
Make something noteworthy (and therefore worthy of a link)
Get people who own websites to see it (and thus link to it)
What is the significance of link building?
Links are one of the three primary ranking variables in Google, according to a Google insider. If you want your website’s pages to appear high in search results, you’ll almost likely require links.
Links from other websites are viewed as “votes” by Google (and other search engines). These votes assist them in determining which page on a particular topic (among hundreds of others) deserves to be at the very top of the search results.
Pages having more backlinks, on the whole, tend to rank higher in search results.
1. Adding hyperlinks
It’s called “adding” a link if you can go to a website that doesn’t belong to you and manually place your link there. The following are the most common strategies that fall within this category:
Submissions to business directories; establishment of social profiles; blog comments; posting to forums, communities, and Q&A sites; creation of job search listings; and so on.
It’s fairly simple to build links using those methods. And it’s for this reason that those links have a poor value in Google’s opinion (and in some cases can even be flagged as SPAM).
Aside from that, these types of links offer little in the way of a competitive advantage. Nothing prevents your competitors from doing the same if you can manually place your link on a website.
However, you shouldn’t completely disregard this category of link-building strategies. Each of these might be quite advantageous to your online business.
Downing has many links coming from business directories. Some of these directories include sites like DesignRush linking the phrase small business web design companies, Yellow Pages, and Nelson Chamber of Commerce.
2. Requesting links
As the name implies, this is when you contact the owner of the website from which you want a link and convince them to link to you.
For this collection of link-building strategies, that “compelling reason” is critical. People you contact don’t care about you or your website (unless you’re a celebrity), thus they have no reason to assist you.
So think about it before you ask them to link to you: “What’s in it for THEM?”
3. Purchasing links
This is by far the worst strategy and should be avoided.
At best, you’ll waste a lot of money on faulty links that have no effect on your results; at worst, your website will be penalised.
However, we’d be putting you at a disadvantage if we didn’t tell you that many people in the SEO field “purchase” links in a variety of methods and get away with it.
So, if you’re ready to put your website’s health at risk by buying links, look for instruction on how to do so “safely” somewhere else.
4. Getting links naturally
You “earn” links when other people link to your website’s pages without having to beg them to. This is way links are meant work. People link to you because they like your content and want to share it. This does not happen unless you have something truly exceptional that other website owners would want to include on theirs.
Of course, this is the hardest option but one that should be attempted.
Good luck and happy linking!
