Link building is a very important offsite technique in the world of SEO, so if you are looking to boost your websites visibility then its something you need to be focusing on. A good way of explaining it would be to compare it to making friends online. In short, the more high-quality connections you have, the more credibility and trustworthy you appear to search engines. Bearing this in mind, let’s go a bit deeper and look at why link building is crucial for SEO and why its almost all SEO’s use it for their campaigns.
First off, let’s talk about what link building technically is. In simple terms, it’s the process of getting other websites to link back to yours. If you’ve just opened a new café in your town then you want people to know about you, right? So, you start chatting with local food bloggers, and they mention your café in their posts. Those mentions are like digital votes that your café is worth visiting and in the SEO world, these are backlinks, and they tell search engines that your site is reputable and should be shown to more people.
Why is this important I hear you ask? Google and other search engines use very complex algorithms to decide which websites should appear at the top of search results for specific searches. Links are a key part of these algorithms. When reputable sites link to yours, it’s like a vote of confidence in your content. The more quality votes you get, the better your chances of climbing up the search rankings.
But not all votes are created equally, quality is king. What people define as a quality link is discussed daily in digital marketing and everyone has their own opinion. Try to think about it this way, if a top chef praises your café, it means much more than a random passerby doing the same. The same goes for links. Links from authoritative, relevant sites are much more valuable than those from less reputable ones and they help establish your site as a trusted source in your industry. Using a local example, a link pointing to your business site from the Bangkok Post, will be far more valuable than a 1 page personal blog.
Another way link-building can be beneficial is that I can create additional pathways for new visitors to get to your website. If a popular blog or news site links to your page, their audience might click through to learn more about what you offer. This is a double benefit because you will get the SEO benefit of the link itself, along with the potential for people to actually click on the link to your website after having read the blog or article associated with it. This is more of a benefit with a link from a high traffic and highly trusted site.
You can compare link-building to relationship building online because in many cases link building often involves reaching out to other site owners, bloggers, and influencers in your niche (or a logically related niche). This outreach can help you achieve some excellent quality links and build mutually beneficial relationships which can often lead to further collaboration in the future. Think of it as networking, the more people you know and who know you, the more opportunities come your way.
Of course, while building links, you need to be strategic. You should aim to get links from sites that are relevant to your industry. If you’re running a tech blog, getting a link from a gourmet food site might not do much for you, but a link from a tech news site or an industry-specific blog would be considered the gold standard.
Link building can also help you stay competitive. If your competitors are gaining high-quality links and you’re not, they might outrank you on search engine results pages. Keeping up with link building ensures you’re not left behind and in competitive industries it’s a non-negotiable.
As you’ll know if you work in digital marketing, nothing remains the same for too long, but one thing that’s held steady is the importance of link building for SEO. Time and time again link building is shown to provide a positive correlation to website rankings. It’s a strategy that requires effort and time, but the rewards in terms of visibility, authority, and traffic make it well worth it.