When Google evaluates each piece of content, backlinks are an important factor that it takes into consideration to determine the quality of your website. The more legitimate backlinks you have means more people trust your website and include it as a resource.
So, for most site owners, the answer is yes. Link building is not only worth it but necessary for long-term growth.
Marketers and search engine optimization (SEO) experts consider link building to be one of the most effective strategies for boosting a website’s Google page ranking. Because this can be a long and painstaking process, paid link building is a common tactic for fast-tracking the process.
Link building is any activity that you engage in to secure backlinks for your site. That can range from creating unique and link-worthy content to begging for links from people you know who own sites and everything in between.
Unfortunately, spammy links and rampant black hat link-building strategies make it difficult to stay within Google’s guidelines and remain profitable. These tactics violate Google’s guidelines but they can provide short-term boosts for unscrupulous webmasters.
When done strategically, link-building can have outsized benefits for your business. Here are a few powerful benefits of employing a meaningful link-building strategy.
Backlinks Boost Your Credibility and Site Authority
Google wants to give users the most relevant search results. If it sees authoritative sites linking to you, then it is considered a vote of confidence in your content and landing pages. Quality matters more than quantity, so five high-quality websites that link back to you will have more weight than twenty spam sites.
Authority scores such as Domain Authority developed by Moz and Domain Rank created by Ahrefs measure how relevant your website is when it comes to a specific topic or industry. Backlinks are essential in increasing your authority ratings.
Naturally, a new website will start on the low side. You can quickly improve your scores if you work hard and learn about the best backlinks for SEO strategies.
You must also understand PageRank, Google’s system for ranking web pages, to fully assess the quality and relevance of your backlinks. It looks into backlink data such as follow and no-follow links and referring domains.
It is essential to regularly conduct a site audit to ensure that there are no harmful links driving traffic to your site. If you find any, remove them immediately to avoid getting penalized by Google. If you can’t take them out, you can use the Google Search Console so that the Google algorithm will ignore spammy links when crawling your website.
Drive Traffic to Your Website and Generate Leads
Because authoritative sites have longer staying power, unlike Google ads that are only available for a limited time, there is a greater chance of reaching more people and getting regular click-throughs. Investing in backlinks helps with long-term revenue goals.
Backlinks will cost you time and money, no matter how you go about link-building. You can streamline the process in many ways, but as links become more valuable and the bar to compete becomes higher, you’ll always be struggling to keep up with the needs of your site.
Another option to consider is building private blog networks (PBN). While the practice is controversial, if done correctly, it helps you rank in competitive niches. You can purchase high-quality, expired domains that have good domain authority, restore previous content, and continue to develop relevant blog posts. You can then include backlinks that behave and look the same as editorially placed links on authoritative sites.
It is always good to err on the side of caution when starting to build PBNs. Networks that are haphazardly put together can quickly be discovered based on bad hosting strategies and a number of other traces that alert Google to the nature of the network.
Choosing a capable hosting service can help to avoid these pitfalls. Getting hosting right is 90% of the battle when it comes to creating and maintaining a long-standing private blog network. That’s why it’s worth investing in s PBN hosting provider that provides a spotless hosting profile free from footprints.