Why Link Building is Still Relevant in 2021 – Information Technology Blog

If you want to rank your website on Google in 2021, there’s no way you can do it without link building.

Google even ranked link-building among their top 3 recommended practices to increase a website’s rankings in Google’s SERPs.

But before we get into how link building is the best investment you can make for your website, let’s define what we mean by link-building.

What is Link Building?

Link building is the practice of having third-party websites link back to yours.

This is as simple as a hyperlink—one that other websites use to lead back to a page on your site.

Essentially, when once established, a high domain authority (DA) website links back to another site, the site that places the link is telling Google that they “approve” of the site they’re linking to.

Therefore, Google should take note and rank the site they’re linking to as well.

Because of this nod of approval from an established site, Google is more inclined to rank the site for its specific keywords.

For a more detailed video explanation of what link building is and how it’s important for your business, be sure to check out this video on our Search Berg’s YouTube Channel.

Let’s discuss how you can use backlinking services and link building for your site’s benefit.

Why Should you Go for Link Building?

Some benefits of building links with other sites include:

1. You will rank higher on Google as well as other search engines for your respective keywords
2. When you create new pages on your site, Google will index and rank them faster because it builds off your previous link building efforts,
3. Due to the social proof that comes with creating credible backlinks, through a backlink service or by yourself, your business becomes more easily trusted and relied on.
4. Since your linking partners will be in your niche, your sales and branding goals can benefit by obtaining new targeted traffic to visit your site and join your sales funnel.

3 Backlinking Tips and How They Help You

Finding Your Target Website to Link Build With

When determining which site is worth obtaining a link from, the key factor is page rank/site authority/domain authority.

This is the factor that ensures the SEO juice is transferred to the linking website.

The second most important factor is site relevancy.

A site linking back to your site needs to be relevant because it’s not enough, according to Google’s algorithm to only have a high DA website linking to your site.

To this end, you don’t need to go to a direct competitor but rather just find a high DA website that’s broadly within your niche.

Now that you know what kind of sites will provide you with the best SERP results once they create a backlink to your website, let’s talk about how to place the link in a way that it gives you the biggest SEO bang for your proverbial buck.

How Does it Help?

Having a backlink from a relevant, High DA authority in your niche is helpful because it shows readers and active customers within your niche that you’re a credible resource.

To illustrate this referral traffic, it’s the equivalent of a customer who just got a haircut from a salon who now wants to style their new haircut. The salon owner will then refer that customer to your business, which, in this case, could be a company that sells quality hair gel.

Since the customer already loves the haircut they got at the salon, they’re much more likely to take the word of the salon owner when they hear about your brand than they would had they passed by it on the street.

That is the power of referral traffic.

Placing Your Link in Just the Right Spot

The best combination is to have an Editorial backlink, naturally placed within anchor text like this.

Basically, it’s best if the website links to your website in a way that shows the writer or website owner thinks you have a great website with relevant content that’s worth linking back to.

When deciding the structure of the link itself, you have two options—a no-follow link and a do-follow link.

The difference between these two is intuitively within their names themselves.

Essentially, in plain English, a no-follow link tells Google: “Hey, we’re linking to this site. But don’t consider it as an official endorsement from us.”

Whereas, a do-follow link would be communicating: “Hey Google, this is the site we endorse. So give it some of our SEO juice.”

Naturally, do-follow links make a larger difference in your rankings overall than no-follow links do. This doesn’t mean that no-follow links don’t help your rankings.

It’s still helpful for your keyword rankings to keep a diversified portfolio of backlinks linking back to your site of both do-follow and no-follow links.

How Does it Help?

When your links are placed naturally into a piece of content, a customer will be more intrigued by it enough to click on it than they would be if it were just inserted out of context.

Today’s customers don’t like to be sold something simply for the sake of buying something.

Instead, they want to solve their problems and are seeking solutions from businesses that are there to help them rather than just sell them something and promote their own business agenda.

Having this natural approach not only helps potential customers see you as a business that is there for more than a quick buck, but it also helps improve your rankings in Google and other search engines.

Your links need to make sense in the context of the content they are being placed into and flow well into the subject matter.

You must be wondering what reason you can give these big fancy websites to rank to your website in the first place?

Let’s get into it.

How to Convince the Best High DA Sites in Your Niche to Link to Your Site?

In two, the answer is: provide value.

Websites want content.

Therefore, what you or a link building service you hire would want to do is provide a ton of value to the websites you are targeting to build links with.

Creating value for these websites has a macro component and a micro-component:

1. The macro component is creating good, valuable content such as articles, blogs and guest posts.
2. The micro component that a lot of backlinking services use is creating media-rich content that provides value to the target website.

To expand on what we mean by media-rich content, we mean really good graphics.

This can look like relevant info-graphics, graphs, diagrams, flow-charts, and more.

Anything that enhances points that they already made on their website or want to make, you can help them by creating these valuable illustrations.

And how do they thank you for this kind gesture?

They provide you with a juicy backlink to your website.

How Does it Help?

There are two reasons this approach of providing value is key. Firstly, more obviously, it improves your rankings because it gives you a solid backlink to your site as previously explained.

But secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, it shows the website owner that you took the time to analyze their content and provide even greater value to it. This goes a long way in building relationships with fellow businesses within your niche and can be instrumental for organizing future collaborations.

For more detailed information regarding how you can provide value to target websites, be sure to check out our blog 10 Advanced Link Building Tips And Tricks To Boost Your SEO.