Link building
Achieving good organic visibility within search engines starts with optimizing your own website. This includes technical optimizations to make it as easy as possible for search engine ‘spiders’ to enter, crawl and index the website. In addition to technical optimizations, it’s crucial to equip the website with engaging textual and visual content to optimize organic visibility and meet the needs of search engine users.
The higher a website’s organic position, the higher the CTR (Click-Through Rate) from search engine users. The CTR refers to the number of users who click through to visit the website. Simply put, the higher you rank in search engines, the more traffic you will attract. Therefore, it is crucial to achieve the highest possible position for your key search terms. If the content and technical aspects are already fully optimized on your site, but you haven’t achieved top positions, how can you further optimize your content? Another way is to increase the authority of your domain, or in other words, link building.
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What is link building?
Link building is a process where backlinks are generated from (mainly external) websites to a specific domain. The purpose behind the 'link building' technique is to transfer (a part of) the authority from an external domain to the receiving domain. The links from external domains increase the credibility and reliability of your website's content. This is exactly what you want to achieve with your website or blog. When external websites place backlinks to the content on your website, it showcases your authority about a specific topic. Search engines will recognize this authority and assign higher relevance to your website or blog. All this will lead to better organic rankings.
What is a backlink?
A backlink is a hyperlink from one website to another site. By clicking on the link, the backlink will bring a user to a specific page on another website.
Example: LEQUAL receives a backlink from Wikipedia. That means somewhere on the Wikipedia website, there is a hyperlink that points to the lequal.com domain.
How do you acquire backlinks?
Link building is the process organizations use to acquire relevant backlinks from relevant external domains to improve the organic visibility of their websites. However, how do you encourage external parties to place a hyperlink to your website? There are several ways to do this.
Organic acquisition or link earning
The ultimate scenario for building authority is by obtaining backlinks organically. This means that external websites find the content on your website valuable. As a result, they will want to link to it as a source or reference. This is also why informative platforms, such as large news websites, acquire a tremendous number of backlinks organically (link earning), thereby building significant authority. For commercial entities with less interesting niches, this can be very difficult to achieve. However, this doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities.
Buying backlinks
The fastest and easiest way to acquire quality backlinks is to purchase them from external domains. This strategy is one of the most commonly used techniques worldwide for building authority. Many content publishing websites, such as blogs and news platforms, have established a business model where references (backlinks) are sold and published in articles or blogs, with a fee paid by the receiving party. Since a fee is paid, the content does not necessarily have to be of value to the publishing party.
Search engines, such as Google, do not tolerate this method of obtaining backlinks. Deliberately manipulating search engine algorithms can result in penalties, resulting in significantly reduced organic visibility for the receiving party. However, in practice, many organizations in competitive markets still use this technique and are not deterred by the potential penalties.
Achieving backlinks through your network
In addition to buying backlinks or organically obtaining them, there are other options to acquire backlinks, often for free. For example, you can make use of your organization’s network. Organizations typically have many partners, suppliers and customers. You can showcase these partnerships by linking to and from their websites.
In order to assess opportunities, it is advisable to map out your organization. Which partners do you have in the fields of ICT, development and hosting? Additionally, make it clear which tools and suppliers you use. This way, you can offer to write testimonials for the relevant parties, which you can use to generate backlinks. Such backlinks are extremely relevant, given the collaboration between the parties. Additionally, these backlinks are very difficult for competitors to replicate, especially if they do not have relationships with the same parties.
PR (link building)
Through PR link building, it is possible to obtain backlinks from even the most authoritative domains. PR link building is a highly creative and sustainable strategy for acquiring backlinks. However, this strategy may not be suitable for every type of organization, as the process is often expensive and intensive. Nevertheless, a successful PR campaign can make a significant difference, even with a strong backlink profile.
So, how does it work exactly? PR link building campaigns typically begin by researching several interesting propositions. These propositions should either be newsworthy or provoke a lot of discussion or controversy. After researching propositions, they should be tested with a panel. The results are then shared through a conclusive press release. Finally, this press release is sent to local and national media agencies. Whether the PR material will go viral is often uncertain, but having good connections with editorial teams will usually increase the chance of success.
Key considerations in link building
Relevance of backlinks
The relevance of backlinks is extremely important in link building. This means that the backlink should originate from a webpage on a domain that aligns with the niche, subject and content of the receiving website. Additionally, you can increase the relevance of backlinks by using proper anchor text and placing them within the right context.
Naturalness and authority of external domains
The technique of link building has evolved significantly in recent years. Algorithms are becoming more sophisticated, making it easier to detect suspicious manipulation techniques. Therefore, if you want to reap long-term benefits from link building efforts, a natural and sustainable backlink profile is essential. In addition to the relevance of the domain, it is important that the external domain you wish to link from also receives relevant traffic. If the domain is relevant and receives a lot of organic visitors through quality content, then a backlink from this domain is likely to be a valuable addition to your backlink profile!
The relevance and naturalness of potential backlinks are important, but are there any other factors to consider when looking at ‘the ideal backlink’? Another important factor is the authority of the domain from which you receive a backlink. The higher the authority of that domain, the more powerful the link. So, how do you measure the authority of an external domain? You can measure the authority of external domains by using third-party tools, such as Majestic, Ahrefs, MOZ, and SemRush. All these platforms have their own metrics based on their own algorithm. The tools provide you with an indication of the authority of a domain. However, it’s unclear to what extent the rating corresponds to the algorithms of search engines, such as Google. Either way, the authority scores are still useful for determining the value of backlinks from external domains. However, do not rely solely on such metrics from third-party tools.
Link velocity
Link velocity is the speed at which you acquire backlinks. It is generally based on the number of backlinks coming in from month to month. It is unknown how much link velocity plays a role in organic search rankings. However, what we do know is that stagnation or decrease in incoming links usually leads to declining organic positions. Therefore, it is generally advised to achieve a steady stream of incoming backlinks, thereby creating momentum.
Anchor text
Anchor text, also known as link text, is the clickable text in a hyperlink. When placing backlinks on external domains, you should consider the anchor text you place in your backlinks. Search engines can read the anchor text, so this anchor text provides them with an indication of what can be found on the page that the backlink leads to. However, using the same anchor text too much can lead to over-optimization.
Homepage versus deep linking
The focus of a link building campaign is an important part of the preparation. Which keywords are promising and commercially interesting? The keywords on your homepage may be visible, but there is a good chance that they are also visible on deeper pages. If this is the case, you run the risk of ‘imbalance,’ which happens when the entire link building campaign is focused on deeper pages. In a natural backlink profile, the homepage receives approximately 20% of all incoming backlinks, while the remaining backlinks are somewhat evenly distributed among the other deeper pages. Avoid imbalance by spreading the backlinks across your landing pages and the homepage.
Creative link building strategies
Creativity plays a crucial role in link building strategy. The more creative the campaign, the more unique the backlinks, making it difficult for competitors to replicate them.
Through creativity, you can outpace the competition and make your backlink profile truly unique compared to other websites. So, what are the best creative link building strategies? We have listed them for you in this image.
Knowledge sharing
Knowledge sharing is a highly creative strategy for generating backlinks and creating exposure. If you have a wealth of expertise about a specific topic, you can be of great value to external knowledge platforms. With this strategy, you seek out informative platforms willing to collaborate, where you share your expertise for exposure for your company, preferably with backlinks included in these collaborations. Such partnerships are generally beneficial for both parties. In addition to exposure and backlinks, you also build authority at an individual level. As a result, search engines are more likely to recognize the content you publish on various platforms as being authoritative.
Barter deals
Don’t have a budget for “buying” backlinks or paying for collaborations? Fortunately, there are multiple paths to success. Through barter deals, you can offer relevant products or services in exchange for blog posts and backlinks. The success rate for such collaborations is generally slightly lower versus paying cash, but a barter deal is typically cheaper than paying cash. A barter deal can also lead to more exposure and even potential sales, for example, by offering giveaways or sharing discount codes in the collaboration.
Branded citations
Large brands and companies are often mentioned in the media, especially when they have an active PR department. Branded citations are mentions of a brand or company on external websites. Oftentimes, branded citations do not include backlinks, even though the company is mentioned. For this reason, it can be worthwhile for PR departments to contact publishing platforms and request them to add backlinks to citations. This is a very straightforward and highly effective strategy, but generally only suitable for larger organizations.
Skyscrapers
The skyscraper technique involves publishing extensive educational, informative content on your own website. With this strategy, you gather inspiration from external sources (competitors), aiming to essentially copy their content. However, you then make it better and more comprehensive. With this comprehensive information, you can approach other platforms that have also written about the topic, requesting them to link to your skyscraper content. In order to be effective, the content must be of high quality and value so that potential links are seen as valuable to external domains. With the skyscraper technique, it’s important to update the content frequently, ensuring it is as complete and original as possible.
A good link building campaign starts with a precise baseline measurement. As accurately as possible, map out all relevant terms and create a baseline measurement of positions. Take note of the positions and dates, or use a dashboard with the ability to track positions. You can also track other important data after the baseline measurement, such as page or domain-wide traffic, authority metrics, number of referring domains and backlinks, etc. However, much of this data can also be viewed over time with SEO support tools.
Competitor analysis is a valuable tool for uncovering and learning from the strategies of competitors. Some aspects covered in a competitor analysis include:
- – Current positions and position development of competitors
– Benchmark metrics compared to competitors
– Deep-dive: what strategies does the competition employ?
– Which backlinks have competitors generated?
– What anchor text does the competition use?
Based on the above insights, you can refine your own strategy. Competitor analysis also provides insights into potentially interesting backlinks that you can replicate.
Once the baseline assessment and competitor analysis are completed, it’s time to develop the final strategy. At this point, it’s clear which keywords are of interest, what you might still be lacking compared to the competition, and what strategies your competitors are employing. Based on this information, the link building strategy can be formulated. Determine the amount of effort needed for building links, decide which link building techniques to employ, plan how to structure anchor text, and identify the pages to focus on. Once all of this is clear, you can develop your strategy.
Measuring and adjusting is an aspect that is often underestimated. However, measuring results is extremely important. By measuring results, you can assess how much effort is still needed to achieve certain outcomes. As you know, the difference in CTR can be enormous when you move from, say, position 2 to position 1. Once you have achieved maximum results, you can consider switching strategies. When rising is no longer the goal, you may switch to a “maintenance” strategy. This allows you to allocate your budget and efforts to new categories.