Understanding Link Building – Its Importance
People often have lots of misconceptions about link building – both in terms of what it is and why it is important. Some misconceptions may even cause issues and could affect your website and its ranking on search engines.
Before you start building links or using link-building services, it is important that you understand exactly what it is.
“What is Link Building?”
To put it very simply, link building is the act of getting other websites to link back to your website – or one of its pages. That is what is commonly known as a backlink in the SEO world, or an inbound link to use a more correct term. There are many ways to build links that are used by link-building services – some of which are more effective than others. More importantly, you should know that not all links are equal.
Understanding ‘Nofollow’ Links
The ‘Nofollow attribute is sometimes added to links to tell search engines not to place any importance on them. It is mainly used in situations where the website doesn’t have control over links that are published (e.g. blog comments) or where it intentionally does not want to pass on value (e.g. advertising links).
One common misconception is that no-follow links are ‘worthless’ – which isn’t exactly true. While it is true that they don’t carry the same weight for search engines, they do have a part to play as well.
To be honest ‘Nofollow links are part of a healthy link profile, and their absence can raise some red flags and cause suspicion. It won’t look very natural if your website just has tons of links pointing to it without a significant number being ‘no-follow.
Good Links vs. Bad Links
The types of links that you build are important as there are some links that are ‘good’ and will help you out, and others that are ‘bad’ and may adversely affect your website.
Suffice to say search engines have become stricter in order to prevent the abuse of inbound links by link-building services and individuals. As such ‘bad’ links from link exchanges, link farms, spam, and other suspicious sources can lead to actual penalties being imposed.
On the other hand, ‘good’ links from websites that are relevant, in good standing, and have high authority are counted as a vote in your favor. The logic behind that is that if a website feels it is worth linking to your website – it must have some value to it.
For a link to be ‘good’ its anchor text should also be descriptive and relevant to both the content as well as the page that it links to.
“Why is Link Building Important?”
The fact that a ‘good’ link is a vote in your website’s favor is important – because that vote counts towards how search engines choose to rank your website in their listings. It is the main reason why link building is so important and popular in SEO circles.
More high-quality ‘good’ links will give your website’s search engine rankings a boost. However by that same token if your website has lots of ‘bad’ links pointing at it – it could take a hit to its rankings.
In short, it isn’t just link building that is important for SEO, but rather the type of links that you build and how you build them.
Aside from the SEO value of links, the traffic they can provide is also invaluable. If you (or the link-building agency that you use) build links from relevant and popular websites, odds are you’ll start to get traffic from them too.
It should be noted that in such cases it doesn’t matter if the links are ‘no follow or not – as actual people won’t see the difference.
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Conclusion
Now that you know more about link building, you should be able to see why the link-building agency you choose and the way that you build links are important.
If you go about it the wrong way it could end up being counterproductive, and land you a penalty for your troubles. On the other hand, if you go about it the right way you can enjoy the considerable benefits that link building brings to the table.
