Chapter 4

Link Building

Building Authority Through Linking!

Alright, how’s your brain doing? So far we’ve learned how SEO works, found keywords that your target market is searching for, and created some awesome content on your website. Give yourself a pat on the back—you’ve accomplished a lot!

But enough with the congratulations, it’s time to get back to learning! You may have noticed during some of your research on SERPs that there are a lot of old, not-so-great websites out there. And that may make you wonder, “How the heck are they on the first page?” The answer is simple: they likely have a really good standing with the search engine, which means they’ve established “authority” with them.

So how do you establish this authority? Well, it can be accomplished in several ways, including (but not limited to) accumulating links from other high-authority websites related to your industry, expanding and solidifying your brand within different online circles, and building an audience that trusts the quality and consistency of your content and overall brand.

But how do you go about getting links from other web pages? Let’s start with the basics.

What Are Links?

There are two main categories of links: backlinks and internal links. Backlinks come from external sources, while internal links are exactly like they sound—they come from somewhere internally on your website. Let’s expand upon each.

Backlinks

Also known as inbound or external links, backlinks are hyperlinked sections of content that point from a web page on one site to another web page on a different website. To give an example, let’s say you own a coffee company. A lifestyle blogger writing an article about her favorite types of coffee might link to your website.

By doing so, that blogger is indicating to the search engine that your website has high-quality, relevant content related to what her blog is about and the anchor text she chose to link. You can think of backlinks as a sort of SEO word-of-mouth—it’s one website recommending the other.

Types of Backlinks

There are two types of backlinks you should make yourself familiar with:

Follow Backlinks

These are what we just described above. They’re a standard hyperlink that allows search engines to “follow” from one website to another. They count as a positive “vote” or SEO word-of-mouth for your web page from an external web page.

Nofollow Backlinks

These are exactly what they sound like. They are links that are told not to be followed by search engine crawlers (via the rel=”nofollow” attribute in their HTML code) in order to not pass any “link equity” onto a site. Because of this, these types of links do not carry any voting weight to your website.

You should usually shoot to get follow backlinks from other web pages (as long as they’re web pages that are in good standing with search engines and have information relevant to your site). The only benefit to nofollow links is that they do bring traffic to your website, so a nofollow link is better than no link at all.

Our favorite tool for checking all types of links is Link Explorer by Moz, which provides key insights related to the quality and quantity of any links going to or from your site.

It’s important to note that not all links are good.
Make sure to monitor your links regularly. If you get links from spammy, untrusted websites, search engines will sometimes rank you lower. When you check out the Link Explorer tool, you’ll be able to see the “Spam Score” for each backlink you have. The higher the spam score, the more likely it is to hurt. You can have these spammy links removed by either contacting the site owner and asking them to be taken down or by using the Google Disavow Links tool.

Internal Links

Internal links are the other major link category, and these are the links that connect internal pages on the same website. For example, if you’re reading a blog post, you’ll likely see blogs with related or similar content linked at the bottom of the page. If you click on these links, you’ll get redirected to a different blog post on the same website. That’s an internal link! They’re another form of SEO word-of-mouth, except, unlike backlinks, you have complete control over these.

Search engines and some AI models have crawlers (bots that index the contents of websites) that use internal links to crawl from web page to web page throughout your website, so it’s important to have your internal links mapped out. (By this, we mean planning the structure and organizational layout of your website.) Doing so ensures your website is directing crawlers the way you want them to. Most websites start with a navigation bar on their website to make sure users and search engines can figure out which pages are the most important.

How to Build High-Quality Backlinks

Acquiring high-quality backlinks is not easy, which is why they hold as much weight as they do. Link building is a lot like networking—you have to either make some friends or have people trust your content to get backlinks. It’s an ongoing effort, but here’s what we’ve found to work best:

Create Shareable Content

One of the best things you can do to help your business accrue high-quality backlinks is to create shareable content. If you create content that other people find resourceful, they’ll link back to it. This can be content like:

• Blog articles
• Unique resources
• Guides & eBooks

For example, let’s say you’re an expert in all things related to SEO. If you’re making helpful videos and publishing guides about SEO optimization, other people will want to backlink to your website as a resource when they’re creating content that relates to the topic.

E-E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)

E-E-A-T is a phrase that Google loves to use throughout its Search Quality Rater Guidelines. To summarize, E-E-A-T emphasizes that all web pages should have some sort of beneficial purpose and avoid spreading hate, causing harm, or misinforming users.

The more a webpage embodies E-E-A-T, the higher Google is willing to rank it. If a medical advice website is produced by an organization with accredited expertise and aims to inform the general public on health-related topics, then that website exemplifies E-E-A-T.

You want to obtain links from websites with high E-E-A-T because it signals to search engines that your website also contains credible, trustworthy, and useful content to searchers. Because these websites are usually harder to obtain backlinks from, Google will put even more weight behind them if they end up linking to your page. So, how do you get these high-quality backlinks that boost your website? Unfortunately, that part is a bit more complicated.

Think About People You Already Know

It’s important to always take advantage of whatever you already have at your disposal! Leverage your existing relationships—whether that be your loyal fan base, colleagues, friends, or industry peers. If you know people who have websites that are relevant to yours, create content that’s specific to them and send it their way. It may seem like a small amount of people can’t do much, but over time, their consistent support will help your website grow.

Become a Local Hero!

While you don’t have to become a full-on Batman, getting involved in your community is another easy way to earn backlinks to your website (and potentially some business for you while you’re at it). You can do so by:

• Joining local business associations
• Sponsoring local events
• Running local promotions
• Donating your time to nonprofits
• Organizing your own events
• Attending public speaking or training opportunities

All of these things—nonprofits, business associations, promotions—will likely have their own brand online and will therefore be able to backlink to your website.

Be Authentic

A common mistake we see daily (in the thousands of emails in our spam folder) is unauthentic and cookie-cutter outreach. Too often, you see companies create an email template of them asking for backlinks, which they then randomly send out to hundreds of people. This is not an effective nor recommended method, and it can actually harm your brand over time.

If you’re going to be sending emails asking for backlinks, make sure to reach out to website owners whose content is relevant to yours. Create a compelling, personalized email that highlights how backlinking to your content will provide value to their website. You want to be sending information that will help them more in the long run than it will help you.

What to Avoid When Building Links

SEO is just as much about what to avoid as what you should do. There are a bunch of spammy, unethical ways people go about trying to get more links that you’ll want to steer clear of (similar to the black hat practices we’ve mentioned).

Purchased Links

Buying links is a big red flag to search engines. Your backlinks should be constantly growing at a steady rate. If there’s a huge influx all at once from buying them, followed by stagnant growth, your website will likely be flagged. Besides, the types of pages that sell backlinks usually aren’t the most reputable either.

Link Exchanging

Another way that people try to “outsmart” Google is through link exchange. If you’ve had a website long enough, I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of emails (that are probably piled up in your spam folder) asking to “trade links”. These are people offering to put your link on their site as long as you do the same. Not only is this against the rules, but you can also be sure most of them don’t follow through. (Let’s just say there’s a reason those emails end up in your spam folder.)

Low-Quality Links

You may not always ask for this one, but this is a prime example of why you need to watch over all of your links and make sure the links you’re getting are from reputable sources. Links that are coming from spammy websites can actually hurt you, so watch out!

How To Research Backlinks
Want more information on how to research backlinks? We wrote a step-by-step guide to help you learn how to analyze the backlinks your website already has, and what you should be looking for when doing that research.

Link-Building Best Practices

To summarize what we learned, here are a few best link-building practices to keep in mind as you move forward with building your web presence:

• Quality > Quantity
• Create content that will make people want to link to your content (without you even asking).
• Link building is a lot like working out. It’s not a one-time effort; it takes consistent practice to work correctly.
• Regular backlinks are more important than nofollow links, but nofollow links still play a role in healthy link-building.
• Remember to promote your content. Social media is a great tool for this!

Next up, we’re going to be talking about some strategies for local businesses to get web exposure. (If you’re not interested in local exposure, feel free to skip over this chapter.) Otherwise, let’s get started with Chapter 5: Local SEO

Frequently Asked Questions