Why is link building so important?
The previous chapter described how to make your site visible to search
engines and how to optimize keywords by using on-page SEO. If you want to
see your rankings improve by leaps and bounds, then your site needs links.
You may have wondered what makes link building so important, especially
when there are so many factors Google use to rank sites.
The truth is, links are such a strong factor, it is unlikely you will rank high for
a keyword if you are competing against sites with more backlinks.
When you think about it, links are the currency of the web. Each time a page
links to another, it is a vote for the value of the page being linked to. If a page
provides massive value to Internet users, it stands to reason it will be linked
to from other sites. This is why links are such a strong factor in Google's
algorithm.
Link building is the key to ranking your site high in the search engine results.
The dirty little secret no one wants to tell you about
link building.
There are a lot of opinions circulating the Internet about the best kind of links
to build to your site. So much so, they often escalate into heated discussions.
What is the best link? A link from a government site or from a high trafficked
blog? Is it better to get a link from a highly relevant site or from a site with a
lot of social media activity?
The dirty secret no-one wants to tell you about link building is there is no
single best kind of link.
If this weren’t the case, Google wouldn't work. Everyone would go out and
find a way to spam their way to the top of the rankings very quickly. Having
thousands of one type of link pointing to a page is suspicious and a clear sign
the site owner is gaming the system.
That said, as a rule, you should try to build links on authoritative, relevant
and high-quality sites. High-quality, relevant links are much stronger than
links from low-quality, unrelated sites.
How to acquire links and what to avoid in link
building.
There are many stories floating around about business owners being slammed
by Google for no good reason. Don't let the horror stories mislead you.
In most cases, what really happened is the webmaster was doing something
clearly suspicious or outdated, like building thousands of links to their site
from link directories, and then their rankings suddenly dropped off from
Google's top 10 search results.
If you don't exhibit overly spammy behavior in your link building, as a
general rule you will be OK.
These best practices will ensure you acquire links correctly and don't break
Google's terms of service:
1. Acquire links naturally and evenly over time. Your links should be attained
consistently and organically.
In fact, Google has made its approach with assessing link acquisition in
relation to time public knowledge. Patent US20050071741 outlines how
Google analyzes the age of links and the rate they are acquired and then uses
this information to calculate the search results.
If you don’t fancy reading up on patents in your spare time, then just
remember to gradually build up your links over time, so Google sees that
your website is acquiring links organically. Don't go out and buy one
thousand links pointing to your site overnight or you’re sure to set off a red
flag in Google’s system and get into its bad books.
2. As a rule, don't purchase links. Buying links with the intention of boosting
your rankings is against Google's terms of service and you risk being
penalized. These kinds of links may work, but are generally not worth the
potential damage, unless you are confident you know what you are doing.
3. Forget about link-swapping or link-trading schemes. These are completely
obvious to Google, and either no longer work or may harm your site. This
goes against common knowledge, but I've achieved countless number one
rankings for ridiculously competitive keywords without ever swapping links.
Link-swapping is extremely time-consuming and completely unnecessary.
Get by without it.
4. Don't spam message boards, article sites or blog comments with crappy
content. This might work temporarily, but strategies such as these are
outdated very quickly.
5. There are paid networks out there offering to build new links to your site
for a low monthly fee each month. Never use them. These networks are
against Google’s terms of service and using them is a quick way to ensure
you find yourself in hot water with Google.
Anchor text. What's all the fuss?
There has been some controversy around anchor text, as touched on in a
previous chapter. Anchor text is the text contained in a link. Anchor text was
one of the strongest factors for achieving top rankings.
If you had one thousand links to your site with “NFL football jerseys” as the
link text, and competitors only had a handful of links with the same anchor
text, it was likely you would rank number one. That is, until Google’s
Penguin update effectively put an end for SEOs using “exact match” anchor
text as their strategy. Now it is just simply too risky.
Not only is it no longer as effective as it once was, building hundreds of
“exact match” links to a site actually can prevent it from ranking for that
keyword.
So then, you might wonder, what is the best way to build up anchor text?
It should be natural.
It is OK to have your targeted keyword in your anchor text, but it should not
be the only keyword or the main keyword in all of your links, and there
should be a mix of related keywords.
If you think about it, this is a pattern all legitimate sites naturally attract. It
defies logic that a quality site would automatically be linked with the exact
same text throughout the entire World Wide Web.
Look over the below examples to see a bad anchor text profile compared to a
natural anchor text profile:
Bad anchor text – external links
http://www.examplefootballbrand.com/football-jerseys.html
NFL football jerseys - 200 links
Good anchor text
http://www.examplefootballbrand.com/football-jerseys.html
examplefootballbrand - 50 links
NFL football jersey store - 10 links
NFL football jerseys - 5 links
http://www.example.com - 25 links
football jersey store - 5 links
football jerseys online - 5 links
football jacket store - 15 links
click here - 7 links
website - 15 links
The above good anchor text example illustrates the natural way sites
accumulate links over time. Your target keyword should not be the most
linked phrase to the page.
You can learn a lot by looking at the search engine results ranking in Google,
enter high-ranking sites into Link Explorer, and looking at their anchor text.
You'll notice almost every top-ranking page has natural anchor text, like the
good example above.
Track your link-building efforts and keep them in a spreadsheet. This way
you can monitor your anchor text and make sure it fits in with best practices.
Link Explorer
https://moz.com/link-explorer
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