What is link building?

The number and quality of backlinks are among the most important factors used by Google’s algorithms to determine the ranking of websites in search results. Therefore, link building is especially crucial in SEO efforts. Bots particularly value links to sites they can trust and that have high ratings.

Therefore, publishing on the right websites is more important than quantity. To learn how to improve your website's SEO, be sure to read our guide on link building.

What is link building?

Link building is simply the process of building a good reputation for your domain on the web through references obtained from high-authority websites. The better the reputation, the more effective your SEO efforts will be. How does it work in practice? A link directing the customer to another HTML document, usually a specific subpage of the company that purchased the article, is placed in the text published on an external portal.

Link building is a difficult and exceptionally time-consuming process, which is why most companies outsource it to marketing and interactive agencies. Google's ranking algorithms themselves are based on hundreds of different factors and analyze millions of websites daily. Each year, there is increasing emphasis on high-quality content, so when choosing links, you should focus on their quality. The more high-quality links you have, the greater the traffic, and consequently, the more visitors your website will attract.

What does a link consist of?

A link to a website consists of several elements that should be considered when planning SEO. The anchor text is the text that helps bots determine the topic of the page. The URL is the address to which the user is taken after clicking the link. The title attribute is optional and displays auxiliary text. Another optional element is the target attribute, which specifies where the link should open.

It is important to know that hyperlinks can have an additional rel attribute that indicates the relationship between the link and the website. Links are divided into dofollow and nofollow, although users themselves cannot distinguish between them. Dofollow links help achieve higher positions in search engine rankings. The nofollow attribute was originally used to combat spam in comments and informs Google that the link should not be associated with the page where it appears. The rel="sponsored" attribute indicates that the link is an advertisement, while rel="ugc" (user generated content) means the link comes from a user comment.

How to check the quality of external links

Analyzing external links will help identify all errors that negatively affect your website’s SEO. The most popular tool is Majestic SEO, which measures the number of external links, keyword linkages, and checks domain authority. It is also worth using Ahrefs – a tool that creates charts showing whether the number of referring links is increasing or decreasing. Be sure to also use the frequently mentioned Google Search Console. This tool shows the URLs that most frequently link to your website. It's a good idea to save backlinks for later analysis—you can learn a lot by examining the strategies of other highly rated sites.

Where to acquire valuable links?

Obtaining the most valuable links requires time and effort. To get good, natural inbound links, your website must contain unique, high-quality content. One of the most common but very labor-intensive link building methods is guest posting. You personally contact website and blog owners, asking them to add a link to your site. Try to build relationships with editorial teams and online creators covering topics related to your website. This way, you have a chance to collaborate through interviews, product or service reviews, charity events, contests, and many other activities that result in strong, natural links.

A very effective and creative way to obtain valuable links is to become a sponsor of a local event or a partner of a local institution. Event websites are excellent sources of inbound links because they contain links to trusted sites such as the city hall, municipal office, local press, and so on. You will also gain strong links by posting job offers on large career/job portals, as you create an employer profile with a link to your website.

Link building is a process that requires a well-prepared strategy and considerable work. Remember that creating backlinks is just as important as maintaining them. Your ultimate criterion should be user opinion—if a link looks bad to users, it is likely that search engines will not like it either.