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Link building: What you need to know.

If you’re looking to optimise your Google search ranking, working on your link building is a sure-fire way to boost your positioning and resultant website traffic. In today’s post, we’ll be answering three common questions: what is link building, what are the different types of links and what are their benefits?

Link building refers to the process of other websites linking to your pages to boost your search engine ranking. Link building increases your ranking in Google search results due to Google’s ‘authority’ rating: the more links a website has, the more authoritative Google deems it to be, therefore placing it higher in its search rankings.

Effective link building, especially through optimising backlinks, is a great method to ensure your website maintains relevance in search engine results. With search engines such as Google gathering data on links to determine page ranking, it helps to think of backlinks as votes that bolster your website’s positioning. The more you have, the higher up the ranks you climb.

Backlinks can be seen as search currency- the more you have, the greater value your website has, resulting in a higher search ranking. What is a backlink, you ask? With a number of categories comprising this rank-boosting goldmine, we’ve created a handy pocket dictionary to help you get to grips with the different links available below.

If this all sounds like a step in the right direction for your brand but you’re not sure where to start, you might want to consider using an affiliate marketing agency. Here are some of the benefits to this approach.

Backlinks

These are the links to website resources that take us from one website to another. You often find these links when a website is referencing a specific resource authored on another website as a source of information, such as statistics or reports.

Internal links

Internal links take us from A to B on the same website. Think of it as a shortcut to a different page without having to navigate there yourself. These links are often used for PDFs that pop up in another tab.

External links

External links direct a website user to a domain on another website. These are the richest links as they are valued as external votes of popularity by search engines such as Google.

Outbound links

Outbound links direct you to another specific webpage or website altogether. They aren’t as key a player in your SEO arsenal, but are useful additions to blogs to point readers to reliable resources that your blog or article references.

Broken links

If you have a broken link, chances are the webpage or resource it originally linked to no longer exists. When a link leads to a non-existent page, the visitor will get an error message and this negatively impacts the user experience. As a result of this, the more broken links on your website, the further down the search rankings your website will appear. Remember, Google ranks websites based on valuable content for user experience, so ensure all of your links are up to date and reflect on your current website structure.

Now that we've filled you in on the positive impact of link building, it’s time to devise a strategy to maximise your company’s search engine score.

Manually adding links

You can place your link on another website that you don’t own, for example by submitting your website to a business directory or forum. As this is a fairly straightforward method for building links it tends to have lower value in search rankings, but focusing on business directories with high traffic will increase the likelihood of visitors discovering your website.

You can earn links by having credible, valuable content that other websites will want to reference. A link is considered ‘earned’ if another website links to it without you asking. The best way to ‘earn’ a link is to include linkable assets such as infographics and data studies, or content promotion.

The whole point of having a link building strategy is to maximise your potential search engine ranking. The more links that point to a specific page, the greater authority it will have, resulting in a higher ranking. But it’s not just about quantity- quality links go a long way.

Links from websites that are relevant to your own are more valuable, and the placement of a link can have a great implication on the success of the click-through rate (CTR). Aim to position your links at the very top of the page where possible, and only include links that are truly a valuable asset to the content on the page, otherwise, you’re simply diluting your page’s authority.

With your newfound knowledge of website links, we’re sure you’ll be combing through your site to find ways to optimise your link building strategy. If you want a helping hand, Ketchup offers helpful SEO services to optimise your SEO performance. Let us take the stress out of the process by offering a free SEO audit from our specialist team. Find out more here.