If you’ve got a new website and you’re keen to start seeing some SEO improvements, it’s a good idea to begin with some foundational link-building practices.
It’s well-known within the SEO and online marketing industry that acquiring more links, especially high-quality ones, to your website can provide a considerable boost to your search engine rankings and organic traffic. So, here’s a quick guide to getting started with some basic link-building activities.
What are Links & Why are They Important for SEO?
In SEO terms, links, also known as backlinks, are simply live, clickable links from an external website to your website. If you’ve ever been reading a blog post or seen a clickable graphic that links out to another site, that’s a classic example of a backlink.
Why are these important for SEO? Although the main search engines keep their exact algorithms and ranking factors a closely guarded secret, it’s been well-documented that backlinks can play a key role in the ranking potential for a website or online resource.
Backlinks have been likened to digital votes, and the more other websites ‘vote’ for your website (by linking to it), the more the search engines regard your site as a valuable, relevant, or authority site that is worthy of ranking well in the listings pages.
However, SEO and backlinking is highly nuanced, so it’s not simply a case of getting lots of other sites to link to yours. In SEO terms, all websites are not created equal, and a link from a strong, established, powerful site can carry much more SEO weight than a link from a new or poor-quality site. Additionally, there’s an issue of relevancy – if the site linking to yours is strongly related to your website’s topic it can be more beneficial and effective than a link from a random site that has no relevance to your material.
Being aware of the nuances of backlinking, such as the quality and quantity of links pointing to your site, can help you consider how you’d like to include these SEO benefits in your marketing mix. Maintaining natural and relevant backlinks is crucial for staying visible in Google’s search results.
How to Build Links for a New Website
If you decide that building some good-quality links would be beneficial for your rankings and traffic, here are some tips for getting started; starting with a well-planned link building campaign is essential.
Additionally, consider these advanced link building tips to enhance your strategy and ensure you are acquiring high-quality backlinks effectively.
Link to the homepage with branded anchor text initially
When beginning your link-building efforts, keep it simple and stick to branded anchor text that links to your homepage. For example, if your brand is My Online Biz and your home page is myonlinebiz.com, you would use the anchor text “My Online Business” and use the url https://myonlinebiz.com to link back to your homepage.
Branded Social Media links
Social Media Profiles are a great way to get started with some foundational link-building, partly because you have full access to the link settings, but also because they start to establish your site as a brand online, which can help with SEO. Again, use your brand name in the link to help your company get established, and link back to the homepage initially, though you can always change the url down the line if you have a particular strategy that requires linking to a different page.
Local/niche directory links
Another good place to start is adding your business to online directories that allow a backlink. Again, simply use your brand name as the anchor text and link it back to your homepage. Directories are often free and you can add or edit your own links, which makes them a good place to begin. Even though they might not be regarded by the search engines as the highest quality backlink, they’re a quick and easy way to start building a backlink profile and getting your website established.
Associations & accreditation links
If you are a member of any professional associations or you have accreditation with an online provider, you can request a link from their site to yours. These types of backlinks can be invaluable, especially if their websites are deemed high-quality and relevant sites by search engines. In addition to the backlink ‘juice’, links from these sites add to the credibility of your website and your business, both for search engines and human users.
Internal links
Although internal links are not regarded as the strongest type of link-building assets, they can still be beneficial for your SEO. For one thing, they help search engines discover your site content and understand both the hierarchy and the subject matter. This alone can deliver a boost to your SEO. Secondly, internal links are within your control, meaning you can add or edit them anytime without needing anyone else’s permission. So, when relevant, it’s good practice to use internal linking as part of your SEO efforts.
Creating linkable content
This is the ultimate link-building strategy: create highly valuable and share-worthy content that people naturally want to link back to and share all over the internet to attract links. Although this can require the most time and energy investment upfront, as well as a degree of good luck, it can lead to a wealth of beneficial backlinks that boost your rankings and traffic for years to come.
Guest Posting for Link Building
Guest posting is a win-win strategy for acquiring quality backlinks. The idea is that you write a helpful blog post for another site, and in return, they link back to your site, ideally with the anchor text and url you’d prefer. If you enjoy writing and building up a network of connections online, this can be a great way to see more relevant and quality sites linking back to yours.
Competitor analysis
One way to research which sites and backlinks would be most beneficial for your business is to review the backlink profile of your competitors and analyze their link-building tactics. Another effective strategy is broken link building, which involves identifying and replacing non-functioning links on web pages with valuable content from your site.
To do this, search for your chosen keyword, see who already ranks for that keyword, and then find out what backlinks they have. There are specialist tools to help you do this, which is evidence that it’s a popular and viable practice.
Building up a strong and beneficial backlink profile is an ongoing practice that is usually a core part of any successful SEO strategy. These tips will help you get started and learn which of the various methods you’d like to focus on more deeply in the future.