What is linkbuilding?

The page authority vs. link authority

In the paragraph about domain authority, we already talked about page authority and link authority. These are also evaluated by Google and scaled from 0 to 100. However, page and link authority do not mean the same as domain authority. Page authority means that it is the value of that one page. Google also indexes specific pages.

Link authority (also called link value) is the value that a link has and that the link gets from the page where the link is. Links can therefore take the value from other websites to your website.

What are backlinks?

Basically, backlinks are the links that point from one website to another. A well-known example is an online news article, which contains a reference (backlink) to the news source. Backlinks are therefore external links, as these links point to another website. There are also internal links, these refer to another page on the same website. An example of this is the links that Wikipedia uses to refer to another explanation.

The external links form the link profile. This link profile depends on several factors, but mainly on the ratio between dofollow and nofollow links and the anchor texts.

What is the difference between nofollow and dofollow?

The standard form of a hyperlink is dofollow. In short, this means that a dofollow link passes a certain value to Google. A nofollow link, on the other hand, does not give any value. The bots that visit your website will recognise the nofollow link and not follow it to the web page the link refers to.

What is an anchor text?

An anchor text is a valuable addition during the link building process. It is a clickable text, a hyperlink, which can contain an internal or external link. Good anchor texts are very important for the online findability of your website. But what exactly is a good anchor text? It is especially important that the anchor text contains clear language. An example of an unclear anchor text is "click here". The visitor of your website doesn't know where he or she is directed to. Also, an unclear anchor text does not pass on any information to Google. Examples of good and clear anchor texts are as follows:

1. Branded anchortext
   The text in the link refers to the name of the company, brand or person. A branded link to this website is for example: Digital Newsgroup or Pieter Schippers
2. URL anchortext
   This is an anchor text with the complete url where you want to link to. This is often used for links. An example is: https://www.digitalnewsgroup.com
3. Exact Match anchortext
   This is the anchor text where the anchor text is the same as the keyword you use in your text. An example of this text would be: linkbuilding or anchor text
4. Partial Match anchortext
   This means that your anchor text partially matches the keyword. An example would be: link building for advanced users or creating anchor texts
5. Synonymous anchortext
   As the word synonym suggests. This is an anchor text that is a synonym for your keyword. An example would be: link building - off page optimisation
6. Related anchortext
   The anchor text is not exact or partial, but this will be an anchor text that is topic related. An example is: link building - linking with websites
7. Random anchortext
   These are anchor texts that contain words, terms or phrases that have nothing to do with the subject. For example: go to or read more
8. Image anchortext
    A slightly different way than we are used to with link building, but it works too. Normally you will find an image next to a piece of text. 

   The alt text was created for the visually impaired or blind who cannot read the text. The alt text gives an explanation of the image. The alt text can also be filled with the url to your website. This will then act as the anchor text.

9. Title anchortext
   The title of your website or article is used as anchor text.

All 9 of the above mentioned anchor texts can be used as anchor text, however, you will have to be careful what you use when. It is quite strange when you are reading an entire article and suddenly come across a URL anchor text. So pay attention to where and when you use which anchor text.

Reasons to start link building

It may be that you're not entirely convinced why you need link building for your business. Here are 3 reasons to convince you to start link building as soon as possible!

• You have a new page online which contains a current topic, therefore you want to receive as much traffic on this webpage. Link building can help you to get this specific page higher in Google.
• See results quickly. Depending on how many backlinks are placed, you can see results within a week or two.
• Setting up a link building strategy is also good for creating more brand awareness.

Ways and tricks of linkbuilding?

There are a lot of techniques for link building and to cash in on strong backlinks. In the past, people mainly used 3 ways: outreach, broken link building and guest blogging, we will explain them further on the page. Nowadays, you mainly see links on the website with a partner page (friends, links or something like that is also possible) or links embedded in a blog.

Outreach

You are ranked lower than your competitors in Google and of course you want to improve this and climb the Google ranking ladder. You have heard from people around you that links to your website help well. You should have as many as possible, but where is the balance between quantity and quality?

We recommend always going for quality, because quality links are always worth more. Think about it: you have a website about motorbike clothing and you are looking for links as they say. There are links from other motorbike clothing related websites, which means quality, but there are also links from a shop that specialises in dishwashers. You can already guess that this is not a qualitative link and that is what Google sees. Google sees that as inferior quality, because the people of the specialised dishwasher website are sent to a website about motorbike clothing. That's not right and Google will not reward you 100% for that, of course.

Why outreach?

• Be seen as an expert in Google
• Receive traffic from other websites and be rewarded by Google
• Create and share content
• Increase the authority of your website
• Get that top spot in Google.

Link building and outreach

Link building is an umbrella term for focusing on quality backlinks, as you would find it annoying if you were sent from one website to a completely different one. Outreach is a certain way of link building, as you have already read.

Outreach is basically the same, but with this method you focus on reaching people rather than web pages. So with outreach you try to reach the right people in the right places to get links and clicks to your website. This is essential for the authority that your website builds.

There are many ways to use outreach. The only thing that is really important for outreach is that it should be quality content. For example, if you create a very high quality blog, several things can happen:

• People share your article or webpage on their own social media platforms
• Others link to your content because it is high quality content that fits their industry
• You will share your content with interested people. That way you hope that people will pick it up and link to your page.

Broken link building

Another way of link building is broken link building. With broken link building you locate the dead links on the internet. These can be outgoing links to websites or they can be internal links that point to a 404 page on the website itself. Map all these links, because when you have done this you can replace these links for your own content. These links don't work anymore anyway so they can be replaced by you.

How do I do broken link building?

When you have mapped these broken links, you can make sure that you serve replacement content (your own content) to the concerning webmaster. The webmaster benefits from this, because he wants to minimise and remove his broken links on the website as much as possible, and you benefit from it. A win-win situation actually! This way of link building is very time-consuming but generally has a high conversion ratio.

How do I find broken links?

The three most used ways to find broken links are:

1. Keywords: Search for keywords relevant to your website and then see if these relevant websites have broken links on the pages that are attractive for you to link to.
2. Authoritative links: In every industry, there are always those big independent parties. For example, consider the tax authority for financial websites. Check out the outgoing links to other websites and look for broken links.
3. Targeted search: Ask yourself which website is extremely interesting for you to get links from. Imagine you have a webshop in motorbike clothing then you look for a website that also sells motorbike clothing. Again, look for the broken links.

Guest blogging

If you are looking for ways to use link building to drive more traffic to your website then this is a really useful way. With a guest blog on a page that is very relevant to you, you often get valuable backlinks in return. This of course promotes the authority of your website and you will rise in the search engine results. In short, with good and smart guest blogging you can optimise your website and have it rise in the search results of search engines.

Why should I choose guest blogging?

Writing guest blogs is extremely interesting for everyone who is looking for ways to achieve increasing results with link building. In principle, this way of link building is interesting for every website and every company. What you want as a website is more traffic and visitors to your website. When more traffic and visitors come to your website, you can also convert them into conversion, which means that you can achieve a higher turnover when you organise this properly.

As you have already read, guest blogging is a great way to get your link building strategy off the ground successfully. It is a great addition to your SEO strategy so you can almost see it as a win-win situation. Often it works like this: you deliver a blog and the website that accepts your blog will provide you with two links to your website.

The great thing about guest blogging is that it is very attractive for both new and experienced entrepreneurs in online website land. For both parties you provide quality links that Google can judge you on and let you rise to a top position.

What is the best thing to blog about?

In principle, it does not really matter what subject it is about. The most important thing is that the blog has a subject that is relevant for you and the website you are writing for. The advantage of a guest blog is that you can discuss what topic it should be about, things you should keep in mind to write a guest blog are:

• How many words should it contain?
• How many links should the text contain that link to your website?
• How many visitors does the website have?
• Does the website also use social media?
• How is the quality of the other guest blogs?
• What is the DA (Domain Authority)?
• Use a good and catchy title.
• Use good royalty-free images.

Writing good quality blogs takes time and is an enormously time-consuming task, but it can also give you a lot. Consider for yourself whether it is useful or not and then make contact with websites. Many websites are open to this method of link building.

Techniques of link building.

Link building can be divided into several techniques, together they provide a good link profile which must be forged to perfection. Often these techniques are all used together. This ensures a natural distribution of backlinks and if there is one thing that Google wants to see: it must look natural!

It is most powerful when you use all components, because that is necessary for the link profile and necessary to reinforce each other well. It is really a big miss when you miss one part and that has a big impact on your positions in Google. Link building is most powerful when you apply all parts and techniques together (but in balance). Because Google's algorithm likes natural link profiles, you will have to build them naturally. So don't start placing all the links you've collected on the same day. Google will see this as manipulation and will certainly punish you for it when they find out. There are many ways and tricks to collect links and get people to point to your website or webpage. 4 Frequently used techniques for link building are:

Press releases with authority

It is a form of guest blogging, but with this technique you will get just that little bit more attention for your business which will benefit your brand awareness. We are talking about writing press releases with news value that are placed on news websites with a high authority. Often these are strong qualitative links that not only provide link value but also increase the authority of your company.

Apart from the authority, it also ensures extra attention for your company. News websites are visited a lot, which benefits your name recognition. It is smart to do this with the right department. This way your article will have the best chance to get in touch with your target group through the press release. With this technique you are mainly busy with the traffic to your website, creating and increasing brand awareness and it will have a plausible chance of improved positions.

Backlinks from homepages

Key for linkbuilding is to generate as many qualitative backlinks as possible, however, reality teaches that this is not always easy and there will also be some less qualitative backlinks between them. With only qualitative backlinks you will probably lose on numbers and authority of your competition. That is why many people choose to gather backlinks through start pages. What we see more and more is that people start linking with start pages. The intention is to combine this with quality backlinks. The advantage of start pages is that they often have a very high DA.

It is up to everyone to judge whether this is the right technique or not, but people often use this as a way of link building.

Blogs

As mentioned before, blogging is an often used and well functioning way of linkbuilding. Blog placements on platforms with relevant blogs are a smart way to appeal to your target group and relevant people. This way, your blog will also be read by the right people. This will also increase the traffic to your website, because because the blogs contain relevant links, your customers and potential customers will visit your website. So you are not only building a good and strong link profile, but you are also engaging in content marketing. Win-win!

Tiered link building

A link building method that not many people know and use, but can be very effective. It is mainly used for these large and very competitive keywords. Sit down carefully because this is a bit more complex to explain:

You write a blog article for a website. Articles are often written because it is relevant for the website where it will be placed, but also because it is relevant for you and contains links to your website.
What you are going to do now is actually linking to that article. You're actually going to link to the article you wrote that links to your website.

It may seem a bit complicated because of the explanation, but it is a very good way to give the article you wrote and the page even more authority. This way the article gets authority, but the website will also pass on more authority to your website. So you make powerful links even stronger, as it were.

Internal link building

Actually, external and internal link building is almost the same. Above we have only discussed external link building, but there is another form of link building and that is internal link building. The only difference is that with external link building you use links outside your website and internal linking means that you keep the links inside your website. You make sure that internally all pages are linked to each other to get link value to other pages, posts or content. 

Just like with external link building, it is important that internal link building is also done well because it is not only important for the search engines but also for visitors to navigate to a specific page or blog post.

Benefits of internal link building:

• You can easily place, change or remove links
• You can easily determine yourself how your structure will look like
• You can easily add depth or information to the article
• You automatically improve your findability
• You ensure better accessibility for search engines

What do you need to pay attention to?

Don't make it too complicated, because you can provide each article with 10 links to internal pages, but the goal of the article is that it should remain clear and easy to read. So always keep this goal in mind and don't stuff it with links. 

To get the most out of internal linking, make sure that all important pages are linked to each other. So link with pages that will give you leads or blogs that are of added value to you because this is your core business.

The most important thing is still to keep it natural. Avoid spam and dead links. Search engines like Google look at your link profile and also at your internal link profile. If this looks like spam, Google may penalise you for it. Of course, Google has a big stake in your link profile, but your visitors also benefit from it being correct and clear. Visitors to the website can no longer see the wood for the trees and that can lead to them leaving the website. You don't want that either.

Outsource link building?

For many entrepreneurs and marketers, it is a complicated and time-consuming process to set up a successful link building campaign. Therefore, it is definitely a good idea to think about outsourcing link building. You can confidently leave it to the experts at Digital Newsgroup. Link building is important for every business, regardless of how big or small it is, because Google sees backlinks to your website as a vote, which will ultimately ensure a better position in the most famous search engine.

Looking for a link building agency?

Are you totally convinced that your business needs link building? That's good to hear! With our link building agency in Tilburg, you're in the right place. We have several specialists who will help your business get a top position on Google. Besides link building, we're also experienced in multiple forms of modern marketing techniques, including digital marketing and content marketing. Curious about our link building rates for your business? Then contact us by email or phone, or see our contact page.