UPDATED: Does link building matter for SEO?
Off-page technical search engine optimization (SEO) sounds a bit like secret SEO magic, but in reality, it is just a long, manual process that never ends! This is not something that any company or business owner should handle on their own for the simple fact that it is not for the faint heart. Off-page SEO which involves link building is hard.
Well, it is kind of like Pastry Week on the Great British Baking Show. It takes a whole lot of patience, it is difficult to execute, time-consuming and you can not cut corners. But, when it’s done and done well, it is damn good.
Now, we may not be even remotely qualified to be on the Great British Baking Show, but we do know we are qualified to handle and speak about off-page SEO strategies like link building. To find a successful Denver SEO Specialist, it is important to understand that not all SEOs handle the process the same, offer the same solutions and do not always have your best interest in mind.
When it comes to SEO, the importance of link-building often pops up. Does it really matter? Does it really affect your search engine rankings? It all matters and affects your ranking at the end of the day.
What is link building?
Link building, backlinking, inbound links are all the same thing, but just a different way to say it, they deal directly with links that refer back to your company’s website. A company that uses your blog to source their statistics is practicing link building without even realizing it.
In the scheme of things, it is pretty self-explanatory. Links are a way for Internet users to navigate to other pages on the web. Link building is getting other websites to link back to your website.
These links are crawled by search engines and have the capability of driving significant referral traffic to your website. When your referral traffic to your website increases, so does your authority with search engines, like Google.
Why is link building important?
The top three factors that Google still uses includes link building strategies. A highly credible link that refers back to your website can easily start to boost ranking because, in Google eyes, you are trustworthy and credible in that specific topic or even industry.
Our Denver SEO Specialists always try to explain that there are different types of backlinks that every company wants to stay away from- spammy backlink. These are links that are characterized by search engines as spam and can affect ranking such as trafficbot4free.com or something along the lines of that!
What other links should companies often time avoid or try to not use consistently in their link building strategy?
Sites with more backlinks have been recognized as having higher search engine rankings than those without. But, how do you get people to link back to your website?
1. Quality content
To rank in search engines, such as Google, a company needs more than a backlinking strategy. A company needs content that consumers want to read and companies want to link back to as a resource on their site.
It is important to create content that is relevant to your company, its consumers and SEO strategy that is in place. Without quality content, the backlinks are helping, but might not get that okay content out there in search engines!
2. Outreach
Our Denver SEO Specialists get about five to 10 emails a week regarding an outreach on link building strategies.
These emails kind of go like this, “Hey X, we love your blog article (insert article)! Would you mind adding our link (insert link) into your article with some content?”
Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing because they found your article to begin with, and sometimes, those articles are older which means they are ranking for keywords.
The biggest notion to remember is to review their Domain Authority (DA) on their website. This is because the higher the DA score, the more trustworthy they are to Google, which means it could be a great opportunity.
3. Utilize the right keywords
All SEO content that is being published should be written with keywords in place. There is a practice behind choosing the right keywords and their importance, but always remember, make sure the keywords are relevant. Just because it seems as if that is the right keyword, the context and usage of that specific keyword could be different! This starts to get noticed by Google, and a bunch of websites that link back to yours that aren’t qualified will hurt your credibility!
Here’s even more ideas on how to do this from Backlinko!
Any SEO Denver Specialist will tell you that earning backlinks to your website is incredibly important! Earning them in an ethical way is what will set the “good guys” apart from the “bad guys” who implement Black Hat SEO practices. When earned the right way, your business can work its way to higher domain authority and show the expertise you hold in your industry.