Link Building 101: The Basics
Link building is an SEO topic that we haven’t touched on very much recently but is key to Search Engine Optimization. This blog post will go over basic questions about link building for your company’s benefit. “Link building 101: The Basics” will lay a foundation for proper and positive link building for your company’s website. Let’s get into it!
Link Building 101: The Basics
What is link building?
Link building is the process of linking throughout your own website. It is also the process of gaining links to your own website from others. High quality link building can be a difficult task to tackle in SEO. Once you’re equipped with the basics from this blog post you’ll be set up to investigate more and start link building for your own site.
Link building relates to brand building as well. In our last post, I talked about differentiating your brand from the crowd. Link building techniques like creating useful content and updating information will help in brand upkeep as well (two-for-one deals are always appreciated).
What’s the difference between internal vs. external links?
Internal links link to another page on your own website. We use internal links on our blog frequently when we link to another blog post with content that relates to what we’re talking about. We also do this with a “contact us” link in most of our blog posts (speaking of. . . contact us here if you’d like to chat about link building and SEO for your own site). While internal links improve interaction on your own website, external links can bring new traffic to your site. External links are links from other sites that lead to your page.
How do search engines use links?
Before we can go into how to begin link building, we should understand why it’s important. Link building is important because search engines use links discover new websites. They also use them to figure out where a website page should fall in their search results. Search engines, like Google, factor in how many quality links are leading to a web page when they decide how relevant and useful a page is to internet searches. This basically means that if a lot of respected sites link to your page, you’re more likely to show up higher on Google searches. For SEO purposes, then, link building is very important.
How do you start link building?
One important concept to remember while link building is that your site needs to be worthy of linking to. High quality content is necessary for link building. Blog posts are a viable option for link building content. Graphics, resources, or tools are also used to incorporate content on your site that’s useful to link to. So before you start a link building campaign—start a quality content campaign. Re-work your content or create content that is worthy of linking to.
Link building can be done many ways. In a blog post to come soon, we’ll go more in depth with how to increase external links for your site, so be on the lookout for that! In the meantime, one way to build links is by reaching out to others in your industry for guest blog posts. This’ll allow both you and the other writer to link back to your own sites. If something applicable comes up in your industry, press releases can create links from a high rated website (like the news source that picks up your press release) to your own site. Connecting with those in your industry’s network will help in getting referrals or mentions from others.
Internal link building has the potential to be easier than external link building. As shown above, linking to various pages on your own site is helpful. However, while linking throughout your site, keep it clear. Clear linking text and straightforward connections from one page to the other helps in viewer’s engagement and your website’s search engine rankings.
For personalized SEO and link building information, feel free to contact RedMoxy.