Introduction
Links are the currency of the web. More and higher quality links translate to a higher ranking with Google. Building links is at the heart of every SEO strategy, so it’s essential to learn the front and back of this approach to enhance your website’s trustworthiness. This guide will go over everything from link building definitions, types, strategies, tools, and more!
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What is link building?
Link building is simply getting other websites to link to pages on your website to boost authority in the eyes of Google. The purpose of link building is to increase search engine visibility, raise your pages’ rankings, and generate more traffic. However, it should be done in a strategic way because there are many factors to be considered. More backlinks indicate that the webpage is of good quality and is used as a reference by others, but it’s important to note that quality is more important than quantity. Generally, with white hat link building, there are two simple steps to follow.
- Create something noteworthy like a study, survey, top content, infographic, etc.
- Show it to webmasters so they link to it as a reference.
The importance of link building
Links (or backlinks) are one of the major factors that influence search engine rankings. When crawling, Google considers the number of high-quality inbound connections to a webpage. Imagine visiting a new place and asking for the “best coffee shops in town”. If most of the locals vote for one coffee shop, you trust that it is the best one here. Similarly, Google goes around “asking” for the best links and ranks them accordingly. As a general rule of thumb, the more referring domains, the higher the search traffic. However, if the focus isn’t on the quality of link building, your backlink will result in a high spam score and get penalized by Google.
Types of link building
- Backlinks, or inbound links, are incoming hyperlinks from other websites to yours and are considered as the most important factors when determining your site’s ranking on Google. When referring to link building, we use backlinks to form a strategy to boost search traffic, establish site authority and improve customer experience.
- Outbound links – links from your website to other sites – to show that your content is based on trustworthy sources. They also help you increase search ranking, although not as important as backlinks.
- Internal links are links from one page to another within the same website and help visitors find related content and keep them on your site longer.
For backlinks, there are several types of link building. Here are a few that could be applied or need to be avoided to your web pages.
Natural Link Building
Natural link building is a backlink obtained naturally when someone links to your page as a reference source. Not just with pages, this type of link can also be attained when someone uses your website as a provider of infographics, sources of statistical data, or mentions someone related to your site. This is the most credible link but is more difficult to get. The only way to attain this is by creating top-quality content that is useful to the user.
Outreach Link Building
Outreach link building is when you contact the owners of other sites to link to your pages. Of course, this isn’t easy, which is why you need to understand what their focus is and why your link is helpful to them. To ensure the quality of your backlinks, choose credible and relevant websites to contact and ask them to attach the link. There are a few ways to achieve this.
- Guest posts by publishing articles on other websites and embedding your site’s link.
- Publish press releases on other sites related to your website or brand.
- Sponsor or partner with other websites, so they mention your page in their content.
Black Hat Link Building
Black hat link building is something you should avoid in your strategy. This involves getting backlinks that aim to manipulate the ranking. Site owners may use every means possible to make Google believe this is a credible and relevant link when it’s not. Here are a few actions to avoid based on Google’s link building guidelines.
- Spamming practices by creating links to your webpage in the comment section of other websites.
- Creating a lot of threads in online forums that contain a lot of backlinks to your site.
- Buying and selling low-quality backlinks excessively with targeted anchor texts.
How to build links?
Link building can be accomplished through various methods, but they typically fall into one of the following four categories: add, ask, buy, and earn.
1. Add links
When you access a website that isn’t yours and manually place your link there, it’s called adding a link. The most common tactics include business directory submissions, social profile creation, posting to forums and communities, and creating job listings.
- Business directories: Avoid adding your website to every business directory you can find. Instead, focus on those that are well-known, have traffic, and therefore bring actual visitors to your website.
- Social profiles: When you have a brand, claim all your brand names on every social media platform to avoid snatchers claiming them. Links from these platforms have little to no direct SEO value but investing in your social media is always good practice to increase your brand awareness and hold ownership of your brand name on all platforms.
- Blog comments: Leaving a comment promoting your content can fall in on either side of a very thin line that indicates if it generates referral traffic or signals the website owner to flag you as spam.
2. Ask for links (outreach for links)
Reach out to website owners directly to ask for a link. There are many tactics you can employ to get your desired backlinks. One of the most popular ways is to do guest posts, which we will go over in detail below. Another tactic is called the skyscraper technique, which involves showing them a better resource than the one they have now. Link insert is when you show them a referrence source on something they mentioned in their content and ego bait is when you paint them or their work in a positive light. Other tactics include link exchange, unlinked mentions, link moves, and more. Big companies usually have a dedicated department to do outreach for them so we will need a separate article to explain all the outreach techniques in detail.
3. Buy links
It is not easy to create top-quality content and then ask people to link to it. More than that, even if you have a masterpiece of content, most of the time, it is not attractive enough so people give you free backlinks. Therefore, many agencies increase the incentive by paying webmasters so they link to your content instead of others’ content. This technique is very common in the SEO industry because nowadays, everyone is aware of the value of backlinks so they always ask for something back when they give you a backlink.
4. Earned links
You earn links when others voluntarily add your link to their website without having to ask them. This won’t happen unless your content is extraordinarily useful. Try some of the tactics here to raise your chances of getting earned links.
- Linkbait: Create linkable assets that they can “borrow” (and credit), such as infographics, data studies, maps, surveys, awards, and more.
- Podcasts/Interviews: Similarly to link baiting, many prefer to reference something personal and unique, like podcasts and interviews on related topics.
- Content promotion: That’s right, people can only link to you if they know about it. So start promoting to spread your business name and improve your backlinks results.
What makes a good link
There is no official guideline or criteria of how Google ranks backlinks; however, there are a few general concepts that the SEO community believes are used to evaluate backlinks.
1. Authority
Two types of authority – page and website authority – are good indications of the link’s quality. Page authority refers to Google’s PageRank algorithm, where pages with more links weigh more in the vote. Google has denied the weight of website authority in the past, but it’s intuitive that well-known websites are more credible than random ones. That’s why many strive to get backlinks from old pages with solid profiles. That doesn’t mean a newly-published page should be ignored as they may acquire high-quality links over time, increasing your link’s value in the long run. Low-ranked but high-potential websites should be treated similarly to newly-published pages as they can become a big deal in a few years.
2. Relevance
Let’s look at this indicator with an example. Your business website publishes an article reviewing the best coffee shops in town. Later, two of your friends decide to link it in their articles, one about “10 places to visit in this town” and the other one is “10 ways to start a conversation”. Assuming that both have the same level of authority, the more topical-relevance one’s vote will (obviously) weigh more in the eyes of Google.
3. Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text that links to another document or location on the web. In most cases, anchor texts describe what the linked page is about, and Google uses these texts to better understand which keywords to rank you for. in other words, anchor texts signal Google about which keywords your content is related to. Keep in mind that Google may penalize your website if they see a pattern of excessive targeted, exact-match anchor texts that can only be achieved via unnatural link building.
4. No-follow vs. follow
A no-follow link does not have much value for the linked page and is often ignored because it means it does not give the linked page a vote of trust. However, Google switched to a hint model in 2019 that says some no-follow links have an influence on page ranking. Of course in link building, you want to build high-quality follow links. But if there is a chance of getting a no-follow link from a relevant high-authority page, absolutely follow through.
5. Placement
The placement of the links indicates the likeliness of it being clicked. Generally, an article has three blocks: sidebar, content, and footer. Viewers put the most attention in the content section, so your link can get more attention here, especially if it’s at the beginning of the article. Similarly to anchor text, you have little to no control over it. But if you’re writing a guest post for someone else’s blog, boost the SEO value and send some traffic by placing your link strategically.
6. Destination
In link building, there are three destinations to point to: the homepage, linkable assets, and pages that you want to rank high on Google. There is no right way to go about this, and it depends entirely on your strategy. It is a common strategy to build an authoritative homepage and then funnel the “authority” using internal links into pages that you actually want to rank.
Best link building strategies in Vietnam
A good link building strategy always centers around useful content. This could be harder to achieve if you are an international brand looking to enter the Vietnamese market without a local expert. Here are some tips for your link building strategies in Vietnam.
1. Perform Vietnamese keyword search
One of the things you want to do before pumping out content for your website is to perform Vietnamese keyword research. This will ensure that your content is targeted to the Vietnamese market specifically. Google gives different search results based on location, meaning the search results for a keyword in the US will be different from the search results in Vietnam for the exact same keyword. You can use tools like Google Trends, Semrush, or Ahrefs to start your localized keyword research.
2. Localize your content
After you have those keywords and ideas for the content, start building links with localized content. Most Vietnamese people prefer to read in their native language, especially when it is promoting your business or website. Be wary of translating your content word-by-word, as it comes off unnatural and hard to read. To better appeal to the Vietnamese audience, we recommend that you hire professional copywriters whose first language is Vietnamese.
3. Build content topic clusters
Google has begun using artificial intelligence to rank content, so you will need a few tricks to get on its good side. If you want to rank for a certain keyword, build content around one central topic and expand around it. Surround this pillar page with several related, more focused blog articles that link back to the page. This is called a topic cluster model, first pioneered by HubSpot, and is now the norm for content marketers globally.
4. Pursue competitor’s link
The top-ranking page for your desired search query always has the right links, hence why it’s important to perform competitor link research. By studying its links, you will be able to figure out which tactics you can employ to get similar links and outrank that page. With the help of SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, you can figure out how many backlinks each of the top-ranking pages has and can take further actions to achieve the same outcome. You can either try to get backlinks from pages that link to your competitors or study their strategy and implement it to get more backlinks than your competitors.
5. Content promotion
Now that you have your localized content and have learned a few strategies after analyzing your competitors’ backlinks profile, the next step is to execute the plan. No matter how “linkable” your content is, people can’t link them without knowing about them first. Even the best linkable assets have to be promoted to attract links, which can generally be accomplished in three ways: advertising, outreach, and community.
→ Advertising: This is a pretty straightforward tactic where you pay money to get visitors to your page. You can reach out to the audience on any platform and raise the chances of someone linking to it. The problem is that it is a costly tactic that you have to pay to acquire visitors, so this isn’t sustainable in the long run. However, it’s perfect to increase your brand awareness as well as attract, nurture, and retain customers. Advertise because it helps your business grow, and backlinks will result as a byproduct.
→ Outreach: This is the most popular way to promote your content because there is a higher chance of success and faster results. It involves sending an email to other website owners in your niche to pitch why your content is worth linking to. A good way to go about this is to impress them with your content and make them want to check it out. Another way to perform outreach is by guest blogging, offering the webmaster a high-quality piece of content (a guest post) in exchange for a link to your website. Guest posting has become the dominant technique in the SEO world in the last 10 years and even now, most link builders still consider this to be one of the most effective ways to build links.
→ Community: Reaching out to people who are interested in you or related to your topic has never been easier. They can be found on Facebook groups, subreddits, and other social platforms. You might also be able to find some standalone communities in certain niches. Before you can effectively promote your content, become an active member, and gain some respect. After you get a following, it would be a good idea to create your own community with an audience who looks forward to your content. You can connect with them through your business’ Facebook group, email newsletter, and Twitter.
Link building tools
While manpower and an email address are enough to start your link building journey, many link building tools can aid you in executing your strategy and help you achieve your desired numbers. The two most popular tools for backlink analysis, content research, keyword research, link prospecting and web monitoring tools are Semrush and Ahrefs, I personally prefer Ahrefes for its crawling power on the web. Some popular outreach tools nowadays are Pitchbox, Mailshake and Hunter.io.
- Backlink analysis tools: This tool will come in handy when researching competitors’ links. It helps you develop an actionable link building strategy for your own site.
- Content and keyword research tools: You can now easily create shareable, link-worthy content by using this tool to research the most popular topics with the highest chances of getting you backlinks.
- Link prospecting tools: This tool helps you find and prioritize relevant websites to send your pitches to. It can improve the success rate of your outreach strategy.
- Web monitoring tools: You will be notified of any newly-published pages that mention your keyword, brand name or new backlinks that your competitors have acquired.
- Email outreach tools: This tool helps you manage and track link building campaigns. It also simplifies the process of sending out pitches, creating dynamic outreach templates, sending follow-ups, and more.
Common mistakes in link building
With 1.5 billion websites on the Internet today, you want to do the best you can to stand out. If you’re planning your link building strategy today or are wondering why your current one isn’t working, check out six common mistakes in link building before you go.
1. Building links with low-quality content
As mentioned above, quality backlinks go a long way. You should not only focus on building authority and relevant sites in link building but also focus on creating content that is useful for readers.
2. Repetitively linking to the same web page
Backlinks that repetitively link to the homepage of a website are commonly seen in the link building strategy. A landing page does help drive more traffic to your site, but don’t limit your creativity. It is a good idea to link to informative blog entries, the author’s biography, and service pages.
3. Building irrelevant links
Never build a backlink unrelated to the main content of your site. Just like if you were a swimmer, you wouldn’t want to also compete in table tennis. That will cost you time, money, and more importantly, make it will not help to rank your content. If users who came to your site looking for beauty products to find the content centering around sports gear, they will return to the previous site or exit the site altogether. Make sure that you are creating backlinks in the same niche topic because relevancy is vital for Google to give you authority.
4. Ignoring no-follow links
No-follow links don’t register in search engine rankings, but that does not mean they are useless. On the contrary, because many make the common mistake of skipping over them, they miss out on good link building opportunities. Applying no-follow links to your website can improve your ranking by adding diversity to your backlink profile to look more natural.
5. Performing bad outreach
Outreach is one of the best tactics to build backlinks, but it needs to be performed in a strategic manner to ensure that other websites will attach a link to your web page. The most common way is to send an email to the webmaster, however, it needs to be well-written with clear intentions unless you’re looking to be ignored or intentionally avoided. A common mistake that could happen is using a generic outreach email template online. To raise your chances of getting a credible backlink, personalize your email and make a win-win pitch.
Final Words
This guide has covered the definition, strategy, tips, and common mistakes so that you can build the best backlinks for your website. Building relevant links to the localized version of your site from local websites is the only way to rank in a local market. If you want to emerge into the market or attract visitors from Vietnam, investing in a strong link building strategy is extremely worthwhile. If you opt for poor-quality, cheap, and ineffective links, your site will drop in ranking or worse, be removed from Google’s search engine completely. Les Michels is a Web & Digital Marketing Agency in Vietnam specializing in SEO and has had years of experience building authoritative high-quality backlinks in various industries. If you want to transform your business by increasing your website ranking on search engines and generating higher traffic long-term, please get in touch with us:
Email: tdphat@lesmichels.fr
