The Importance of Link Building

Link building is an important aspect of SEO marketing. If you have not yet employed link building strategies in your marketing structure, you are possibly missing out on potential business. Using link building strategies will help you create high-quality SEO marketing campaigns that will help your business thrive. But, first you need to understand what it is and how to use it.

What is link building?

Link building is a strategy that that gets web pages to link to each other by acquiring hyperlinks from other websites and apply them to your own site. It helps users navigate between different pages on the Internet. They also help search engines crawl between the pages on your website. There are different ways to build links. But, if you can master at least one of them, it can catapult you ahead of your competition. In the United States, the interest for link building has grown 43 percent since 2005.

How are links created?

Since links are at the crux of link building, it is important to know something about their creation. A link tag has four parts, all of which work together to create the entire unit. Each part has a specific function within the link:

• The beginning: the first part of the link is known as the anchor. It opens the link tag and indicates to the search engine that there is a link that leads to something else following it. This part of the link is identified by an “a”.
   
• Link referral location: the referral location shows to where the URL is pointing. It can be another web page, an image, or a downloadable file. This part of the link is identified with an “href”. If this part begins with a #, it indicates that the link leads to a different section of the same page.
   
• Visible text of link: this section consists of a small portion of the text that users will see on the page when they click on the link. It often stands out from the surrounding text in some way. It often appears blue and underlined to indicate it is a link that can be clicked on.
   
• Closure: this part of the link indicates to search engines that the link is complete.

How link building helps businesses

Link building increases SEO ranking, but it provides many advantages for business as well.

• Builds relationships: when you build your links it requires you to reach out to other businesses, often to relay information about promotions and other activities related to your business. Although your primary focus for reaching out is to improve your link, there are also residual benefits as well. You can foster long-term relationships that is mutually beneficial to both businesses. Guest posting services and strategies have increased by 112 percent in interest since 2005.
   
• Referral business: Strong links can improve traffic to your site as well as improve your ranking. If your site is linked to a relevant and often visited site, it can boost your sales as well. Further, those sales can easily turn into repeat customers, so you can reap the benefits far into the future.
   
• Brand building:  good link building also helps to promote your brand. It can help to show that you are an authority in your field through links to relevant content. It can also help to promote the expertise of your company as well as the strengths of its goods and services.

Make sure your pages are worth linking to

For your links to be truly worth building, you must have valuable information to link to. Start your website’s homepage. Build links that connect to important industry information and other specialized resources. Also, create a blog that contains relevant information that you can link to as well. Much of the content you will want to include will already have been created by your organization, some of it will need to be expanded on, and some of it will need to be created from scratch with the idea of building links to it in mind.

Strategies to get other pages to link to you

When you reach out to other entities to create links to your site, try some of these tried and true strategies.

• Create compelling content that people will want to link to and reference 
   
• Submit your news for press releases and submit your site to directories
   
• Put your products and services where influential people will see them
   
• Get links from friends, partners, and other people you know

The structure of link building is organic and changes continually, so it is important to keep up on the practice and be willing to make changes whenever necessary. However, as long as you start with content that is worth linking to, the effort you put into building links is well worth it in the long run. 

Link Building and SEO in 2018

As we head into 2018, it's important to evaluate and update your marketing campaign and SEO strategies. You want to head into the year with a solid campaign and plan to increase your sales and your success. In order to do this, understanding SEO and link building is essential. Last year Backlinko analyzed 1 million Google search results:

• Links were found to impact search ranking more than any other factor.
   
• Backlinks are one of Google's top three ranking signals.
   
• Google looks at links to a page instead of just analyzing the content of the page.
   
• SEO tools demand has increased by over 200 percent over the past decade and is continuing to rise.
   
• A case study was completed by Backlinko found that one Stumbleupon post had 17,584 different visitors to a brand new website during just one day and then over 204,000 total visitors in the last four months. There was also a consistent growth pattern for traffic for the entire website.
   
• Evaluate where your link is on the page: links in the middle of the page are worth more than links in footers and sidebars. Put more links in the main body of the webpage.
   
• Use emails to your advantage. Instead of asking for a link in your first outreach email, you may want to wait. Consider using a two-step process instead. First, send out a feeler email. Second, send out a very personal email. The reply rate for the two-step sequence is 40 percent, while the direct pitch has only a 16 percent reply rate.
   
• Heading into 2018, keep prioritizing content. You will have more success with people linking to your content if you have valuable content to begin with. The rest of the work that you put into link building will be for nothing if you don't have the content to back it up. It is a great time of year to reevaluate your strategy and improve as we head into a new year. After content, you should prioritize the relationships you have with other businesses and make sure to keep these strong, so you can help each other move forward and have continued success.
   
• The structure of link building is organic and changes continually, so it is important to keep up on the practice and be willing to make changes whenever necessary. However, as long as you start with content that is worth linking to, the effort you put into building links is well worth it in the long run. 

Looking for a place to start? Did we build your website? Contact us today or leave a comment and link build with Virteom! We can write a featured blog post about your website and in return, you can write a blog about working with us! 

Blog Updated: 12/26/2017