Posted At: Aug 02, 2024 - 141 Views

The Link-Building Techniques that Work Best in 2021

Improving the positioning of a website on Google or other search engines is the goal of any SEO campaign. We know that Google ranks search results, taking into account both the quality and relevance of the content with the search query but also the trust of the page and the website hosting it.

Link building is the SEO and Search Engine Marketing technique that seeks to increase the trust and authority of a website by acquiring inbound links from other websites. Said it seems easy, but it is not. Doing link building in 2021 requires experience and intuition, all qualities that are acquired over the years. In this blog, we report a practical method on how to do link building.

SEO, in fact, has many schools of thought, especially with regard to this issue. However, everyone agrees on one thing, which is that without link building, it is extremely difficult to obtain prominent positions on competitive SERPs. For making link building more effective, look for SEO services in Dubai.

What is link building?

As we will see, receiving links from authoritative and themed sites is crucial for obtaining noteworthy placements, especially in competitive sectors. However, getting links is extremely difficult. With the advent of social networks today, it is more likely to receive likes than links. Unless it is a recognized and appreciated brand, receiving a spontaneous link is really complex and tiring.

The solution to this problem is link building. By definition, therefore, link building is an Off-Page SEO technique through which to artificially build a backlink profile, with the aim of increasing the authority of the entire website.

How a link is made

To fully understand the importance of link building, it is necessary to start from the base that is the meaning of links and the various types of links on which it is possible to leverage to create a network of web pages.

Link is an English term that means a chain, or link. In computer science, a link, also called a hyperlink or hypertext, represents a hypertext link between web pages. The purpose of the link is to transport the user to a web page in which the subject of the link is explored. To insert a link on a web page, use the HTML tag as in the following example:

A link consists of:

  • Anchor text: or simply anchor, it is the text contained between the link tags and represents the clickable text section;
  • Href attribute: contains the URL of the landing page, which can be either an HTML page or any other resource such as a video, an image, a PDF, and more;
  • Rel attribute: if present, it specifies how the source page is related to the target page.

The values ​​that can be configured with the rel attribute are different but for SEO purposes, what we are interested in is the nofollow value, which tells the search engine not to transfer trust to the destination web page. We will deal more specifically with this concept in the following paragraphs when we talk about link juice.

Usually, the rel = ”nofollow” attribute is used for affiliate links, sponsored links, credits in the footer, or to optimize the website crawl budget. A link in the absence of this attribute is considered a do-follow. A do-follow link, or simply follow, contrary to the first one, tells the search engine to transfer trust to the linked page.

Finally, a link that has a page belonging to the same website as its landing page is called an internal link. Instead, when the landing page is that of another website, it is called an external link. An external link that has a home page as its landing page is called a surface link. Otherwise, if used to link to any internal page, it is called a deep link.

Finally, the links received from web pages are called inbound links or, more commonly, backlinks.

Types of links

There are several ways to link to a resource or a web page. In a link-building campaign, it is important to diversify the way in which a website is linked to avoid incurring potential penalties.

At the moment, we can identify the following types of links:

Manipulative links

They say link manipulative ones that have as anchor text the keyword with which you would like to place the landing page. A link like the one in the example suggests that Google place the URL https://www.xyz.com as a result of the Web Agency search query. In link-building jargon, manipulative links are often referred to as dry anchor links or exact anchors.

Branded link

They say links branded all links containing the brand in the anchor text or its possible variants.

Navigational links

They say link navigational all links that have anchor text as a generic keyword. 

Sitewide link

They say to link sitewide all links that are repeated in many of the website pages, such as those provided in the footer, sidebar, and in page header. It is a type of link not recommended for link building as it could lead to penalization by Google both for those who receive it and for those who insert it. If you really can’t do without it, it is always better to insert a branded nofollow link as sitewide.

Link from images

They are the links placed on the images. They have less relevance than classic text links as they transfer less information to Google about the context and the reason for which it was entered. For this reason, it is very important to specify the alt attribute in images and treat it as if it were a normal anchor text of a classic text link.

Follow and nofollow links

As already mentioned, the follow link is a link that transfers trust to the landing page. A nofollow link does not do the same; therefore, alone is not very useful for positioning purposes. But as we will see when we tackle the topic of citations, even a nofollow link has its importance in a link-building campaign, helping to enrich the website’s backlink profile.

Links from non-indexed pages

These are links from pages not indexed on Google, such as those blocked by robots.txt or that contain the noindex Meta tag. For SEO purposes, the link has no value.

High and low-quality links

A link is said to be of high quality when it comes from authoritative, famous, well-positioned websites with topics relevant to the web page to be linked. On the contrary, a link is of low quality if it comes from low-authoritative domains, with few keywords positioned, or with too many pages with outgoing links.

Link from redirect

They are those links that happen through 301 redirects. In blackhat SEO, it is appropriate to buy expired domains, called dropped domains, with a good backlink profile and make the complete redirect to the home page of the site. Choose the best Backlink Building Services in Dubaiby creating links for redirecting.

If done well, it is possible to get a boost thanks to the trust transferred from the links that linked the pages of the expired domain. If done poorly or superficially, it could cause serious problems.