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Link Building – Beginners Guide [2023]

Link Building – Beginners Guide [2023]

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You must have heard the word “link” from an SEO expert? 

But, what are links? Why are they so crucial in an SEO campaign?

Well, links are the most important ranking factor used by search engines like Google to measure the authority of a website (domain).

If you want your website to rank higher on Google, then you have to acquire lots of relevant, natural, and high-quality links pointing to your domain.

You can find tons of link building information on the internet, but few of them are providing a step by step guide, which helps beginners start with link building. That’s why I have created this in-depth beginner-friendly guide on “Link Building.”

In this guide, I’m going to show you the best link building techniques that will help you acquire tons of high-quality backlinks so you can increase your rankings and traffic. In this guide, I have covered all the topics related to backlinks such as what it is, its types, tactics, guidelines, best tools, future of link building, and other critical information.

So, without wasting time, let’s jump to this link building guide.

Contents

Link building is the practice of acquiring links to a website to increase the reputation of the domain so that it starts to rank higher in the search engines.

Links are critical to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) success because sites need links to dominate the search engine results.

Without links, you fail to rank on Google resulting in less organic traffic and decreased organic leads.

For example, if there are 3 sites named A, B, and C then if sites B and C link to A, then the rankings of A will significantly higher than the rankings of B and C provided no other site is linking to B and C.

Links are counted as ‘votes’ by Google. The higher the number of votes you acquire for your domain, the greater trust you can win. Trust leads to better branding, higher rankings, and maximum conversions.

The various benefits of link building are:

  • Most Important Ranking Factor: If we talk about the popularity or authority of any website, then links are the first thing that Google considers. The higher the number of links, the higher will be the reputation of the domain.
  • Relationship Building: Relationships are very important for any business. To acquire links, your need to reach out to businesses for promotion or other activities. This way, you can build long-term business relationships. 
  • Brand Building: A good link building campaign also helps you to promote your brand on the internet. It will tell people that you are an authority brand, and people will start trusting you.
  • Higher Organic Rankings:  The main focus of link building is to increase the ranking of the website. Most of the SEO industry is doing link building just to get a higher ranking on Google to increase branding and revenue.
  • Higher Organic Traffic: Links boost the authority of the domain which in turn increases the organic rankings of a website. Higher organic rankings lead to higher organic traffic.
  • Trust: When you acquire links via content marketing, you are admired as a valuable resource, which builds the audience’s trust for your website.

There are three different ways through which you can acquire links to your domain.

  • White Hat Link Building – This is Google’s preferred way of link building. When you create quality content for your audience and people start to link naturally to the content, then this is called White Hat Link Building.
  • Black Hat Link Building – When you buy links from other sites that come with a dofollow attributes and passes Page Rank then this form of link building is known as Black Hat Link Building.
  • Grey Hat Link Building – This is what most of the SEO’s do. When you build links for your domain using techniques that are a mix of white hat and black hat link building then this method is known as Grey Hat link Building.

There are many techniques that you can use to build quality backlinks to your website. You should only use the white hat link building strategy, as suggested by Google. 

Many webmasters use black-hat techniques to get quick rankings, but this is not good for long-term SEO success. Indulging in black hat SEO link building will increase the risk of penalty by Google (meaning, you will lose all your rankings and organic traffic).

Here are the top techniques for link building:

Social Bookmarking

In this technique, you submit your website on various social bookmarking sites. Some of the best social bookmarking sites are:

Infographic Submission

In Infographic Submission, you create attractive infographics, add them on your website and submit the links on different infographic submission sites like:

In this technique, you create web 2.0 links to your website. It is one of the easiest ways to build links to your website.

Some of the highest authority web 2.0 sites are:

Business Listing

In this link building technique, you submit your business information on different business listing sites., It helps your business to get exposure on the internet. Some of the top business listing sites are:

Profile Creation 

In profile creation, you create profiles on various high authority sites. You can add multiple details on these sites like name, address, phone, website URL, etc.

Some of the best profile creation sites are:

Classified Ads

Under this link building technique, you create various ads and submit them to high authority sites free of cost.

Some of the best classified ads sites are:

Product Submission

You can submit your products on different sites in product submissions, and people will be redirected to the official product page on your website.

Some of the best product submission sites are:

PPT Submission

PPT (PowerPoint) is a marketing tactic to get quality traffic and links. You can create PPT to promote any of your web pages with excellent images, infographics, and other attractive multimedia.

Some of the best PPT submission sites are:

Resource Pages

Resource pages are the type of pages that links to different content on a specific topic. You can acquire high-quality links using this link building technique.

Below are the steps to follow to build links from resource pages.

In simple words, “A resource page is a page on a site containing a list of links or resources on a particular topic”.

For example, in the below image you can see that a website has a resource page for “KETO Diet” and is linking to several other blogs belonging to the same niche. These links are given naturally. You only need to approach the webmaster and inform them about the resource. Of course, the recommended resource should be worthy of linking.

Step 1: Finding Resource Pages

You can use various search strings and search them on Google. By using these strings, you will find lots of resource pages related to your niche.

Some of the search strings to find resource pages are:

  • “Keyword” + “helpful resources”
  • “Keyword” + “useful links”
  • “Keyword” + “useful resources”
  • “Keyword” + inurl:links

Step 2: Check Resource Page Authority

Before outreaching to the website owner for a link, you should check the website authority or quality. In this step, you can use some tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. I have explained how to use these tools to check the quality of a site further in this article.

Step 3: Setup Best Content

You need some best pieces of content to link out to resource pages. Not every content on your website is best fit for the resource page. So for this, find out content or write if you don’t have that will be a good fit for the resource page.

Step 4: Send Proposal

It is the last step; you have to outreach the webmaster via mail. Here’s the mail copy I recommend:

Subject: Question About (Resource Page Website)

Hello (Your Name),

I hope you are doing good.

I was just searching on the web for (Topic) today, and I just landed on your excellent resource page: (Resource Page URL)

Your content helped me a lot. Your article solved each of my queries.

I have recently created a guide (Topic) on my website. This guide (Describe your article in short)

Here is the link if you want to check: (Your Content URL)

Maybe my content will add extra information to your website.

Thanks for your excellent resources. I hope you also like my guide. Have a nice day!

Your Fan,

(Your Name)

Note: Customize this copy as much as you can to make it more attractive. 

This one is my favorite link building technique. I have used this tactic the most for my websites, and the best thing is that the success rate of this technique is very high.

Broken links are links on the website, which results in 404 errors. And you can suggest your content be linked in the place of broken links. This way, you will get quality links with ease. Follow these simple steps to use this technique:

This extension will help you in finding broken links on the website. 

To find pages with broken links, you have to find a website with lots of external links. The resource pages work best here. You can use the search string above and find tons of sites.

To find broken links follow these simple steps:

#1 – Open a website, and click on the extension in your browser as shown in the image.

#2 – Now, this tool will start checking all the links in the webpage. Just look for the links in the red color.

Step 3: Outreach The Site Owner

In this step, you email the site owners and pitch them to link out to your content on the place of a broken link. Here’s the email copy I personally use:

Subject: Issue with (Broken Link Website’s Name)

Hello,

There are some problems with your website.

I was just searching for the (Topic) on the internet and landed on your excellent website page (Broken Link Page URL).

On this page, I noticed that some of the links are not working:

(List URLs of Broken Links)

I recently published an excellent guide on (Topic). I think it may be a suitable replacement for (Name The Specific Broken Link).

I hope this will add some extra information to your content.

Have a nice day!

Thanks & Regards,

(Your Name)

Pro Tip: Try to create or choose high-quality content related to broken links. It will increase the chance of getting a link.

Guest Posting

Guest Posting is one of the best link building techniques used by webmasters. Many marketers do guest blogging to increase their brand awareness.

How do Guest Posts work? It’s very simple; you just have to create excellent content related to your niche. After that, just send the proposal to the owner of the website you wish to get your guest post published.

Here’s are some search queries you can use to find lots of guest post opportunities:

  • keyword + “write for us”
  • keyword + “guest post”
  • keyword + intitle:”write for us”
  • keyword + intitle:”guest post”

Here are some simple steps you can follow to start guest posting or blogging:

Step 1: Find Quality Sites

First, you have to find sites that have good authority. I have covered this step below in the guide. You can refer to the guide below to check these metrics step by step.

Step 2: Click Guest Posting Guidelines

To reduce spam, most sites use some guidelines for their guest post. To check these guidelines, you have to check their “write for us” page, as shown in the below image.

Step 3: Outreach

In this last step, you have to reach out to the website owner with your desired topic on which you want to write content. You can use my mail copy to outreach various website owners.

Subject: Guest Post Contribution Request

Hey (Name),

I am (Your Name), owner of (Your Website Name). I am a regular reader of your blog, and I have followed you since I started my website.

As your blog is one of the best in the industry, I would like to contribute as a guest author on your site. Here are some of the content ideas that may be useful for your audience.

(Suggest Some Topics)

I will prepare in-depth and informative content that your visitors love to read. And also, I have read all your guidelines.

Here’s my recent guest post (Guest Post Link) in case you want to check my content quality.

Thanks for your valuable time.

Thanks & Regards,

(Your Name)

Note: If you are doing guest posts for the first time, you can skip the line no. 6.

Brand Mentions (Unlinked)

Sometimes people use your website or brand name on their website and don’t link to you.

This type of technique is known as “unlinked mentions.”

With these mentions, you are on the way towards acquiring links.

Pro Tip: With mentions, you know that the website owner is familiar with your website or business, as you can see that they have mentioned your business name in their content. So, this is a great opportunity to reach out to the author and convince them to link to your website in place of mentions.

There are two types of links, do-follow and no-follow.

No-follow links are types of the link which tells search engines not to count the link for ranking purpose. Also, no-follow links didn’t pass any link juice to your website.

Link Juice: It is a common term used by SEO experts. It refers to the value of a link from one page to another. High quality link means high link juice. 

Do follow links are types of the link which tells search engines to count the link as an endorsement. Also, in terms of SEO, you always try to acquire a do-follow link if possible. These links are very effective and powerful because they pass the link juice to the website.

In simple words,

A do-follow is telling search engines, hey I’m linking to this site because I want to, pass link juice and have this site rank higher.

And a no-follow doesn’t pass PageRank but they are still useful in terms of branding & indirect traffic.

In general, we usually don’t link out to sites with a no-follow.

For example, if you’re promoting an affiliate offer, and that company has thousands of affiliates like you, Google wants you to no-follow those links because if you don’t no-follow them, that site can unfairly rank higher.

To use nofollow or dofollow links on your website, add some code as described below:

  • Nofollow Code: In nofollow, you have to add an extra tag in the link code, i.e., “rel=nofollow”
    • Example, <a href=”www.exmaple.com” rel=”nofollow”>
  • Dofollow Code: In dofollow, you don’t have to add any tag in your link code. By default, every link is a dofollow link.
    • Example, <a href=”www.exmaple.com”>

It’s very simple to detect whether the link is nofollow or dofollow. You have to check the above tag in the code. Follow these simple 2-steps to check link type:

Step 1: Open any web page on your browser. After that, right click your mouse on any link under the page and click “Inspect” as shown in the below image.

Step 2: Now, look for the nofollow tag in the HTML code. For this, you need to press CTRL+F and then write “nofollow” or “noreferrer” to check whether it’s nofollow or dofollow.

Day-by-day, Google is making the link analysis harder than before. And it is also very important in terms of SEO and rankings.

In general, search engines have divided links into two types that are Natural and Unnatural Links.

Natural Links: Natural links are the links that are created naturally. Like, if someone is linking to your website because of the quality content you have, that is known as Natural Links.

Unnatural Links: These types of links are just created to increase website ranking. These links include the spam or links created by paying some sort of money. 

How To Acquire Natural Links Via Content Marketing?

To acquire lots of natural links, you have to create excellent content with in-depth information, lots of stunning multimedia like images, infographics, or you can also use videos in your content. By doing this, you are making your content the best resource on the internet that people love to link on their website.

For example, If you are in the digital marketing industry, you may know, “Brian Dean,” of “Backlinko.” He created an evergreen content known as the “Skyscraper Technique.” This technique is very popular because every marketer is using the exact strategy to get tons of natural links.

With only this blog post, Brian got over 8k backlinks from 2.5k different referring domains.

It is one of the best examples of natural link building. Brian just created excellent content, and people start linking to his blog post naturally.

When building links, we all have to follow the link schemes guidelines provided by Google.

Don’t build links just for ranking purposes; check the link authority, is it relevant to your niche? How much traffic is there? Just check all this metric before starting link building. You can use tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, etc.

Unlinked Mentions

I have already described this one above in link building techniques. It is the best practice of acquiring links, and it is also very simple because you don’t have to research at a higher level. You can find these mentions easily.

Outreaching

Outreaching is not a bad thing to do when done right, especially when leveraging effective outreach tools. I know that the response rate of outreach is typically very low, around 3% to 5%, which is not good at all. However, when utilizing appropriate outreach tools, the link you will acquire can be of exceptional quality.

Quality Content

We all know that content is king. Many marketers said, “Link building is dead.” So what to do then? Just create awesome content, and people will link to your content, and it is also known as “Natural Links.” 

Alright. So we know how to link building the right way. Now, let’s take a look at some rules which violate Google policy.

Over-Optimized Anchor Text

Targeted anchor texts are spam. You should never ask for a specifically targeted anchor text for your link. The website should link wherever it fits. It also looks like a natural link building. Google is going to love this practice, and it will help your site ranking as it will be considered as organic.

ou can find tons and tons of websites selling different types of links at cheap price rates. What is it worth? Definitely No. You should never buy these types of links for your website. They violate Google guidelines directly, and if you do this, then your website will lose all the ranking soon.

Hidden links are the types of links that come under Black-Hat SEO. It is beneficial to do it back in the day, but it’s 2020, so Google will not consider this as a ranking signal. Webmasters hide these links on the website, only web crawlers can find them. I recommend staying away from this. Also, Google is becoming smarter day-by-day in understanding this type of thing.

Directories

As per the link-building agency, Amplifyed, “Directories are dead. Yes, this is the old practice of building links when we submit a website on thousands of directories with low authority. Stay away from this spammy practice.

It’s 2020, and still site-wide are also done by many webmasters. But this looks very spammy. In general, you will add a link to either website header or footer. Many websites added tons of links to their footer or header at the top-level navigation menu. Avoid this link to not hit by the Google penalty.

Comments

Comments links don’t violate Google guidelines if done in the right way. But most people optimize their comments links according to anchor text, and it looks spammy. Stay away from comment backlinks.

Look at the image below, this person is using exact keywords in his comment and also linking to the targeted page. This is known as spam commenting.

Now, take a look at the image below, this is known as a good or genuine comment.

Automation Tools

There are some tools available in the market which create lots of links automatically. One of such tools is ScrapeBox.

PBNs

PBN is a “private blog network”. It is a very popular link building practice used by many webmasters. PBN’s are also very effective in search rankings, but it doesn’t mean that Google is going to consider them as a good link building approach. It is not in the long run, which means Google will paralyze you after some time.

A PBN is a group of websites created to manipulate search rankings. Webmasters buy or find expired domains and use them to build links to their primary or main website.

Article Directories

Article submission was a very popular link building method used by many individuals or agencies. But Google considers this type of article site as spam. Their main purpose is to generate links only. And Google hates this thing.

Relevancy is a must for your website authority. Every time you build backlinks, you must see the relevancy of the website. But some people create links on different country websites like Chinese, Germany, and other sites. It harms your website authority very badly.

Before deciding the website from which you want to get a link, you should check the website’s quality.

There are some metrics you must check before acquiring links:

  • DA (Domain Authority)
  • PA (Page Authority)
  • TF (Trust Flow)
  • CF (Citation Flow)
  • Is the website penalized by Google?
  • Check websites referring domains?
  • Check the website’s historical data
  • Check anchor texts
  • How much traffic website is getting?
  • Number of ranking keywords
  • Whether the link will be dofollow or nofollow

DA and PA

Domain authority and page authority are very important aspects of any website. Especially, the DA describes the website authority. You can use Moz tools to check this. I recommend acquiring links with the website having DA 30+

Step 1: Open the Moz tool from this link. And register a free account.

Step 2: Go to “Link Explorer” by clicking on ”Free SEO Tools.”

Step 3: On the next screen, type in the website URL and click on “linking domains” and hit “Analyze.”

Step 4: On the next screen, you can see the DA and PA. Also, there are some metrics like links, ranking keywords, etc. you can check using this tool.

TF and CF

Trust flow is the number of websites that are linking to the site. And Citation flow is the amount of link juice a site has. Majestic SEO is a tool that helps you in checking these matrices. In general, if a site has TF of 20+ and CF of 40+, this type of website is considered a good source of getting a link.

Step 1: Open Majestic on your browser (no need to sign up). And paste the website URL in the search box, as shown in the below image.

Step 2: On the next screen, you can see the TF and CF.

Is the website penalized by Google?

Google has the power to penalize any website. And that’s why we should always check the website for any penalties by Google. Below you can see how to check the Google penalty.

How to use FE INTERNATIONAL?

This tool is very simple to use, you just have to search for your website, and it will show you all the details as shown in the below image.

If the website traffic seems down on any of these lines (these are Google algorithms), it means the site is penalized by Google.

Check the number of referring domains

Checking the number of referring domains that the website is holding determines the overall link juice power. You can use tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, UberSuggest & Moz. Here I am using Moz for checking the number of referring domains.

Check historical website data

We don’t know the past of the website. It may be used for spam or used in other languages like Chinese or many different assumptions. So, it’s better to check the history of the website. In such a case, you can use “Wayback Machine” to check the site history.

Check anchor texts

Is the site having lots of specific keywords targeted anchor text? To check this, again use the tool Moz (or other). In the below image, you can see that this website doesn’t have any spammy anchor texts.

How much traffic website is getting?

Traffic is also an essential matrix of any website when thinking of acquiring links. If there is very less traffic coming to the site, then it means that you will get less number of referring visitors to your blog. To check website traffic, you can use tools such as UberSuggest, or other similar tools. Here I am using UberSuggest.

Just open UberSuggest, type in your website URL in the search box, as shown in the below image.

Number of ranking keywords

Did you know that the website you want to get a link has ranked on Google and how many keywords the site is ranking for? To answer all these questions, I am again going to use the tool UberSuggest.

It’s very important to check whether the link will be dofollow or nofollow. It is because dofollow links are more powerful than nofollow. And webmasters are always seeking for dofollow link opportunities.

For checking this matrix, you can directly ask the owner of the website, or you can also check this manually.

How to check link type manually:

Step 1: First, you have to check the previous guest post on the site. Just go to each category on the site and check for any guest posts.

Step 2: Next, right click your mouse and tap on “Inspect” as shown in the image. Here you have to check for the “nofollow” tag, and if it’s present, it means the website is offering a nofollow link.

Many people said, “link building is dead.” But we all know that links are going to die, they are alive and remain a critical factor for website rankings. And links also increase your branding and authority. 

Marketers never stop link building, and also Google will never deny that it will stop seeing links as a ranking factor. So, that’s why still in 2020, link building matters for SEO.

Links are not going anywhere. People still use link building and give priority when it comes to SEO. Links are still the strongest signal considered by Google for website rankings. Also, if we mix content and link building together, it can be a good combination for your search visibility.

  • No matter what people say, the link is still the priority in the Google algorithm.
  • You can use link building with your content to supercharge your content marketing.
  • Not every time you need content. You can still build links without even having lots of quality content. 
  • Many agencies only depend on link building. Their main work to do is just building links using various strategies.

Wrapping Up

So, we have learned everything about link building. You can use this guide to get more exposure to your rankings and search visibility. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner, this guide will teach you A to Z of link building.

I have also included some of the link building strategies which I personally use and also recommend you use these exact methods to get lots of quality links. I hope this article helps you to start your first ever link building campaign.

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About The Author

Joydeep Bhattacharya
More from this Author

Joydeep Bhattacharya is a digital marketing evangelist who has over 11 years of experience in online marketing. He helps businesses improve their revenue online. He is a regular contributor to SEMrush, Ahrefs, Search Engine Watch, Hubspot, Smart Insights, and several other publications.