Link Building SEO: The Most Complete Guide for Beginners
SEO messages as a digital marketing strategy are starting to be recognized and used by website owners (online businesses). One of the SEO techniques used is link building.
What is Link Building?
Link building is a strategy in building links within the website structure itself and getting links from other websites that point to your website. In getting links from other websites then referred to as backlinks or backward links which are useful in increasing domain referrals.
And you need to remember that Google values backlinks by quality, not quantity.
Quality backlinks are links that come from websites that are relevant, credible, and have stable traffic. Quality backlinks even if there is only one number will beat 100 backlinks that are not of high quality.
Types of Link Building
Link building must be comprehensive, built with 2 types of link structures, namely internal and external:
Internal link building
Internal link building itself is a strategy to build backward links from one web page to another (still on the same website) that are still related or relevant.
some SEO observers classify internal links into four different types, namely:
- Contextual links or in-text links are links that are in the anchor text of the main content of website pages. Blog posts often feature these types of links to direct readers to relevant, related content. It's also useful for helping Google understand how your site's pages relate to one another.
- Navigational links are internal links that must and always be in the website's main menu because this type forms the main navigational structure of the website. Navigation links are often located in the top menu or sidebar of websites that cover general categories, such as product menus, services, or the website's main content topics.
- Footer links are a type of navigational link that generally appear at the bottom of website pages where they must also lead to other pages on the same website. For example links contact us, about us, FAQ, and other types of reference pages.
- Sidebar links are another type of navigational link which is useful for directing users to related content. This type of internal link is usually implemented by news or recipe websites to encourage visitors to access related pages on the same website.
External link building
This type of link building uses the website you are targeting as a place to place the link or in other words you are looking for backward links from other websites to your website.
1. Organic
The first type of link building is link building with organic methods. That is, you don't need to look for sites that can be used as a place to plant backlinks. You also don't need to ask someone to embed a link that leads to your site.
This is the best type of link because it is obtained organically, that is, when other people voluntarily place your link on their website. This can happen because your content is considered to be of good quality or can be used as a credible source of information.
2. Outreach
In contrast to the first type of link building. The link building outreach technique is a technique for getting backlinks by asking permission from other website owners to embed links that point to your website.
3. Black Hat
The next type of link building is Black Hat. This one method is an alternative for website managers who want faster results than other methods.
The Black Hat method is done by creating your own backlinks for your own website with the aim that the ranking will increase rapidly. Even the method of planting backlinks using the Black Hat method is now very neat, detailed and has a lot of success.
How to Build a Link Building Strategy
There are various link building strategies that can be used in Off Page SEO optimization. Here are some link building strategies that you can run:
1. Content link building
Content link building is a link building method that uses an article creation method, this type is included in the organic category.
Production of Quality Content
In order to get quality backlinks, you also need to create high-quality content that has value for your website readers.
Some examples of the types of content that usually get lots of backlinks, such as infographics, statistics, white papers, guides, videos, and image galleries.
Then, how do you create quality content? At least you need to understand choosing content topics, using the right keywords, making interesting content titles, engaging content, and how to include related links.
After creating quality content, only then can you promote the content that you created earlier via social media and you can link websites that are relevant to yours. You can ask them to post a link to your content on their website. If the content was really good, of course other website owners will have the potential to make content creation references.
Guest Blogging
The next way is guest blogging. This method is a link building that is done by being a guest on another website by writing articles to be published on that site.
In that article, you can insert a link to your website. However, still make sure the guest blogging you make is of good quality and not spamming.
Share Content in Online Forums
Another way of link building is to get backlinks and share the content you create in one particular online forum.
2. Broken Link Building
Broken links are broken links that can no longer be accessed by visitors. When you don't have time to create new content, take advantage of broken link building. Help website owners fix the broken links they have and in return, you can offer new links to relevant targets of your website.
And broken link building is a strategy that aims to help website owners fix existing broken links. How to? Of course by providing a link to your website.
3. Link Reclamation
Link reclamation is a strategy that aims to claim a link that should be yours. This link building strategy is divided into 3 kinds.
Link 404
If a website has posted a link to your website, but the link points to a page on your website that no longer exists or has been deleted. So the 404 error appears.
So here you can contact the website owner to replace the link with another page of your website.
Mentions Without Links
It's not uncommon for people to mention your brand or website name without providing a link. You can contact the owner of the website to provide a backlink when mentioning the name of your website.
Image Without Source Link
When using images on your website, many other websites may take images without your permission. And this is a copyright infringement.
Here you can take this opportunity, contact them to provide a link to your website in the caption (image source).
conclusion
It's best to run a link building strategy as early as possible, so that the potential to get ranked on Google search pages will increase.
Having this strategy can help business owners to build site authority, generate referral traffic, and have long-term promotions. Even link building will also support the company's branding itself so that it can be more popular.