4 SEO Link Building Techniques

The construction of links or link building has been and is essential to achieve optimal positioning. In previous articles, we have already seen how to build links for SEO web positioning and link building tactics for SMEs.

In today’s article, we are going to see 5 perfectly valid link building techniques for these times, in the middle of the year 2022 in which we find ourselves.

4 Link Building Techniques for SEO

Why link building is critical for SEO. A little history

In its beginnings, the great innovation made by the founders of Google was to treat links as “votes” and position websites on the results pages based on them.

The algorithm assigned a numerical value to each indexed web page, as well as to each link. The value of links was derived from the value of the pages from which they originated. And the value of the pages was derived from the value of the links pointing to them.

The algorithm was called PageRank, and in 1997 it was the only signal taken into account to position websites in the SERPs. This algorithm is so fundamental to how Google works , that before the search engine was called Google it was called Backrub

Enlaces DoFollow vs. Enlaces NoFollow

Google does not consider all links “authoritative”. If a link is tagged as “nofollow”, this means that it is not counted for PageRank purposes.

But even if a nofollow link does not benefit our positioning, we should try to get a mix of dofollow and nofollow links. In this way, our link profile will be natural and we will avoid any possibility of a Google penalty for having an overly optimized profile.

Therefore, it is not so much dofollow vs. nofollow, but rather dofollow in combination with nofollow. For example, if we have an opportunity to write an article for a publication with many followers, and their policy is that all links are nofollow, we should not hesitate and write the article: we will increase our visibility, our reputation and at the same time our profile. of links will be more natural and balanced.

What does PageRank mean to us?

We need other websites to link to ours. But not all links are created equal. Not only are links from high-value websites more valuable, but links from some sites, and some forms of links, can actually hurt our rankings, as there are strategies that Google identifies as web-spam: strategies to artificially inflate the positioning of websites.

Google updates its algorithm over time to filter out this web-spam; And if a link to our site looks like web-spam it can be worse than useless: it can lower our rankings.

Only at Google do they know the details of the algorithm. But we can make educated guesses about whether a link is helpful or harmful. To do this, we must take the ‘reasonable person test’, which has 2 questions:

1. Does what you are doing seem legitimate or web-spam to a reasonable person?
2. Is a reasonable person likely to click on that link?

Not everything is the number of links

It used to be, but big companies with big budgets just bought hundreds of 1-page websites, all with different URLs, and each website linked to the main website. This is an example of web-spam, with a link profile working against you.

Helpful Links

Links in the body of articles with clear reference purposes are best.

Harmful Links

Links in the footers of websites are especially suspicious as they can be considered a web-spam tactic.
As said before, a high number of links from a single page website is highly suspicious.

Effective ways to get quality links

1. Post and share your best material

It must be understood that “sharing” implies “linking” in one way or another: be it a blog article, an update on Social Networks or in an email.

The most important concept is to share our best material, and considering that everything we do improves with practice, we should wait until we have written a few dozen posts before we start sharing.

We should post the first 10-20 articles on our website for search engines to find and index, but not start sharing yet. Unless we have a natural talent for blogging, our first posts would not be “top notch.”

The more we write and publish, the better we do.

The second important concept is that asking people to share our material is a form of feedback on the quality of our material. If we ask people to share and they don’t, our material is no good. At least not good enough to share. If they share it, it is.

2. Write for other websites

It’s all about finding industry websites and offering to write for them. Although Matt Cutts said that guest posting was no longer an effective strategy, writing for a reputable site is not a spam tactic.

We can search Google with something like:

“[industry-specific phrase]” “write for us”

For example: “content marketing” “write for us”

3. Micro-Celebrity Interviews

Micro-Celebrities are well-known people of the sector that we are dealing with.

We can make a list with contact information and send invitations.

Interviews do not have to be live. We can send them a questionnaire by email and receive the answers by the same means.

We will then post the interview along with a short bio and a link to the interviewee’s website.

Finally, we will send an email with a link to the article. Some of the people interviewed will not link to us and share, but many will.

4. Participate in Online Forums

The strategy of attracting traffic and links to our site through online forums is quite simple.

If we see someone ask something in the forum that we know the answer to, we will answer the question via a short article on our website. Then, in the forum, we will reply with a summary of the answer and a link to the article on our site.

If the forum link is dofollow, it will help us in our positioning. And even if it is nofollow, this strategy also serves us as it helps us build a reputation; other than that others could share the answer and url.

Help others and ask others for help

The one thing these strategies have in common is that they are different ways that people help people.

Of course, there are people who are shy about asking for help. There are also people who won’t offer help unless they see a return of some kind.

But we should always keep in mind:

Understand that we are members of various communities.
Be useful to others.
Be willing to ask others for help.
Everything we do in our efforts to build quality links to our websites is a combination of helping others and others helping us.

Conclusion:

As John Donne said, “No man is an island.” All of us are members of communities, to which we offer and from which we obtain help.

The same can be said for our website: and seeing it like this opens up opportunities, both to help others and for others to help us.