The more other sites link to yours, the better. Search engines like Google consider the number of links to be one of the decisive factors in determining the authority of your pages. The more authority your pages have, the better positions they will get in search results.
Link Building is therefore a fundamental aspect of website optimization for search engines.
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Why is link building important for SEO?
Google began in the late 1990s as a pioneer in Internet search. It was not the first search engine in the world, on the contrary, many were ahead of it. However, Google was the first to count the number of backlinks from other sites. Each backlink was considered a vote that the site contained quality content. Based on this, he then ranked the pages in the search results.
Since then, the website ranking process has continuously changed and improved, but link building is still one of the most important factors for obtaining high positions in search results. And this is a key success factor for an online business.
In addition to the number of backlinks, it also depends on their quality. Link building has become much more complicated and sophisticated in recent years. People began to abuse it to artificially increase their positions in search engines. Therefore, Google continuously adjusts its terms and algorithms for ranking pages to prevent spam and unfair practices.
Google’s war on spam
It started in 2012 when Google introduced an update to its page ranking calculations that fundamentally changed the future of website search engine optimization (SEO). The update was called “Penguin” and aimed to prevent the manipulation of search results by fraudulent practices – such as buying backlinks or spamming discussion forums. Many sites that used such gray tactics until then immediately lost their search positions.
People gradually began to understand that the only long-term way to successfully build website authority and increase search engine rankings is by publishing quality content and getting natural backlinks. Anyone who tries to use some unnatural abbreviations will be penalized by Google.
Also Read: Five SEO Tactics To Maximize Internal Links
Link building nowadays
Google’s goal is to offer people the most relevant results in their search. If someone is trying to get their site into search artificially, it undermines the credibility of Google itself, so it is understandable that Google tries to prevent this.
As Google gets better at ranking websites, it constantly updates its algorithm. It publishes ethical SEO principles that website owners should follow. It’s all based on publishing quality content. Quality content naturally receives backlinks from other websites that want to draw their readers’ attention to this content or quote some part of it.
What matters in link building
Individual backlinks have different weight in the eyes of Google. Link building also depends on this. Among the factors that determine the strength of a backlink are mainly the following:
- Website authority: Links from authoritative websites carry more weight than links from lesser-known websites. For example, a link coming from Wikipedia will be much more significant than a link from a small personal blog. Google determines the authority of websites based on long-term monitoring of their popularity and credibility on the Internet.
- Content Relevance: If a link comes from a page that deals with the same topic, it will carry much more weight than from some unrelated site. For example, if you have a computer business and someone links to you from a tech blog, it will have a lot more benefit than a random link from an article about handbags.
- Link Text: When someone links to your computer store using the text “good computers,” it shows search engines that your site is about computers. On the contrary, when the text of the link is, for example, “read more here”, it will have less meaning for search engines, because it is not clear what they should expect under the link.
- Link Strength: If a link to your website is in an article that also links to a dozen other sites, that link will have much less meaning than if it links exclusively to you. As if a positive signal is being shared between all the links from that page. At the same time, it depends on which part of the text the link is located, whether it is at the beginning, in a subheading, in a comment, in the footer of the page, etc. The more prominently your link is placed, the better.
How link building works
There are two types of backlinks: internal and external. For each of them, link building works a little differently.
You create internal links yourself within your site. For example, you create a link in article A to article B. Such internal linking is very important. On your website, try to link not only to your home page, but also to different sub-pages, creating a natural hierarchical content structure.
External links come from other people’s sites. For example, someone links from their blog to yours. Of course, getting external links is more difficult because it depends on the website owners. The more relevant links you can get from other sites, the better. If you create quality content, people will naturally start referring to you as an authoritative source of information.
Also Read: Why Most SEO Companies Fail To Provide Quality Link Building Services