The art of effective link building has long been the topic of discussion between many webmasters and SEO specialists over the years, with many debating over what strategies produce the greatest organic impact.
So, let us clear something up for you. Link building is not a dark art, nor do you require Harry Potter wizardry to achieve great success, it is simply a case of knowing what links are worth gaining and which are worth ignoring.
Here is a list of our top link building tips, which are designed to improve your online authority levels, increase your organic performance on Google and, of course, drive a greater number of referral visitors into your website:
Quality NOT Quantity: We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, Google is looking for your website to gain quality links into your website NOT a high volume of links. Of course, if you can gain a high volume of quality links then perfect, but when a high number of links have been gained then this usually means that the majority of them appear on low quality domains. So, it is more effective for you to focus on gaining links on high authority domains/pages rather than trying to increase the total number of backlinks to a significant level.
Put simply, it is far more beneficial for your website to receive 10 links from high authority domains than 1,000 links on low quality domains, especially if the high authority domains are industry-relevant to your own website.
The Domain Authority rating and URL Authority rating for a specific website’s Homepage.
The key is to analyse the websites and, specifically, the page that your link will feature on, to establish whether you should gain the link or not. Sites such as https://ahrefs.com enable you to discover the overall Domain Authority score and specific URL Authority score, allowing you to gauge if a link is worth gaining.
For example, the image of the right shows that the Domain Authority rating, for a non-specified website that we have analysed, is currently 52/100. This suggests that the website has a fair amount of online authority, which is a good start. However, the main thing to focus on is the authority of the page that your link will appear on. So, in this case, we have analysed the authority level of the Homepage, which is 31/100. As the majority of websites gain links on pages rated between 0-20/100, this data suggests that gaining a link on this specific page would be extremely beneficial.
However, if the data came back and stated that the URL Authority rating was 8/100 then gaining a link on this website/page wouldn’t particularly help to increase your own authority rating, although it could lead to additional referral visitors entering your website. So, in this case, you need to weigh up the pros and cons of gaining the link. For example, if it’s a paid directory and the yearly charge is relatively high then you might want to look elsewhere, but, if it’s a low cost (or free) listing, then it is still worth proceeding.
Anchor Text: It’s all well and good gaining quality links but the anchor text that is placed upon them is just as important. Google wants to see your links look as natural as possible, so this means that a higher percentage of links should contain anchor text that relates to your company name or website URL. If you suddenly gain a high volume of links that use ‘New Cars’ as the anchor text, for example, then this looks extremely unnatural, especially if they are all coming via the same domain, whereas Google would expect you to have a high percentage of links that contain your company name as the anchor text. So, ensuring that this is the case is just as vital as gaining quality links in the first place.
Ideally, you’d want to make sure that around 60%-75% of your links contain company/URL related anchor text, with the remaining 25%-40% focuses on a variety of specific keyword search terms. This could mean that 3% of links are focused on ‘New Cars’, whilst 5% of links are focused on ‘New Cars for Sale’ and so on.
Don’t Just Focus on Your Homepage:
Many webmasters tend to focus their attention on gaining links into their Homepage. However, it is equally important to gain links into sub-level pages too, especially if you want these pages to feature strongly within the organic rankings on Google. For example, if Jump 2 IT Media want to improve our organic position for a specific service that we provide, we would need to focus on improving the authority level of the page on our site that directly relates to this service. So, for website design, we would have to gain additional, quality links into www.jump2itmedia.com/services/website-design/ rather than our Homepage, especially as the content that features on our design page is focused on this specific service, whereas the Homepage is set-up to target our overall digital marketing services.
Ultimately, Google will weigh up whether your sub-level pages is more authoritative than a competitors. If so, you’ll have a great chance of featuring above them within the organic search results due to your page becoming more important in the eyes of Google.
Of course, you still want to build up links into your Homepage, but it is also important that you focus on your sub-level pages as well. Don’t neglect these pages, as you’ll soon discover that this could be the beginning of your organic downfall.
