What Is Link Building?
Link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites to your own. These links, usually referred to as backlinks, are like votes of confidence from one site to another.
Think of backlinks as digital recommendations. The more high-quality backlinks a site has, the more search engines like Google view that site as trustworthy and authoritative.
Say you run a blog about cooking, and a popular food website links to one of your recipes. That link signals to users and search engines that your content is worth a look.
Or say you are a kitchen remodeling company and a local news outlet links to your site in a story, perhaps a reader’s choice awards list. That’s a valuable link that helps prove your local relevance!
In simple terms, link building involves getting other websites to link to your site.
A website might acquire links naturally without ever asking (like the reader’s choice example), or a website might promote its content to other sites and ask for link placement (perhaps like the recipe blog example). Either way, those links are crucial votes of confidence for your site, signaling to users and search engines that your website has something of value to offer them.
Is Link Building Still Important?
Sometimes the debates over what “matters for SEO” make your head spin. While the fuss over the prominence of backlinks was stirred afresh in 2024, most digital marketers agree: quality backlinks lead to better organic search performance.
Google’s PageRank algorithm, developed in 1998, relied heavily on links to score and rank web pages. While Google’s ranking systems have become exponentially more sophisticated since then, it remains clear that an increase in the quality and quantity of backlinks to a website positively correlates with improved search engine rankings.
While Google doesn’t really talk much about PageRank today, their documentation still mentions links as an important signal:
One of several factors we use to help determine [expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness] is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content. This has often proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted.
In short, link building still matters for SEO.
Backlinks work to enhance a website’s credibility and authority, thereby improving search engine rankings and resulting in increased organic traffic.
Link Building Basics
Before we move into strategies, let’s make sure we have some link-building blocks in place. It’s not rocket science (even if the freelancer on Fiverr wants you to think it is), but a few definitions can clear up confusion.
Key Terms
- Backlink — A link from one site to another, also referred to as “inbound links” or “incoming links.” These links vouch for your site and its content.
- Anchor Text — The clickable text in a hyperlink. Often highlighted with a different font color or underlined, anchor text provides valuable context about the content of the linked page. Descriptive anchor text helps users and search engines understand the link.
- Link Juice — SEO jargon used to describe the value or authority that one website “passes” to another via backlinks. High-quality backlinks from reputable sites tend to have a great impact on the receptor site, and so it is said that “more link juice” is passed.
- Domain Authority (DA) — A metric developed by Moz that helps predict how well a website’s pages will rank in search engines. DA scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores assuming a greater ability for a website to rank its pages. Domain authority correlates directly with a website’s number and quality of backlinks.
- Natural Links — Links given naturally by other website owners who link without prompting. Sometimes referred to as “editorial backlinks,” these links are genuine endorsements of a website’s quality content, products, or services.
- Manual Links — Links acquired through deliberate link-building processes like email outreach, guest blogging, and partnerships. These links require manual effort and strategy to obtain.
Link Building Strategies
Building a robust backlink profile can be hard work. We’ll mention three tactics here, but if you’re a website owner, keep your eyes out for link opportunities in your sphere of influence. You never know when a creative link idea or opportunity might pop up.
Just a word of caution before proceeding with the strategies: Fundamentally, quality link building is relationship building. Once the capital exchanged for links moves from relational to another currency, you might be crossing into link spam territory.
Content creation & promotion
Creating valuable, informative, engaging content is the cornerstone of any link-building strategy. High-quality content naturally attracts backlinks as others find it useful and worth referencing.
The more thought leadership permeates your content, the better. Especially in an AI sea of sameness, compelling, incisive content stands out.
If your website and business already have an audience, you might be able to publish and pray (for links). Oftentimes, though, promoting your content across the web, with your audience, and among your relational sphere can increase the likelihood that you land valuable links.
Guest blogging
In 2014, Googler Matt Cutts (in)famously said,
Stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy.
So why are we still recommending guest blogging here as a link-building strategy? Because guest blogging doesn’t have to be spammy.
Guest blogging on link farms and private blog networks (PBNs) will likely earn you a penalty or “manual action” in a heartbeat. Bye, bye, organic traffic! But adding real value to the web with quality content, whether it’s on your own website or a colleague’s, is still plausible and beneficial.
If you know of sites in your niche or in your locale that have a blog (they might even still be asking for guest bloggers!), strike up a relationship and collaborate to produce quality content. Whether you receive a backlink with keyword-rich anchor text to one of your product or service pages or a link to your homepage in your bio, you’ll add value to the web while enriching your backlink portfolio—so long as your content is quality and the host site isn’t spammy.
Broken link building
Websites and their pages aren’t static. Content moves, resulting in the potential for 404 errors and broken links. If a website you follow links to a page that no longer exists, then that’s not helpful to its users. You would be doing that website a favor by informing them of the broken link and providing an alternative on your own website they could link to.
The ins and outs of broken link building can get complicated quickly, but keeping it natural isn’t so hard. If you keep up regularly with some websites in your niche, you’re bound to come across a broken link every once in a while. If you have content that fits the original link’s intent, or if you create content that does so, you have a great chance at landing that broken link for yourself.
Link Building Best Practices
We mentioned at the top of the previous section that link building is fundamentally about building relationships. When link building strays beyond one’s natural relational sphere, things can get spammy fast.
Here are some guardrails to keep you from crossing over into spamland.
Focus on quality links over quantity
Better to have a few high-quality backlinks from reputable sites than the 147th link from a low-quality directory. High-quality links are harder to come by (what of quality isn’t?), but they sure are worth working and waiting for.
Aim for links from websites that are authoritative and relevant to your industry. Staying in the natural orbit of your business will help you find topically and locally (if applicable) relevant links.
Steer clear of spammy techniques
It’s worth reiterating: steer clear of private blog networks (PBNs) and link farms. Link placements on spammy sites will inevitably get you penalized, immolating your organic traffic.
Spammy links are easy.
Spammy links are not worth it.
You might witness websites get away with detritus-level links for a time, but it always and inevitably catches up with them—most of the time, anyway…
Diversify your link profile
Link diversity is great for your website. If you’re forcing a few too many guest blogs and 80% of your quality links are from the same types of sites, you might see the effectiveness of those links diminish. There’s no golden ratio for diversifying, but having a range of blogs, news sites, industry publications, and other types of sites link to you will benefit your site.
Think natural—after all, this is organic search traffic we’re after, isn’t it? A website that’s growing steadily and producing quality content, products, or services will inevitably acquire links from a variety of sources. Even if you’re attempting to speed up that acquisition a bit, make sure you don’t get tunnel vision with a single link-building tactic.
Build relationships
This is the third time we’re saying it, but we’re gonna say it again: building relationships in your industry and locale is crucial for effective link building. Collaborating to produce quality content and products will naturally lead to backlink opportunities.
Better Business, Better Links
If you’re a website owner, why should someone link to your website?
Because you emailed them to ask?
Okay, maybe.
Because you have an undeniably good product?
Much better.
Better businesses land better backlinks. It’s that simple.
Focus on being worthy of the links you want to acquire more than on acquiring links. There’s nothing wrong with using strategies and manual outreach. But if your website is link-worthy, the links will come in due time.
Be something worth talking about. Make something people desire. Provide a service that induces smiles.
Do something great, and watch the links—and all the organic traffic that comes with it—start rolling in.
