Link Building and SEO: What You Need to Know

Link building has a bit of an ugly past. Though it was created as a way to sort out the useful and relevant content from the less effective content, some people took this as an opportunity to cheat the system to increase their search engine rankings.

However, this does not mean that link building is no longer valuable for SEO purposes. When your backlinks are coming from the right website URLs and are considered quality links then you can use this tactic to improve SEO. Below, we will discuss what link building is, why it’s important, and how you can create a link building strategy.

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of increasing the number of hyperlinks back to your website from other websites. Search engines like Google use links to help determine a website’s popularity and credibility, which factors into their ranking algorithm. The engines crawl each page of the website and explore the hyperlinks there. Then, they add this content to their indexes.

In order to rank a page on the search engine results page (SERP), the search engine must first determine the quality of the page and its content. Then it will look at and analyze the number of external links that lead back to the site. Typically, those sites with more quality links will rank higher.

How Link Building Has Changed

Most people would only want to include hyperlinks to other content that was reliable and informative as this makes their content more reliable and informative. However, in the early days of search engines, many people would do anything that they could to build links and get to the top of Google’s SERP. This includes manipulating their links. They would place their hyperlinks in blog comment sections and guest books, submit them to directories, and trade links with other websites.

As Google started to work on offering more useful search results and create a better experience for their users, it began to crack down on manipulative linking. Google became better at determining when a link could be trusted and whether or not the link was relevant and would start penalizing those who manipulated their links. In fact, in 2012 Google’s Penguin algorithm update started penalizing those websites that contained unnatural backlinks.

Why Does Link Building Matter for SEO?

So now you may be wondering, if Google is penalizing websites then is it still worthwhile to invest in link building? According to the pros, the answer is yes. The Moz search ranking factors survey shows that the general consensus in the SEO community is that links still play a vital role in Google’s ranking algorithm. If all other factors are equal, then the volume and quality of links pointing to a web page can make the difference in ranking.

Developing a Link Building Strategy

There are a few ways that you can get quality links back to your site. The most effective is by producing high quality content that other people find valuable and want to reference and link back to in their own content. These are called editorial links, and they are not sponsored or requested.

One way to promote important articles, ebooks, and other materials that people can link back to is through mass text and social media. After you have created quality content that others would find valuable, you can promote these links through a cross-channel software to send email, social messages, and SMS.

With these 3 channels, you can ensure that your content will get read. They can then share it with their social communities and increase backlink opportunities.

Author Biography

Sophorn Chhay

Sophorn is the marketing guy at Trumpia, the most complete SMS software with mass sms messaging, smart targeting and automation. Jumpstart your business by grabbing your free copy of his powerful Mobile Marketing Success Kit. Watch Trumpia’s 5-Minute Demo on how to execute an effective mobile marketing strategy.