What is link building, an essential element of SEO?
Every day each of us clicks on various types of links, most of the users, after typing selected phrases in the search engine window, do not wonder why these particular pages are returned to us the result on the first page of the Google search engine – it is worth explaining. To a large extent, there is the effect of optimization and its various elements, one of which is link building. What exactly is link profile building for a website? Why is it so important? The answer to these and other questions is presented below.
What exactly are links and why are they important?
A link is an interchangeable name for a hyperlink or link that has its place on various sites, stores, blogs and so on. It can lead either to an element within its own page(internal linking) or outside of it(external linking) and can appear in any form; text, photo or even video. Using less complicated language, we can say that a link allows us to navigate the Internet because it takes us from one place to another. It used to be that Google’s search engine ranked sites high based on the number of external links leading to the site – until Google introduced more algorithms(top list) focusing on different aspects of the site, which began to give preference to sites by considering quality rather than quantity.
What is link building and what types of links can be distinguished?
Link building, or external linking, involves acquiring links to a site from other sites and online sources. Their presence on sites with a high ranking in search results suggests that a site is worth visiting because it has valuable content that answers a question or leads to a product you are looking for. At this point it is worth mentioning that the link does not always appear in its pure form. Sometimes it is hidden under an anchor (from English). These are simply words that briefly describe what can be found under the link. The sub-linking of a page is closely related to the “rel” value. It tells what kind of relationship connects the two sites. The most important parameters include:
- Rel=”ugc”. The link comes from a commenter.
- Rel=”sponsored”. Advertising linking.
- Rel=”nofollow”. The link should only be associated to some extent with the linking domain.
- Rel=”dofollow”. Actually, this is tantamount to no rel value, that is, only the part of the page that links to another page is shown.
With these parameters, search engine algorithms can determine whether the content on the linked page is valuable and its assumptions. Interestingly, even when they are not included in the link, the algorithm will still know into which category to categorize the placed links. Two types of links are most commonly used in link building. The first is graphical, i.e. external linking is done through a hyperlink located on an image file. While the second is a text type. Part of the text in question is highlighted and replaced with an anchor. Textual linking occurs most often in the form:
- URL – https://seofly.pl
- Brand – en
- ZMA (Znachor Match Anchor) – check the offer
- EMA (Exact Match Anchor) – SEO agency .
- PMA (Partial Match Anchor) – an effective agency in your city
How to acquire external linking. How to increase the number of links?
In fact, every web user sometimes participates in the process that is link building. After all, it is enough for him to go to a blog and share a particular article, or store at an online store and recommend a product on a forum. However, this is just the beginning of the possibilities of obtaining links for your site, it is worthwhile to diversify links from different sources, but the best will be obtained from sites with similar or similar topics to ours. It is worth asking among friends who run companies and also have sites to provide a link in the form of a graphic or guest post.
There are many platforms on the market that help in the link building process and it is worth using them, but we also need to keep in mind that not all portals may be of interest to us considering not only simple parameters. Unfortunately, when running a link buidling campaign on our own, without the right tools, building a link profile for our site can cause us more problems than benefits. An example is the desire to buy a large number of links with their publication in a short interval, which Google may consider as an attempt to manipulate search engine results. In conclusion, link building is an important and indispensable part of building a site’s visibility, acquiring links from different sources is a good strategy for diversifying sources.
