Link building is a technique used to help websites rank higher in the search engines. With link building, you are actively gathering links to your websites.
It's best to think of a link as a vote. The more votes for your website the higher you will rank in the search results. However, it is important that the links are of good quality. A website has a certain authority. The higher this score is, the stronger the link will be.
Different link building techniques
There are a total of five different link-building techniques:
- Registering your website with directories such as home pages
- Exchange links with other websites. For this you will also have to place a link on your website.
- Guest blogging (very popular lately)
- Deploying social media
- Buying links
The best way to gather links
The best way to garner links is to write very good content. So good that people do want to share your content. If you've written such a tremendously good article, then of course you can just let the other party know about your new article.
A natural link profile
In 2012, Google Penguin was released to combat black hat SEO. Specifically, this involves getting links in the wrong way. Thus, there are a number of indicators that Penguin can fall over:
- Are there many links to the relevant website within a very short period of time
- Are they relevant links
- Are they coming from the same IP address as your own website
- How does the website get your link
In short, it is important that you make every effort to have as natural a link profile as possible. So should you buy relevant links, don't buy 100 in 1 day. Spread this out and benefit in the long run.
So make sure it looks natural
Internal link structure
Getting backlinks, however, is not the only thing you need to consider. Also make sure your website's internal link structure is in order. These are the links you use to navigate within your own website. In articles like this one, we also link to relevant articles or pages within our own website. This is important for your reader so he quickly gets the right information but also for the search engine, which can then understand the structure of your website much better!
You can best think of this as a wikipedia page, again constantly linking to relevant information the certain topics in further detail.