The world of digital marketing is continually changing, and as you work to move your company forward, you may come across many terms you don’t know. One of those terms is “link building.” Exactly what is link building and how should it fit into your digital marketing campaign? This quick guide can help you understand the process.
What is Link Building?
The idea behind link building is that you get hyperlinks from other websites to link back to yours. Google considers your page to be an authority if you have more sites linking back to you for information, so you want others to link to you to help increase your overall page rank.
Why it Matters
Search engines use links in two different ways. The first is to find new pages. The second is to decide how important those new pages they’ve found are. As a search engine crawls, it takes various pages and adds it to an index. Search engines look at the content of the individual page and the number of links that point to that page. The more links, the more important the search engine determines that page to be, the higher the overall rank of that page. Think of each link as a popularity vote. It is like another site announcing to the world that your pages matter, that they contain important content. As such, it’s a strong search engine signal used even today.
Not All Links Are Equal
When sites realised how powerful a link could be, lots of links were sold. Entire sites that were nothing but links (sometimes called link farms) were created. Today, search engines like Google are looking for more than just a link. Instead, they’re looking for a high quality link that helps actually show your site is a popular option.
So, Do You Need Link Building Services?
Now that you understand a bit more about the importance of links, you may wonder whether you need link building services as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. The short answer is absolutely. You can certainly handle the process of link building on your own, but link building services, particularly when they’re part of a larger SEO package, is really the way to do it. Because not all links are equal in the eyes of Google, you risk creating links that may not be valuable for your site if you try to undertake a link building strategy on your own. The last thing you want to do is get your site penalised because you were trying to do something to enhance your overall ranking, but with link building, that’s exactly what can happen.
Finding the Right Link Building Services
Not sure how to find link building services that will help your company? There are lots of good services out there, and the easiest way to uncover the team that will help is to ask lots of questions. Here are a few you should certainly consider.
What link building tactics do you use? You’re looking for a team that uses a number of tactics, including manual outreach to build the best possible link profile. While some companies exclusively use private blog networks, the goal is to use the best possible combination so that you get a clean profile from the search engines.
How do you choose the keywords for link building? You’re looking for a company that can handle all of your keyword research based on the group of customers you need to reach most. The overall goal here is to hire an expert who knows what you need to target to attract the attention of the right audience.
How many links will you create? Some companies will tell you that the number of links you should create depends on your overall budget. Others, though, will give you a solid recommendation based on your industry and your overall goals. That’s the kind of link building services you’ll most want to work with, as they can help give you a reliable answer that isn’t actually based on your budget.
Link building services are the perfect way to get a higher profile so you can connect with more organic traffic, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to build links. Make sure you connect with a company that puts you closer to the right way to build links.
Author’s Bio
Hitesh is a digital marketing strategist and entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in digital marketing, start-ups, branding, and customer acquisition strategies. Hitesh is the CEO and Founder of Reposition Group, which encompasses a number of companies in the digital sector including SEO.co.uk, Reposition.co.uk, and Bouncezap.com, amongst others.
Frank Partnoy is a tech blogger who loves to share his thoughts about the latest gadgets and technology. He loves everything from smartphones, laptops, tablets and more!
