Google and other search engines encourage their users to practice organic link-building by creating high-quality and relevant content. However, natural backlinks are hard to come by, so many website owners have resorted to using other ways of building links like paying for links and simply asking for links and hoping to get lucky.
Unfortunately, some of these link-building techniques can be harmful to your website. Because of this, it’s important not to let bad backlinks hurt your site by using the wrong link-building strategies. This article discusses the best way of link-building.
What Is Link Building?
Link building is the process of obtaining links to your site from other websites and blogs. These links are commonly referred to as backlinks. When an authoritative website or blog links back to your site, it’s a signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy and that helps the content on your site rank higher on search results.
Backlinks are Google’s main ranking factor because its algorithm views them as a vote of confidence from other sites. The more backlinks your site gets, the higher its ranking authority. When your “money” site ranks higher on Google’s SERPs, it increases your conversion rates, as well as your chances of making more sales.
How to Build Links Effectively
As noted above, backlinks are one of the two most important aspects of any SEO strategy (the other being content). However, your backlinks have to come from credible, high-quality, and relevant sources. Spamming your site with thousands of low-quality links is a waste of time and money. In fact, they might end up hurting your site and its ranking.
If you want to build links at scale that are under your control, the best approach is to create and leverage your own private blog network, or PBN.
PBNs are networks of different blogs and sites created mainly for link-building purposes. They’re usually built using expired domains that still have some ranking authority. Although these links aren’t illegal, Google considers them as part of black hat SEO, and your PBN can be removed from Google’s index if it’s revealed to be a link scheme.
Fortunately, you can avoid this penalty by following the latest PBN best practices. For example, ensure that your PBN hosting company knows how to host PBNs without leaving any footprints. A PBN hosting company like Easy Blog Networks will keep your PBN links undetectable for a long time because we take every step necessary to make your PBN indistinguishable from the typical blog.
Aside from using PBNs, you can also build organic backlinks through guest posting, manual outreach, and promoting your content. These strategies will earn your site some organic links and should be a part of your SEO strategy even when using PBNs.
Of course, you should always make sure that the links come from relevant and credible sources. Here are some tips on how to build links effectively:
Reciprocal Links
Reaching out to people for backlinks can be a long and tedious process, but it’s quite effective. For instance, if you want certain authoritative sites and blogs to link back to your site, you can reach out to their owners and request links. The general expectation will be that you provide a link in return, so you should be ready to meet that expectation with a relevant link for the site owner you’re reaching out to.
Earning Backlinks
The most effective way to give your website a competitive edge through link-building is to implement content strategies that will earn your web pages organic backlinks. This approach requires you to put extra effort into your SEO undertakings but offers the maximum reward. Unlike other link-building strategies, it’s very difficult for your competitors to replicate your natural backlinks.
Placing Low-tier Links
Links on blog comments, web 2.0 platforms, directories, and forums aren’t very valuable on their own. But they contribute to a natural backlink profile, which is what you should be aiming for if you expect long-term sustainable growth. These low-tier links are easy to build and provide very little SEO value, but they’re still worth building to mix in with your more high-powered link-building efforts.