Increasing competition means it’s harder to get noticed online than ever before. If you want to make it to the top of Google where your customers are looking, you’ll probably need a dedicated link-building strategy. Link building is one of the biggest parts of Search Engine Optimisation, and it’s the difference between standing out and being stuck at the bottom of the search rankings. In this article, we’ll show you a Brisbane SEO agency should approach link building as one of your most important parts of your strategy.
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What Is Link Building?
You’re the best at what you do, and customers love what you have to offer. Search engines like Google understand how important that expertise is, so they have developed a few ways to differentiate between helpful and unhelpful websites. One of the biggest signals that Google takes into account is the hyperlinks that come into your website from external sources.
Link building is a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy that focuses on increasing the number and quality of the links coming into your website. The more high-quality links you have, the higher you’ll appear in Google’s organic search results. Link building can be one of the most challenging aspects of SEO, but it’s also one of the most rewarding. Google places a high importance on links. So much so that you’ll typically find it difficult to crack the first page of search results without a link-building strategy.
How Link Building Can Boost Your SEO Strategy
Google loves websites with authority. That is, it loves websites that are filled with high-quality, expert information that’s useful to customers. Remember that Google is always trying to connect its customers with the things they’re searching for. Since it can’t individually review every single website in the world, Google uses AI-powered robots to figure out where your website should rank compared to your competitors.
The links that come into your website (and the links between the internal pages of your site) help Google determine how much “authority” you have in your industry. A higher authority score suggests that the information, products and services on your website are high quality and that customers will find them useful. Link building aims to increase your authority score by helping Google understand your expertise and how useful your website is to customers. As you increase the number of high-quality links to your website, your authority score rises, as does your position in Google’s search results.
Internal vs External Links
Google uses a sophisticated algorithm to figure out where to rank your website in the search results. The algorithm gives different weights to several types of links, but they all fall under two main categories:
- Internal links – Internal links are hyperlinks that take users from one page of your website to another. These links improve navigation and make it easier for customers to find their way around your website. That increases the amount of time they spend on your website, which Google sees as an indicator that you’re providing helpful information and a good user experience.
- External links – External links (also called backlinks) are any hyperlinks that come into your website from external sources. Google sees each of these links as a vote of confidence in the quality and expertise of your website. Obtaining backlinks is one of the most challenging parts of link building. It typically involves reaching out to other websites to discuss placing your link on one of their webpages. This is one of the most laborious and time-consuming parts of any SEO strategy.
A Word About Link Quality
A long time ago, when Google’s algorithm was less sophisticated, companies used to cheat the system by building empty websites and filling them with links back to their main page. This effectively meant you could gather hundreds of backlinks in a very short period of time and rocket to the #1 spot. Google quickly realized this was a recipe for disaster and shut the system down, and now the algorithm verifies that each of your external links is “high quality”.
A high-quality link is one that comes from another legitimate website that also has a high authority score. Google gives more weight to these types of links when ranking your website. That means the goal now is to focus on obtaining a smaller number of high-quality backlinks. The quality of your external links is so important that most SEO specialists will regularly check the origin of external links and get rid of any that come from low-quality websites.
Ultimately, link building is one of the most effective SEO tools in your kit. As long as it’s done properly and you focus on obtaining high-quality links from other expert sources, link building may be the key to earning Google’s #1 spot!
