Whether you have just started optimizing your website or you are a more seasoned SEO expert, link building continues to reign high in successfully increasing your site traffic.
SEO or search engine optimization applies methods and techniques to your website and individual posts to promote your company. When someone keys in a search request to Google, the returned pages are ranked according to how well they correlate to the search. SEO techniques are used to catapult web pages to the top of the search results so that more users will click on your page.
Since search engine algorithms are constantly changing, it can be overwhelming to keep informed of the current trends. This article conveys what link building is and how it helps drive free traffic to your business.
What Is Link Building?
Link building is the process of connecting other websites to your own via hyperlinks. A hyperlink, more commonly referred to as anchor text or sometimes backlinks, refers to the clickable words used to link one web page to another. These words often default to a different color to indicate they are interactive.
For search engines to verify the site your anchor text is linking to, Google crawlers or bots will search your linked site to ensure you are referencing material related to your original page. Crawlers or spiders are simply programs that screen or crawl your website along with all related sites.
The actual text is what Google uses to determine authenticity and is similar to tabulating votes. If I create a link under the phrase “protein bars,” the crawlers will expect the site I am linking to address protein bars. If others do the same with that same site, this increases Google’s confidence that the page address should rank for “protein bars,” which boosts the site’s overall search ranking.
This very concept also explains the importance of backlinking. Backlinks are when another website uses our site in its anchor text. It is crucial to acquire backlinks from credible sources. You never want to pay for backlinks, as this would take your site down the “black hat” rabbit hole, which represents tactics that directly violate search engine guidelines.
Internal Links
Internal links use anchor text to link to a different page within the same base URL. A proven internal linking method is to use blog posts to connect and highlight various aspects of your site.
An example would be to promote a page to showcase the different styles of dog collars you sell create an article that describes how to choose a quality collar based on durability, comfort, and style that provides optimal value for the individuals researching this question. The overall strategy is to provide a link that easily connects readers to your dog collar products.
Internal linking helps the web page become discovered and crawled. After all, the goal is to get your pages crawled by Google bots as much as possible. Therefore, if a page has no one linking to it, it is less likely to be crawled, making it harder to find.
Creating an Internal linking structure helps Google understand that a particular page has a lot of “votes” that will enhance the equity a page has built up. How you structure your website and link one page to another is extremely important to make your site relevant and important to Google.
But don’t overdo it; 2-4 internal links per page is a safe target. If your web page includes too many internal links, this can actually hurt your ranking.
External Links
An external link or outbound link is anchor text that points at an external domain, not part of your root URL. On average, websites with more unique root domains (five and under) outrank websites with fewer unique root domains. We will explain why.
If you link to a credible site, it can add value to your page and possibly rank it higher in search results. You can think of external links like the bibliography page for a research paper. This supplemental information shows that you have already done the research, and readers can easily view it.
If everyone links to the sources we consider the best, we end up higher in the search results, and thus, we all benefit. Therefore, selecting the specific anchor text that the site already ranks high on when connecting to an external site is critical.
An example would be writing an article that has tips on choosing the best bed and breakfast. It would be vital to use Airbnb.com in the external linking strategy.
If you are not sure which sites rank highly on the terms you are using for your hyperlink, here is where premium SEO software like Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs come in handy. These tools show how often each page is searched and the traffic potential for any keyword you are anchoring.
Domain Authority
According to the data, there is a powerful correlation between linking and rankings. However, internal and external linking are examples of overall SEO techniques. To get the most out of your linking strategy, it is essential to prime your website to increase your domain authority.
Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score developed by SEO tools such as Moz, Semrush, Ahrefs, etc. that predicts how well a website will rank. This score ranges from 1 to 100. The higher the score, the better its ability to rank. The data accumulated to create a domain authority is primarily built on links.
Links from higher domain rating websites are more impactful than links from lower domain ratings. In addition, not having a recent site index, broken or orphaned links (pages not connected to your root site), and not having relevant or quality content will all lower your overall website authority.
The SEO landscape has changed fundamentally over the last 10-15 years, and some practices that were once applicable have become obsolete. Follow this link-building guide, and you will be on your way to increasing your website and business traffic and overall success.
How FINSYNC Can Help
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