Building links from a holistic SEO perspective

Building connections is not easy. That doesn’t mean it’s rocket science. This means that a lot of work is required if you do it right. Building connections wrong way, it can negatively impact, leading to a complete ban on Google. In this post, I will discuss our ideas on getting more backlinks: building links from an integrated SEO perspective.

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How does a link help your site rank well?

First, let’s talk about why link building is important for SEO. The link to your site helps you rank it in four ways:

• It adds value to the receiving page, allowing it to improve search engine visibility.
• It adds value to the entire receiving domain and allows each page on that domain to slightly improve its ranking.
• The anchor text links and the surrounding copy indicate the theme of the site to the search engine and more specifically the receiving page.
• And apparently people are clicking on links, resulting in so-called direct traffic.

The link value for the receiving page is determined in part by the topic of the page on which the link is located. A link from a page with the same topic as the receiving page has more value than a link from a page about a completely different topic. In addition, a link from an article is worth much more than a link from a sidebar or footer. In general, the more links on a page, the less valuable each individual link is.

Bad reputation building links

Link building has a bad reputation. When people noticed that backlinks from other sites led to higher rankings, they started abusing it. They got links from sites that did not have any current links to their own site. In other cases, people bought links from other sites.

These shady links have polluted search engines. As a result, Google began penalizing companies that bought links or used links from unlinked sites (Google Penguin Update it was all about that). If you received a penalty from Google, it was serious: your site would disappear from search results.

This bad reputation of link building comes from companies that were a little too enthusiastic about shadow link building techniques and received penalties from Google. Does that mean you shouldn’t build connections at all? Ofcourse not! Building connections is not a bad thing in itself. If you do it the right way, you will reap all the benefits it offers.

Read more: Link building: what not to do? »

Building connections is about achieving

Building connections is – or should be – an awareness-raising activity. This means you need to get in touch with people and ask them to write about and link to your site. You will usually get better results if you get in touch with people in person. That means writing emails and press releases, making phone calls and talking about your product. And don’t forget about social media. Platforms like Twitter have made it easier to connect with certain people and businesses. If your products and content are good, there will be people who will want to write about them. Most bloggers and journalists need content, so you could also make them happy by introducing your products to them!

Dofollow vs. nofollow links

As mentioned above, backlinks can add value to your site and help your content rank better. However, not all connections are the same. There are dofollow and nofollow connections. They look the same to website users. In fact, links are dofollow by default. However, you can create a nofollow link by inserting a small piece of code called an attribute that tells search engine bots not to follow that link.

According to Google, nofollow links do not convey any value to the linked site. So if you want to take full advantage of link building, you need to strive for dofollow links. This is what many people in the field of SEO call “link juice”. It is also common practice today not to follow all external links. If you’re asking someone to link to your site from theirs, it’s a good idea to ask them to remove the ‘nofollow’ attribute so they can both get values ​​from the link. If they don’t want to, that’s fine too. You may not get ‘link juice’, but your site is still mentioned on their site. It’s good for the brand and you’ll get some traffic to your site. Nevertheless, there are some (indirect) benefits.

Link building as part of a comprehensive SEO strategy

Holistic SEO means you’ll do everything you can to make your site the best: you need to display high-quality information, provide a great user experience, have the fastest website, and so on. Building links will be easier if your site offers a great experience, just like your products and / or services. Because people are much more likely to be willing to write about a great site and link to it.

Building links should feel like a normal marketing activity and no as a trick. Remember that building links should create links that bring your target audience to your site. After all, these are the people who will read your posts, subscribe to your news, or buy your products. Your target audience will make your business thrive.

Continue reading: 6 steps to a successful link building strategy »