Link building is, and has long been, a vital element of successful SEO. However, building effective links has become a more complex task over the years, not least due to Google’s efforts to regularly tweak its algorithm to filter out unfair advantages that could be derived from unscrupulous link building. Here’s an introduction to what can threaten to become a bewildering topic.
What is link building?
Link building involves acquiring hyperlinks – usually, simply called links – from other websites to yours. As links are used to jump between web pages, search engines will crawl them to find new pages and help assess how well different pages should rank in search results.
Why search engines pay so much attention to links
Having crawled web pages, search engines can extract those pages’ content before adding it to their indexes. In the process, they will look at not only that content, but also the number of links to that page from external sites and the quality of those sites. As a general rule, the greater the number of high-quality websites linking to your site, the likelier it is to rank prominently in search results.
Links have played a major part in such ranking since the 1990s, when Google introduced PageRank, whereby a page’s quality was measured, at least partly, by the number of links to it. This was effective as it deemed each link a vote of confidence in the page being linked to. However, as PageRank came to be increasingly manipulated in SEO, Google started implementing new ways to learn which websites were ranking undeservedly well and, ultimately, filter them out.
How influential do links remain today?
Google’s full algorithm for determining search results remains its “secret sauce”. However, as recorded by Moz’s 2015 survey on search ranking factors, the SEO community generally believes that links continue to play a major role.
Google’s release of Penguin updates to its algorithm and pushing of Google+ has sparked speculation that social signals, like tweets, are eating away at the influence of links on search rankings. However, it is still generally accepted that, should all other factors be equal, rankings will be affected by the quality and volume of links to the page in question.
How your business can reap returns from link building
Even disregarding the technical benefits of link building, it can be seen to bring less immediately clear, yet still worthwhile, advantages. For example, as amassing links often involves outreach to other sites and blogs in your sector, it can help you in building enduring relationships with key industry figures and, along the way, attracting more prestige and trust for your company.
Link building, when done well, can also help you to build a more authoritative image. Should you build links through creating content, this could demonstrate your company’s expertise and encourage other people to share that content. This can lead to a snowball effect where more and more people become exposed to what your company has to say.
Here at JAK, we can craft content that is professional and informative and, as a result, attracts respect for your company. That content can also incorporate links to ensure that you excel with the more technical side of link building. If you would like to learn more, we warmly invite you to email us via sales@jakinc.uk, call us on 0191 3882 698, or peruse our website.