In the most basic sense, link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites back to your own website. A link is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet. You’ll probably use them all the time and never once thought about their importance until now. 

Your website could be full of high-quality content and information that would benefit a lot of people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will rank well. Google believes that links and quality content are two of the most important ranking factors when it comes to where a website is positioned on their search engine results. Trustworthy links have a big impact on the success of your search engine positions. 

What is link building?

Links, also known as inbound links, backlinks or external links, are HTML hyperlinks that point from one website to another. It really is that simple. However, links are the online equivalent of popularity and success. If you were to ask 10 people in real life which restaurant you should eat at tonight and most of them pick the same one, you would feel confident that you were going to get a great meal. Links have the same effect for search engines, the more quality links people give to a website, the higher their reputation. 

Links are not only valuable in search engine optimisation but also audience development through referral traffic and marketing. 


How does it work?

In general, you can improve the ranking of your website by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link you’re your pages. The more popular and important a site is, the more weight the links from that site carry. For example, a site like the BBC, has thousands of diverse sites linking to it. This indicates it provides lots of knowledge, has developed authority, and is well recognised among those other sites. Therefore, ranks higher than many other sites online. 

Search engines rank websites based on several factors, these include; the total number of links to your pages, the quality of the link, the diversity and many more factors. The state of your link profile helps search engines understand how your site relates to other sites on the Internet. There are various SEO tools that allow you to analyse your link profile and begin to understand its overall makeup.


What is its importance?

Links are a major factor in how search engines determine ranking positions. Meaning that the number of good links pointing at your website can significantly increase your chances of ranking well.

Link building should never be solely about search engine rankings, although for many this is important. It is important to focus on acquiring links that will bring qualified traffic to your website and who’s audience would find value in the content you share.  


Where to start?

There are a number of link building strategies used to get external websites to link to yours and provide a reputable link back to your website. These include:

Content Creation - Create compelling and high-quality content that people will naturally want to reference and link back to. Share your content to your audience and you should receive some links back if your content was useful or informative. 

Mentions - Put your product, service, or site in front of influencers in your industry, such as popular bloggers or people with a large social media following.

Use your contacts - Ask businesses you work closely with to link to your site. Links from sites that are in the same general industry or niche as your site will have more value than links from random, unrelated sites. So do think carefully before you start asking friends and family members in a completely unrelated field. 


What makes a good link?

When people began to learn about the power of links, they began manipulating them for their benefit. Finding ways to gain artificial links just to increase their search engine rankings. While these dangerous tactics can sometimes work, search engines such as Google penalise websites that do so. This can include removing all web pages or domain entries from their search engines. 

A healthy link profile is important and indicated to search engines that you are gaining your links in an ethical manner and working hard for the link. A good link is from a website that is relevant and has a high trust score. 


 With link building there are no short cuts to high-quality links. Buying links are against Google’s and other search engines guidelines and can work against your SEO strategy. It is worth investing time into developing a strong and reputable link building portfolio.

We take a proactive approach to creating high-quality link profiles that establish trust with search engines and see the position of your website rise.  If you’d like to find out how Ascensor can help you get the most out of your link building efforts, please get in touch.

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