The Definitive Guide to Link Building in 2021

The rules of link building have been changing over time. Most of the people who have been unable to catch up with these changes have given up on the link building initiative. According to Google, links are among the top ranking factors that you cannot ignore.

The core Google Algorithm is founded on links and this is not about to change. Therefore, you should learn how to find great links if you desire to grow. Link building has been dormant among those who are not ready to adapt to the ever-changing rules. The process calls for a lot of perseverance, details, tools, and skills.

Therefore, you should not focus on on-page SEO and forget about links. You need to stay up to date with the new requirements of link building if you want to succeed. Google pays close attention to links more than anything else.

Changes in How People Use Links in SEO:

Google Penguin has changed the way people utilize backlinks in SEO. Before 2012, you could easily purchase your purchasing position by adding more links. Currently, you cannot get to the first pages of SERPs unless you attract high-quality links.

The Google Penguin Spam Filter is now a critical element of the Core Algorithm of Google and works all the time.  Having poor quality backlinks will have an adverse effect on the ranking of your site in the search engines.

What are BackLinks?

The term backlinks refer to a reference from the other web pages to your website. It is very different from the outgoing or outbound links from your web page. The other name for backlinks is inbound links and you should not confuse the two. Backlinks play a critical role in helping search engines to determine the importance or popularity of your website.

Therefore, link building is a critical ranking factor for Google. Links are good because they point to great content, pass power, trust, and it is hard to find a website without links. It is good to have as many backlinks as you can if you want a better ranking.

However, quality is more important than quantity when it comes to link building. Risky or weak backlinks will do more harm than good to your website. Such links can attract a penalty from Google or even make you lose your organic traffic.

The relevance of a link may also depend on your keywords, language, country, or industry among other factors. There are no general rules to link building and you have to make sure that you are doing your best to get everything right the first time.

Google’s Rules for Link Building

Not all links are equal and hence you have to be keen as you begin your link building campaign. As you build links for your customers and business, you have to make them relevant and link them to great content.

Build natural links and don’t allow Google to conclude that you are attempting to manipulate the search engine. Such links will be a violation of the Webmasters Guidelines and hence will attract penalties. Google likes links that are user-focused, relevant, and of high quality.

Therefore, you need to differentiate between good links and bad link building practices. Don’t do an excessive link exchange or cross-linking as Google will catch up with you. Link exchange linking, reciprocal linking is not bad as long as you don’t over-do it.

According to Google guidelines, buying links to improve your ranking is a breach of their law. Instead, concentrate on promoting your website and creating high-quality content so as to attract natural backlinks. Apart from patience, it will cost you nothing else to get excellent results.

Top Link Building Tips

1. Ask for Backlinks:

This is an excellent starting point in your backlinking campaign. Think about your partners, colleagues, relatives, and friends who have an active site or blog. All you need to do is a request for backlinks. However, make sure the backlinks are coming from a relevant website.

2. Build a Relationship:

You need to build good relationships for good link building. There are several opportunities for building new contacts. Begin with niche-related communities such as social groups, blogs, and forums. Make the initial step and begin contributing to relevant and interesting posts and comments. Provide contextual value for each discussion.

Actively participate in online communities that focus on your niche. It will help you to gain high-quality backlinks to get the best backlinking opportunities.

3. Give a Testimonial:

Testimonial link building results in a win-win situation. Many enterprises give you an opportunity to state a few words about the experience you have using their products. On the contrary, it’s an excellent way of building customer trust.

It is a great chance to get potential traffic and backlinks from those websites and has higher approval rates than the standard link request emails. The testimonial will give you great backlinking opportunities for your brand.

4. Start a Blog:

Don’t make a blog with a single backlink or post to your website. You could be wasting your time and creating a risky link for your website. Make sure you keep your personal blog alive. Focus on the clients of your industry and produce useful, relevant, and well-structured content. The whole world will want to link to this group the more. It is an excellent way to get great link building opportunities and benefit from them.

5. List Your Website in Trustworthy Directories:

There are several online directories that offer real value to internet users and Google has not put them in their search results. You should not allow listing your website on such pages.

However, not all online directories are bad. The directory should give you a chance to post a link on your site but also give useful information to potential clients in the directories you would like to be listed on.

The best choice is to go for niche-specific websites as an excellent choice. Listing your business in such directories will make it easy to be indexed in the main search engines and assist individuals to locate you online.

6. Write an Excellent Guest Post:

Several blogs and sites will accept to publish your article. However, make sure the blog and website are relevant to your niche before making the publication. The article is not about how great you and your company are.

Pay close attention to quality i.e. it should be interesting, professional, and well-written. Remember a poor article can lead to a bad reputation for your brand. The links that you build should help your brand and not have adverse effects on it.

7. Find Out the Common Backlinks for Your competitors:

If you are researching your competitors, you may discover that they have common backlinks in common. One surprising thing is that you may not be having some of them. You can try to see whether you can get some of these backlinks.

8. Get Indirect Backlinks From Your Competitors:

Some of your competing brands link to the same websites. LJT (Link Juice Thief) find places where most of your competitors link. Some of these websites are big authorities within the industry. If you manage to get your backlinks here, your competitors will indirectly begin linking to you.

It will help you receive high-quality backlinks from your niche. These websites should be relevant to your niche so that they don’t risk your link building profile.

9. Recover the Deal Backlinks:

Sometimes you may come across broken links on your site. It can happen if you change the location of your page or if another webmaster-provided a wrong spelling to your link. In this case, the backlinks will go back to the 404 error.

The issues may also take place after re-launching your site or migrating it to another domain. You then need to re-direct the link to another page. The Link Juice Recovery Tool will help you in finding backlinks.

10. Turn Your Mentions to Backlinks:

This is among the easiest ways to get some new backlinks. There is a person who could have written something about you. They could have mentioned your product or brand but did not link it to your website. All you need to do is contact the webmaster and request him or her to convert the mention into a backlink.

Searching Google directly can help you to find these mentions. You could also use the SERP tool for the same purpose in your link building efforts. It will help you to find the most relevant results so that you can avoid chasing irrelevant and weak links.

Read more: 10 Best Backlink Checker Tools

11. Find Healthy Backlinks From your Strongest Competitors:

Google launched its Penguin updates back in 2012 and hence one of the primary concern of the webmaster is having strong links. If you don’t want Google to penalize you, make sure you have safe links. You need to get non-risky and strong links that are relevant to your search.

The Competitive Link Detox tool can help you compare your website against your ten competitors. After receiving your results report, the LRT Power* Trust tool can help you sort the links and by low DTOXRISK.

12. Get the Most Relevant Link Building Opportunities:

The internet has so many link building opportunities. You can place your backlinks on several sites, blogs, or forums even though finding them is not that easy. SERP Research tools will help you find strong and relevant sites to place your thematic forum or guest article with Follow links. It will help you to find the strongest and most relevant results.

13. Know the New Links From Your Competitors:

A quick reaction can make the whole difference between failure and success and the internet is not an exemption. You need to be in the picture of the activities of your competitors. Link Alerts tool will tell you the new backlinks you have and also monitor your competitors.

It will give you fresh link building opportunities and discover new techniques and sources to use in the future. You can get these link alerts in your email with fresh backlinks. It will also help you to find negative SEO alerts. If you have unwanted links, you will react with immediate effect and hence cushion your website against Google penalties.

14. Launch Scholarship Contests or Giveaway Campaign:

.edu and .gov links pass a high level of trust to users even though it is hard to get them. When you launch a program that awards a scholarship to a student who writes blog posts on a certain topic. Students have access to the University magazines and blogs and such a campaign can give you high-trust links. It is among the smartest link building ideas in this guide.

15. Earn Your Links:

Like any other company out there, the primary goal of Google is to earn money. You can only help Google achieve this objective by providing a good user experience. Good user experience will come with relevant search results. If you don’t offer relevant search results, users will switch to another search engine.

For Google, great content means something that is valuable, credible, accessible, useful, findable, and desirable. The search engine will check some of the technical features on your websites such as keyword density, complexity, design, navigation, and load speed. Google also measures the user experience through the time spent on the site, click-through rate, and bounce rate.

The advantage of having good content is that it will give you several backlinks. Remember Google also pays close attention to the links that come on your website. In fact, links are the number one ranking factor for Google. You will not get any links if you don’t have great content. At this point, link building outreach comes in handy. Learn how to write high-quality articles and you will be on the safe side.

Link Building:-Final Thought

In conclusion, you also need to use infographics and lists to make your content more appealing. Don’t forget to research case studies and reports and use the information to support your personal opinion. You can also enhance your link building through newsletter subscriptions as long as you use them in the right way.

The extra materials for link building are podcasts from research, transcripts, webinar recordings, videos, infographics, and guides. Learn from others, especially the authority leaders in your industry, and you will succeed. You will discover that link building is not hard as long as you are using the right tools and techniques to execute the process.

Are you looking for high-quality backlinks to enhance your search results? Call us at [email protected] for the best link building opportunities.

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