What is link building and how to do it for off-page SEO.

Link building represents the heart of off-page SEO, the search engine optimization activity that aims to obtain hypertext links from websites with a different domain than yours. This is useful for improving the ranking of the site.

We do link building because it allows us to position a website . You can do this by writing interesting articles, working on content marketing and focusing on the relationship between digital PR and SEO. How to earn links without nofollow? Is it that hard to get mentions? Here is the Insight Agency's guide to link building SEO.

What is link building, a definition

Link building is a set of techniques, guided by a strategy, to obtain inbound links. That is backlinks. The goal is to increase your search engine rankings. All of this is the foundation of off-page SEO.

Building a network of hyperlinks is important. The reason is simple: inbound links are a useful signal to influence visibility on Google. They represent a very important SEO positioning factor.

Having a good link building strategy is especially important for projects in very competitive contexts. But it must be accompanied by good content marketing and on-page SEO with keyword research and structure management.

Why is link building important?

Links for Google are a signal of quality . If a website receives many links from relevant, themed and quality portals, it means that the pages that have received these mentions – and therefore the domain that hosts them – are useful for the user.

Link building is important because incoming links allow you to better position your website. Links are a ranking factor, but getting mentions of some kind is not enough to have a good result. You have to carefully evaluate the quality of mentions if you really want to make a difference.

Relationship between link building and Pagerank

Link building influences an element that bears the name of Pagerank (from the founder of Google, Larry Page) which is, in summary, the numerical value from 0 to 10 which indicates the value of a page based on the quality and quantity of links which it receives.

PageRank calculation is not a mystery, there is a formula that allows you to have the value of each website and page. It must be said, however, that it is not so easy.

Especially for those who know little about math. Once the PageRank was measured by the green line of the browser, then this system has been abolished but not the value itself which can be retrieved from one of the many online PageRank checker.

Differences between earning and building

One of the essential points to clarify: there is a fundamental distance between link building and earning . Often these passages are treated as synonyms, in reality there is a mainly ideological difference. Link earning works above all on the content.

Therefore it allows you to obtain links thanks to the publication of useful elements for those who insert the link. The concept of building, on the other hand, is inexorably linked to something mechanical and automated. That doesn't concern the publications.

For example, in link building strategies you will find the work of PBN (private blog network) and the purchase of expired domains to create sites that will link to yours. My personal idea? You are walking on a minefield that you need to know how to manage.

This is because of possible penalizing actions by Google. Today, personal opinion, working on the synthesis between content marketing and digital PR strategies can do a good job of link building . But you have to be careful of the effects.

SEO link building according to Google

An important topic for those starting to work in this sector: how to do link building according to Mountain View? Very simple: you can't do it.

Or rather, according to Google you have to earn links naturally. On several occasions and on different guides, the search engine underlines two points : links are important for positioning but it is not a good idea. Here's what it says on the dedicated page :

What really makes the difference is the purchase of links: those who pay to receive mentions risk a lot. But not only that, anyone who manipulates incoming links for an artificial job of off-page SEO points to the punishment of Big G.

Manual site penalty

As soon as a pattern of irregularities is identified you can receive an email in Search Console notifying you that it has detected an irregularity.

At that point you have the opportunity to bring the problem back by eliminating the offending links and reporting the work done. Which must be accepted, otherwise the report will be sent back to the sender. This happens if you buy or sell links.

Algorithmic Penalty (Google Penguin)

Google can also cut your site's legs in a different way, such as by applying rules at the algorithm level . Which are much more restrictive after the application of Google Penguin, an update that forced SEOs to work on quality links. Avoiding over-optimizations especially on the anchor text side.

How Google's tool to disavow links works.

Getting out of a Google Penguin penalty is not easy, you need the help of an SEO expert to analyze the link profile, identify the malicious ones and proceed with a forced elimination. Even with the help of Google's Disavow Tool .

That is, a tool in the search console to disavow links linked to negative SEO actions or websites with webmasters who do not meet your needs.

Planning link building for SEO

One of the mistakes: starting link building without having a good starting point. First, you need a website that is structured so that link juice , the result of your backlink work, flows throughout your website.

So you have to create a pyramid structure so that you can make sure that the results are well distributed. At the same time, this work on the portal structure allows you to identify target pages – those that usually monetize – which should benefit from the work set up by the link building.

All this goes hand in hand with the definition of a good link profile: when I organize the techniques to put into play in the link building campaign, I have to evaluate where to land the links and what type of link to obtain.

Getting links is fine, but they don't all have to be dofollow. You also need quality nofollow links that bring traffic. Maybe some with UGC (user generated content) attribute. In short, it is necessary to organize:

• Landing pages (home, articles, categories, landing).
• Attribute (with or without nofollow, UGC, sponsored).
• Anchor text (branded, absolute, specific key, generic key).
• Link source (text, image, button).
• Link building growth times.
• Reference source and pages from which you link.

Google recognizes patterns, similar scenarios over time. And it tends to penalize those who do artificial, schematic link building , quickly and from non-themed websites. Maybe always without nofollow and based on commercial anchor texts. Then on exact match query, search keywords that match the anchor text of the link.

Google doesn't like anything that looks unnatural, doesn't want you to use sites to buy links, and tends to penalize those who work with overly aggressive DIY link building.

How to do link building: the techniques

With editorial links, spontaneous mentions, within the pages and not in areas such as footers and sidebars. Or on partner pages . But we mustn't improvise: the biggest mistake is to work only in the direction of quantity.

As you can see in the image above there is a great relationship between the authority of the domain of the linker and your position on Google. The serp belongs to those who manage to do quality SEO link building . But it is also true that the number of referrals is important.

In the sense, if the same domain links you 1,000 times it is irrelevant: you must have links from different sites. And quality. But above all contextualized , tied to your world.

It is not enough to get many links to get results. Here are some techniques you can use to activate your link building campaign in SEO terms.

Post news

A good way to get incoming links without paying, therefore respecting the concept expressed by Google with respect to the naturalness of the links, concerns the ability to be a source of the news. And inform your target audience.

So you must be a source. To do this you need to bring back something new, useful and interesting. One of the most effective techniques: the digital PR campaign to advertise an event. You can also organize a local activity in the area.

Like a cycle of seminars in a coworking or a free workshop. Then you write a press release and send it to journalists, bloggers and industry experts. Will everyone publish it? No, but you have to take care of the relationships: this is how the links arrive.

Gift something

There is no free gift, everything contemplates a counterpart and a feeling of obligation. This is the gift theory of Marcel Mauss, a French ethnographer. And I assure you that it also applies to free link building. This is the procedure to follow:

• Study the needs of the audience.
• Study a landing page.
• Create something special like:
  • Ebooks.
  • Tool.
  • Documents.
  • Searches.
  • Data.

The landing page is important because it will help you get links. But the link building strategy isn't everything: with the landing page you can also organize advertising on Facebook and other activities managed by the social media manager.

Publish infographics

Writing a good headline is important for your article but not enough: to create a quality post you often need infographics.

Which are also a great source for free link building. Because there are those who make connections spontaneously and others who need a little help. Maybe they used the work and didn't link: how to find these people?

Just do some reverse search work with Google Images. Once you have entered the infographic on the search engine , you will find the people who have used your work without permission: now you have to write the email and receive free backlinks in quantity.

Create discussion

To get a successful post and link earning you have to entice people to continue the conversation. For example, you can close the article with a call to action that invites people to implement the content through comments.

Is not sufficient. The real work of link building manifests itself when you create an article that divides the audience with strong positions. The post-Christian Democrat , the one that agrees with everyone and no one, makes no noise. If you are looking for backlinks you have to make noise.

This means taking awkward but meaningful positions. Strong. The risk is to be criticized by those who don't think like you . But you can also earn the respect and admiration of an audience. Who will talk about you, will mention your work.

Guest blogging

One of the easiest ways to get backlinks without waiting for it to come from heaven: Guest post on a site in your industry. To do this, just do a Google search and locate blogs that address your basic topic.

You contact them and ask if it is possible to work in this direction. In reality, there would be a strategy behind it: you have to understand how to choose the blog that will publish the content and how to write a quality guest post.

But, above all, remember that guest blogging is one of the possible penalizing techniques according to Matt Cutts: it doesn't mean hiding the purchase of links .

Google is very careful at this point and tends to penalize sites that run large guest blogging campaigns with poor quality copy and commercial anchor text. In short, it can be done but with moderation and attention to quality.

Create a blog

There are a thousand ways to do SEO link building but the most effective when it comes to content concerns the ability to write articles capable of giving basic definitions.

This means understanding how people use the keywords you want to be found for. Unhing the archives of the various SEO tools, such as the always useful Answer The Public, to get an idea and to optimize your article in SEO copywriting key. And maybe vary in blog postings.

If you want to get good inbound links publish articles that can be found, answer users' questions and solve common problems. In short, you have to work on quality content.

Having a high rate of publication does not mean being successful on this point of view. As you can see from this Backlinko graphic , it's not random posts that get huge amounts of links but solutions like bulleted lists and tutorials.

How many articles do you publish per week? It depends, if you want to do link earning work (earn links thanks to the quality of the content) I would say to slow down the pace and focus on the quality of what you write. Then do other jobs.

Blogger outreach and digital PR

This is the best match between content marketing and link building. Purists will say that this is not a network -building activity , but I believe that we must work in a way that avoids Google's penalties and controls.

So, how to proceed? Obviously from the creation of an exclusive content. Something worth linking to , like a very in-depth guide or research with proprietary data. Or maybe an ebook or a free tool. Then you need to:

• Identify sites and blogs that could be useful for your project.
• Contact them with an email to suggest possible content to link to.
• Develop relationship with blogger to understand how to get the benefits.
• Monitor results and record inbound links.

An alternative may be to suggest linking to your resource on a specific page . For example, you can detect broken links with Screaming Frog and suggest you fix them with something that belongs to you. Or you can follow my example.

Broken links

One of the best strategies for SEO link building : do an analysis of broken links in the portals that interest you to obtain information on hyperlinks that you can suggest for possible replacement.

Programs like Broken Link Sleut allow you to analyze the websites you are interested in and locate pages with broken links. Analyze any resources you have available that you can use to replace, then email the owner

Hi, I saw that on this page [link] there is a broken link [put the broken link here]. If you want, you can replace it with this resource I prepared a while ago [link to your article]. If you don't think it's appropriate, no problem, let me know anyway. See you soon.

It is a simple and friendly email, without forcing. You can use this link building technique at any time, it is not very fast in its implementation but it can give good results if you carefully evaluate the web pages.

Best software to find links

Of course, all this cannot be done with bare hands. You need the help of one or more Google SEO tools to find out which sites to intercept and contact for a good link building activity . Is it worth getting a link from that site?

Can it give you any benefits? Does it have good SEO signals ? You can find out with the help of some tools designed specifically for your link building strategy.

Open Site Explorer

The first name I suggest: Moz , one of the best SEO tools to identify the links that have mentioned you, also including Page and Domain Authority .

That is to say a scale from 1 to 100 developed to evaluate the possibility of positioning by contemplating a series of factors . Like inbound links.

Majestic and Ahrefs

Two tools that have made history in the link building sector , as regards the possibility of finding useful sites for your universe and for evaluating your off-page SEO.

Among the Ahrefs tools, in addition to those of keyword research, you will find those of site explorer and SEO audit with backlink profile analysis so you can find out which websites have inserted links to your project and that of your competitors on the internet.

This is to evaluate the quality of the link profile . A similar solution is presented with Majestic which can count on equally advanced tools such as Site Explorer, IP verification of the origin of the links, Trust Flow, Historic Index and customized reports.

Free tool: Uberdsuggest

This tool well known to those who do SEO copywriting also allows you to analyze the link profile of the sites analysed. With Ubersuggest you can get important information on the relevance and validity of any portal from which to receive a link.

Semrush and SEOzoom

Semrush , a paid tool that allows you to have advanced information especially with respect to competitors and blogs that are positioned better than the keywords that interest you. Thanks to this tool you can evaluate important parameters:

• Zoom Authority.
• Domain trust.
• Number of links.
• Link authority.
• Toxic links

In this way it is easy to organize the Digital PR / SEO work to identify, discover and contact any sites for your link building strategy.