Unless you are brand new to SEO, you have heard about link building and how important it is to building trust with Google. What you will also find out is very few people build links the right way. We will be going over the 5 best link building practices and how it will increase your trust with Google, thus increasing your rankings.
How Relevant is the Link to your Website
Back in 2012, Google launched its “webspam algorithm update,” otherwise known as the Penguin update which in a nutshell penalized websites that were using manipulation when it came to link building. Before the update, many companies were acquiring large amounts of links that were not relevant to their website at all. Much like the Panda update, the penguin update was Google’s response to low-quality search results for their queries. For instance, as an SEO company, a relevant link could be from a marketing website or directory.
Check Your Competitors
When you start an SEO campaign or any marketing campaign, your goal should be to take over your competition. There are many available tools to check your competitor’s websites and who is linking back to them. The general rule of thumb is that if they link back to your competition they would link back to you. It is important to remember when outreaching to these websites for links that you center your outreach around what you provide and what sets you apart from your competition.
Page Authority and Spam Score Matters
Google being the popularity contest that it is, you want to have as many links as possible. You can’t forget that quality links are important too. What makes up a quality link?
- Authority – A website that has trust with Google would mean more to your website than a website with little to no trust with Google.
- Spam Score – A tool offered by Moz that is based on their machine learning model that identifies 27 common features among the millions of banned or penalized sites. Chances are if the website has a high spam score it will pass on less equity to your website.
When looking into these metrics along with making sure the website is relevant, you can be sure that the links you acquire will pass on the most equity to your site.
Internal Link Building
One part of link building that should not be overlooked is internal link building. Your website should be viewed as an informational hub. For this to be true you need to not only have other websites talking about you, but you need to have parts of your website pointing out your most important pages for the search engines to see. One example would be writing a blog about a service you provide and having that blog linked to that specific service page on your website. This not only tells Google you have extra or supplemental content supporting one of your services but it gives a gateway for whoever is viewing that piece of content to get to the proper page on your website.
If you would like to know more about the 5 best link building practices, check out our other blogs or click here to speak to one of our specialists.
