Link Building falls within the “scope of” website optimization, particularly in Off-Site SEO. It is a crucial aspect for every quality indexing campaign.
This activity is not simple to implement. In fact, it’s necessary to find available domains, search for the best sites on which to publish the links, and avoid possible penalties from search engines.
In this article, we will look at the different aspects that characterize SEO link building, with some strategy examples. If you want to avoid the risk of doing link building incorrectly, we recommend contacting us and requesting a customized SEO consultation for you.
Here are the main characteristics of Off-Site SEO
Compared to On-Site SEO, which refers to activities performed internally on different pages and resources of a website, Off-Site SEO focuses more on actions of content promotion and sharing.
The objective of this type of strategy is to increase the page rank, the visibility of a site, and strengthen the connection with other authoritative platforms and websites that deal with similar topics.
Search engines aim to provide users with high-quality results and content that can satisfy their search intentions.
Considering that they have to index an enormous quantity of sites daily, search engines need to differentiate and prioritize those platforms that demonstrate greater authority. This is why, on the other hand, many sites are considered spam.
The tool they use to perform this differentiation is link popularity, which is the presence of direct links to your website on other sites. The more authoritative the platform where the link comes from, the greater the link popularity.
However, search engines don’t only take into account authority. They also consider the context of the source.
This means that links coming from not so authoritative sources, if they have a strong correlation with the topics covered on your site, significantly impact link popularity.
This is why Off-Site SEO activities have a decisive impact on the success of a website / web page.
Want to know what link building is? Keep reading
A link is a connection between pages of the same website or between different sites. Link building literally means building a network of links, connecting various pages of a website with other sites.
It should be distinguished from link earning, which is obtained naturally through citations, reviews, and spontaneous sharing.
To do link building, a solid strategy is necessary, made by professionals. After preparing the strategy, you need to engage in actual negotiations with the sites from which we want backlinks.
What is the purpose of a link building campaign in an SEO strategy? We explain it to you below
The purpose of a link building campaign within an SEO strategy is to increase the number of incoming links, the backlinks, to your website or web page portal.
Usually, the main objective of this activity is to increase organic traffic to your pages or to improve the ranking of positioning of specific keywords, although it’s always advisable to try to achieve both results.
The backlink should point to specific content on your site that will be chosen based on the objective.
Examples of resources used in these cases are web pages with good strategic relevance that promote a particular service or product.
Why does the link building strategy play a crucial role for search engines?
Google determines a website’s ranking on its search engine based on specific factors, such as relevance and authority.
Relevance is defined by the quality level of the content that the website contains. In the case of authority, backlinks coming from other sites are evaluated. These are seen as positive references in Google’s eyes.
The search engine, in fact, considers backlinks as a sort of recommendation. The “higher the reliability of the site from which the incoming link comes, the higher the” authority that the search engine will attribute to the site.
This is one of the main reasons why the link building technique plays a crucial role in the success of content marketing and allows both authority and ranking to grow.
How to do link building without being penalized by search engines
We have already mentioned in the introduction that link building is a complex activity. The biggest risk, if you don’t have the necessary skills, is to incur penalties from algorithms.
In fact, those who don’t know this tool well, as well as how search engine algorithms function, risk not complying with the guidelines suggested by Google.
To work, a link building strategy must naturally follow the growth of authority. However, each strategy cannot be applied to different sites.
The natural development of backlinks, in fact, requires the study of specific publication rhythms for each case. This is the only way to obtain optimal and concrete results.
There are therefore some so-called white hat techniques, approved by Google, to acquire links from other authoritative sites and increase the authority of your website.
Below we explain what are the main activities to carry out for link building
It is now clear that to create a winning link building strategy, specific technical knowledge and skills are needed, which allow you to evaluate your reference sector and the work of competitors.
Moreover, it’s important to know how to define the timing of backlink development, their technical peculiarities, and different types.
Creating a link building strategy takes a lot of time. The various analyses cannot be carried out in a standard way, especially if operating in a niche market characterized by high competition.
In these cases, the time to dedicate to this activity is high. If the skills of those dealing with SEO are limited, the timelines increase.
Link building also requires resources to create materials that must be useful to your target audience. Only in this way will you be able to receive a greater number of backlinks. The content created must be of high quality.
Let’s look together at the different phases that make up a link building campaign
A link building campaign is mainly characterized by:
- link profile
- link prospecting
- outreach
- content production
- monitoring
Link Profile: let’s understand what it is and how it’s done
The link profile is the summary of all backlinks that are directed to the site that is carrying out the link building campaign.
During this phase, a very detailed report is created that includes every resource that links to your site.
This report also includes the most important KPIs that allow an analysis of the types of backlinks such as, for example: anchor text, ip, DoFollow type, NoFollow and redirect, discovery date.
The report gives the possibility to monitor the trend of anchor texts in order to avoid penalization by Google.
Link Prospecting: why is it so important?
The next phase in implementing the link building strategy is link prospecting, which serves to find authoritative and relevant sources on which to publish backlinks.
To carry out this activity, it’s possible to use specific link intelligence tools that allow for reverse link building on the competition. Alternatively, you can leverage influencer marketing or special queries through search engines.
After creating a list of possible domains for link building, it’s necessary to perform a technical analysis of each one to understand the domain authority, essentially the degree of authoritativeness and relevance.
Outreach: communicating with other sites to obtain backlinks
The next phase is “outreach. This involves direct contact with the owners of the chosen domains for publishing backlinks. It’s advisable to start communications with the most authoritative sites on the list, so as to be able to conduct the first tests on” the outcome of the strategy.
Usually, if approached appropriately, no website refuses the request. In case of negative feedback from multiple domains marked as authoritative, don’t be discouraged but continue to contact others.
Remember that during these exchanges of communications, you’re dealing with real people who, certainly, receive many emails.
These are well-known and authoritative websites, you need to be patient and know how to wait the necessary time.
How should you communicate with the sites you’re asking for backlinks? Find out in the paragraph below
When scrolling through the list of website links to contact for the SEO link building campaign, we must not overlook any detail within the communication which should be brief and contain the following points:
- official introduction of the writer
- URL of the site where you intend to publish the backlink
- type of content you want to publish
- explanation of why they should link to the site
Regarding the email address to use for outreach, you can choose to use an email that identifies the client, or send the message from an email address of the SEO agency handling the strategy.
Never forget to create quality content for link building
A central part of link building is the creation of SEO content that is then published on your own site.
This involves different types of products, such as informative articles, infographics, guides, eBooks, videos, reviews and more.
Whatever the type, we must create relevant content for our target audience. For example, regarding technical aspects, the following cannot be missing:
- originality
- completeness of information
The ultimate goal is to obtain backlinks from sites that consider the shared topics relevant, interesting, and instructive.
Each time, it’s necessary to find resources that can spark interest in others and that are suitable for creating content for the backlink campaign.
For a practical example, if your website deals with technology, a winning strategy is the creation of guides with tips and tutorials that show how hi-tech products work.
In the case of a restaurant website, the ideal technical solution is the creation of content that covers recipes, cooking techniques, with photos and videos that facilitate the visitor in the procedure.
For medical practice websites, you can plan the creation of articles that discuss common pathologies and delve into symptoms, causes, and remedies.
Monitoring in link building activities yours and competitors’
The next step after the content creation phase is backlink monitoring. As you progress in designing the link building campaign, it’s crucial to analyze the backlinks that have been acquired, those that have been lost, and their respective qualities.
Additionally, it’s necessary to establish which KPIs are of interest to understand if the adopted strategy is leading towards the predetermined objectives.
Factors to consider are, for example, the growth of organic traffic and improvement in positioning.
At the same time, it’s very advantageous to carefully monitor competitors’ strategies, so as to be able to adjust your own activities and improve them compared to the initial idea.
The final step of monitoring is trying to understand if your site has seen an increase in brand popularity and authority, to the point of achieving link earning, or checking if the various strategies have encouraged other sites to link to your site spontaneously.
In this regard, there are several tools that allow you to stay updated on new backlinks received, thus improving the understanding of your strategy’s progress. A very useful tool for carrying out monitoring activities is Ahrefs.
How long does it take to evaluate the results of a link building campaign?
As we have already mentioned, it’s possible that each individual link building campaign may require different timeframes to have a positive effect on the positioning and traffic of your website.
These differences can be very wide and are influenced by various elements such as:
- presence of many competitors in the reference market
- high competitiveness of the keywords to be positioned
- competitors’ activities (if they are actively creating backlinks)
- type of backlinks being generated
- history and authority of your domain
Taking these factors into account, it can take from a few days to several months to achieve growth in SEO positioning and to see an increase in traffic to your site.
If you want to activate a link building campaign, you need to know, and be very clear about, that it’s not possible to achieve instant improvements. On-Site SEO and Off-Site SEO require time and patience.
In this regard, it’s essential to mark the initial positioning value before starting a link building campaign. Moreover, it’s useful to monitor changes in the SERP after the actual link building begins.
Based on the total number of keywords being monitored and the time frame, it’s advisable to use rank checker tools that facilitate the verification of results.
It’s also particularly recommended to consult the organic traffic report from Google Analytics.
Let’s look at some examples of link building strategies
There are many link building strategies that can be used to obtain inbound links to your site. These are the main ones:
- Content creation and sponsorship: if you offer quality materials, it’s much easier for users to consider them an authoritative source and decide to use them as a reference.
- Reviews and mentions: blogs, social media, and influencer marketing are valid aids for receiving mentions and reviews about your product or service.
- Internal link building: this is an often underestimated strategy, but it allows for link building towards the pages you want to improve in terms of SEO positioning on the main search engines. Moreover, it’s important to emphasize that you can have total control over this method.
Anchor text: the anchor text is nothing more than that textual part to which a hyperlink is attached. To be optimized at best, it should be formed by a minimum of three to a maximum of five words. Furthermore, it is essential that it is ‘speaking’. It must make those navigating the site understand what content will open once the link is clicked. Finally, it must contain one of the keywords.
Excerpt on anchor text from Google’s guidelines
- Page quality: search engines give greater value to those incoming links that come from pages that contain high-quality content. This is why any backlink that comes from sites with junk content is dangerous.
- Page to which the link is directed: often users who hear about a website visit it directly by connecting to the homepage. This complicates achieving high rankings for individual pages. In fact, it is complex for the latter to create their own link asset.
Ultimately, developing a good link building strategy and building internal links to your own website is extremely important.
It is also important to devote more care to the optimization of such links, because it allows you to make high-quality inbound links with a high anchor text to the best pages, which will allow you to climb the SERP ranking effectively and, above all, at zero cost.
Google and the battle against unfair link building practices. Beware!
Google appreciates and looks for relevance, authority, and usefulness in websites. It does not accept and condemns any spam activity that tricks or, even worse, defrauds the visitor.
Among these unfair techniques often includes a deceptive link building strategy, which Google defines in its guidelines as link spam.
For this reason, all incoming or outgoing links created to manipulate rankings in search results are penalized.
In 2022, Google launched SpamBrain, an AI-based spam prevention system. It identifies spam and detects both sites that buy links and those used for the purpose of sending outgoing links.
Here are some examples of link building penalized by Google
On this topic, we faithfully propose the list, contained in Google’s guidelines, of link activities considered spam. In particular, Google emphasizes that they are considered spam if the rel=nofollow
or rel=sponsored
is not specified in the <a> tag.
- Buying or selling links for ranking purposes, which involve exchanging money for links or posts that contain links. And again, exchanging goods or services for links and sending someone a product in exchange for a positive review and the inclusion of a link.
- Excessive link exchange or creation of partner pages exclusively for crosslinking.
- Use of automated programs or services to create links to your site.
- Advertising in text format or text links that do not block ranking credit.
- Advertisements or native advertising that involve receiving payment for articles that include links to increase ranking credit or links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites.
- Links from low-quality directory or social bookmarking sites.
- Links with many keywords, hidden links or low-quality links embedded in widgets distributed across various sites.
- Links spread in footers or templates of various sites.
- Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature
How much does it cost to do link building the right way? Read below
Before undertaking any link building campaign, it is more than legitimate to ask what are the costs of a single link, link packages, and guest posts.
To be completely frank, inbound links from authoritative websites come at a rather high cost. The factors that determine prices are precisely the domain authority and the strength of the link coming from a page of a site that has high traffic volumes and enjoys notoriety.
To give a concrete example, if we want the Corriere della Sera website to publish our guest post, we certainly can’t expect the cost to be the same as that required by a novice webzine!
There are specialized websites on the internet selling single links or link packages. We recommend relying on experienced professionals who plan a targeted link building strategy, evaluate the link profile, and proceed with the necessary operational phases that we have discussed in the previous paragraphs.
Choosing seemingly easier and less expensive routes can hide pitfalls and even serious risks. And remember that Google doesn’t forgive tricksters!
Discover the importance of relying on professional SEO agencies with long-standing experience in the sector
Relying on specialized SEO agencies for SEO link building strategies is essential to achieve concrete results.
Our SEO agency Qreativa has more than 10 years of experience in the field of link building campaigns. Over the years, we have optimized and positioned thousands of e-commerce sites, platforms for SMEs or Start-Ups.
We have a small but highly qualified team of six people. The team holds specific certificates for search engine optimization on Google and Bing. The SEO agency Qreativa is able to satisfy every type of need to guarantee optimized content.
The main services offered by the SEO agency are:
- Keyword identification
- Optimization of all types of content
- Natural link acquisition
- Specific positioning for Local SEO
- Technical SEO
Reasons to rely on Qreativa:
- Having the support of a highly experienced and competent team
- Optimizing time and resources
- Avoiding risks
- We have over 10 years of experience in SEO strategies and marketing for businesses such as hairdressers, medical practices, beauty centers, eCommerce, restaurants, and much more.
