What is Link Building? How to get quality links to increase visits to your

It is true that in everything that refers to SEO, anglicisms are abused, very rare words and that everything seems very technical, but the reality is that it is not as difficult as you think. That is why I make you a proposal:

Read the post and then leave me a comment telling me if you still find link building so difficult.

I bet you don’t. ?

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What is Link Building?

Let’s start by leaving a series of clear concepts, in case you are starting with this SEO.

Before entering the definition of link building, it must be explained that there are 2 main parts of web positioning:

• SEO On Page: each and every one of the actions you perform within your page to improve your rankings. You want to know more? Read the post that you can see below where Berto explains it in depth.
• SEO Off Page: any external strategy to your website to improve your SEO.

And with this clear, now yes…

Link building is an Off Page SEO strategy whose objective is to get links to your website.

But what matters to you is not the definition itself, but what comes next.

What weight do links have to position a website in 2019?

Links yes? Links right?

Can a website be positioned without links?

My position is firm in this regard: it is impossible to position a website with a competing theme without links.

If you are a regular reader of Shaz Vlog, you will know that many topics are addressed in this blog:

• Blogging.
• Marketing & Ingresos 2.0.
• Design & web technology.
• WordPress.
• Social networks.
• Etc.

All these themes are hyper-competitive; Even if you searched for keywords with very little search volume, you would be in a battle with many other blogs. I give you a very simple example with which you will see it very well.

Look at the keyword “create blog”:

It has 12,000 monthly searches in Spain. Come on, a very juicy keyword that, of course, is very difficult to position due to the high competition it has (many blogs try to rank it).

Now look at this other image:

Yes, Citizen 2.0.

This blog can fight for such powerful keywords for a very simple reason: it has great authority.

And it has for many reasons:

• A very solid track record (Berto and Raquel have been with this blog for many years).
• A careful editorial line.
• A very loyal audience (because of the high value they provide).
• Etc.

But if there is one that Google looks at in a special way, it is the links, all the links that you have directed to your website. We explain why.

When another website links to you, in the face of Google, it transfers some of its authority to you (this is what is known as link juice ).

Imagine that one of your clients speaks well of you to a friend of his. Since this person trusts the criteria of his friend, he will value you better in order to work with you. Well here the same. The link is the recommendation and the link juice , the trust in you that is transmitted. ?

Hence the importance of links.

However, in recent years it has been debated whether they are still so important for Google.

I am not going to answer this, but Brian Dean , one of the best SEOs of the moment, is going to do it. In his link building mega guide he mentions this:

That is, Andrey Lipattsev ( Google Partner Development Manager ) revealed that the 3 most important criteria in the Google algorithm are: links , content and RankBrain .

If they themselves say so… it must be for a reason, right? ?

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What is a link and what types exist?

This is not very science: a link is a text or an image that, when you click on it, takes you to another page or url.

Perfect.

What already has more crumb are the different types of SEO links that exist.

1. What are internal links and what role do they have in SEO?

The interlinking or internal linking of a website refers to the entire network of links that communicate some pages with others within your own website.

Hence the internal.

The point is that, although we often focus on backlinks (I explain it in the next point), the reality is that internal links are also very important within your general SEO strategy, because…

• The user stays longer on your website.
• Visit a greater number of pages.
• The reader receives better information (which improves their opinion about your website).
• Google will easily crawl and incorporate all the pages of your website into its database (which is called indexing).
• There are more options to subscribe (you improve your conversion rate ).

External links are important, no doubt; but do not neglect the internal . This is a task that only depends on you, so take care of your interlinking .

Recommended post:

Why Interlinking is a “must” if you do Linkbuilding

2. What is a “ backlink ” (external link) in SEO?

If an internal link is a link that links two pages of your website, a backlink will be…

A link that leads to another website . Although in this specific case, I am referring to the links that link to yours from other pages .

But the thing does not end there, because within the link building , Google differentiates 2 types of links:

• Links follow (or dofollow , which is the same) .
• Enlaces nofollow.

But before getting into that (don’t worry, because in the next point I’ll explain what each one is) it’s very important that we talk about the quality of the links.

And I have to do it to answer a question that you may be asking yourself:

The more backlinks I have to my website, the better?

No.

Remember when I compared a backlink to a recommendation earlier?

Well, now imagine that, instead of being a client who talks about you, who does it is a scammer , someone with a very bad reputation. When the other person sees who is talking about you, what he will think is: “ummm, I don’t trust anything because coming from this…” .

The better reputation or authority the website that links to you (recommends you) has, the more quality or more valuable that link is.

For example, Google always grants a lot of authority to websites of:

• The Government (autonomous communities, municipalities, institutions, etc.).
• Universities.
• Media.
• Associations or organizations.
• Etc.

By giving them so much authority, any link that comes out of them has a lot of value in order to position yourself better.

3. Enlaces follow (dofollow) vs enlaces nofollow

Earlier we said that a link is a text or an image that takes you to another page. Ok, so that’s a dofollow link .

Every time you put a link in one of your posts linking to another page it is dofollow . By default it goes like this.

But what does this mean?

Dofollow ( to follow is to follow in English) is a link that everyone can follow. Both you (the reader), and Google spiders or crawlers .

Instead, nofollows let readers through, but not Google spiders. When the crawler reaches that link, seeing that it is nofollow , it will not follow.

I return again to the example of the recommendation = authority that passes from a link.

And this is also where the importance of nofollow links lies.

You’re telling Google that you don’t “trust” that page enough to “recommend” it. That is to say, you do not pass your authority to it in order to improve its Page Rank (the authority that Google gives you in relation to the links that point to you).

What do I do with nofollow links ? Do I use them or do I not use them?

Yes, it is convenient to use them, but beware, I do not mean that all your links should be like this. These links were born so that webmasters could identify links to websites that we do not know about their quality or for advertising and affiliation.

What I want to tell you with this is that there is no problem in using dofollow links when you know that the website is trustworthy and that the information complements your content. In fact, Google would find it very strange if you never used links of this type.

Also, keep in mind that even if you put nofollow links , you do not transfer link juice, but that link juice is lost anyway.

4. What are toxic links?

Surely you can already answer this question.

A toxic link is one that comes from a website with a very bad reputation for Google .

Which means that, instead of transferring quality, what it will do is subtract points from you in the face of Google. This is quite typical within negative SEO.

Be careful with this, check from time to time the origin of the backlinks you have (later I will tell you a tool with which you can do it). ?

White Hat , Gray Hat and White Hat link building strategies

Do not do Black Hat or any strategy that makes you doubt.

As simple as that.

A penalty in Google would mean losing the job of a long time. It’s not worth the risk.

However, the terms are sometimes vague, so I find it interesting to clarify ideas:

• What is Black Hat SEO ? They are techniques that are not lawful or that go against what Google dictates as good practices.
• What is Gray Hat SEO ? The middle path. They do not completely violate what Google dictates, but it moves in the margins.
• And the White ? Follow the rules as set by the search engine, that is, prioritize naturalness in the content.

The conflict is usually in that limbo that I was telling you about the Gray Hat.

For some people, everything that implies not being 100% natural would fall within the Gray . Others, however, defend that using common sense certain strategies can be applied without problem.

A typical example is guest posting .

When you write a guest article, it is normal to include a link to your website, which is useful for a link building strategy .

Is this good or bad?

Use logic.

If your post is of poor quality and is full of links to your blog, it is more likely that even the blogger will refuse to publish it. On the other hand, if your post adds value and the links you include complement the information, there is no problem.

In fact, even Google itself stated that there is no problem with guest posts as long as it is done well.

How to get quality links and visibility for your brand

Now that we have the theory clear, let’s move on to the most interesting part: practice.

Let’s see where you can get quality backlinks from without going crazy. ?

1. Link building con guest blogging

We mentioned it before, guest blogging is a great way to get links. But not only that, it is also an extraordinary way to achieve:

• Improve your personal brand .
• Subscribers (instead of one of your posts, link to your squeeze page ).
• Networking (a guest article can be the first step towards establishing a closer collaboration with the blogger).
• Clients (if you add a lot of value, there will be people who contact you directly to hire you).

Examine the best blogs in your industry and prepare a good article proposal for each one. This post will help you with your strategy:

2. Position “ evergreen ” content

Content is called “evergreen” when it addresses a timeless topic, that is, even if time passes, the information is still valid.

Why is it interesting to rank for timeless keywords?

Because they are topics that will always be talked about, so you have more time and options for someone to like your article and link to you.

In addition, they are contents that you will be able to share indefinitely on your social networks. ?

3. Publications in digital media

Do you remember that before I told you that the links that come out of the media are of great quality?

Well, add to that the authority and prestige that appearing in a news story will give you.

Surely you have noticed how many of the leaders in your sector always place a strip with the logos of the media in which they have appeared.

The reason is just that.

Anyone who sees that a professional has appeared in various media will automatically think: “this is very good, look at all the places where he has appeared”.

And the indirect benefit of this is also very powerful:

• More quality customers.
• Raise rates.
• Sell ??more info products.
• Appear at events as a speaker.

An appearance in the media is always an incredible opportunity to boost your personal brand … but of course, how do you get the media to notice you?

It’s simpler than you think.

At Unancor we dedicate ourselves to just that: to get appearances in different media to improve your link building strategy and improve your personal brand.

In case you are curious, here is a post where one of our clients explains how she managed to position a very competitive keyword using (among other strategies) links from newspapers.

Do you want even more?

Sign up for our newsletter and get 50 free links.

Be careful, putting links hooks. ?

4. Link Building con WordPress y sus plugins

A link building technique that we have discovered on the NinjaSEO blog and that is very interesting.

Do you know English?

Offer yourself as a Spanish translator for a plugin in exchange for a link.

You don’t know English or you don’t have time?

Outsource the translation to someone else. ?

In this post you have all the details.

5. Strengthen your backlinks

If you need more links to grow your authority… by increasing the websites that link to you, double the authority you receive. It’s like a snowball. The more all the pages that link to you grow, the more you will.

How can you do this?

I give you 3 ideas.

• Send traffic from Facebook Ads: this favors all those people to improve the user response metrics that Google analyzes and that it can go viral (and get more links pointing to that website).
• Links to links: this is something very common in the world of SEO. Many webmasters create alternative “blogs” to their project, to be able to link. It is usually done by working at various levels. There are those of level 1 (those that link to your website and where the back link that we want to reinforce is), those of level 2 (that link to level one), those of level 3 and so on with the rest of the levels.
• Traffic from other types of advertising: from the Facebook Ads campaign we have sent social traffic to the website that links to us, but a Google Ads campaign or with other advertising companies can also be interesting.

If you want to learn more about how to do this, read this post.

And if you want to know how to work with Facebook Ads, take a look at this post:

Plugins SEO para WordPress

As an entrepreneur, you sure love tools. Who doesn’t like to procrastinate trying 1,001 plugins on their website?

Well, none of that.

As we do not want you to waste time trying and testing, we give you a selection of the essential SEO plugins that you must install in your WordPress.

Google XML sitemap

With  Google XML Sitemap you can configure the web map of your page. This serves to improve indexing by Google.

SEO by Yoast

SEO by Yoast is another essential plugin. With this plugin you can very easily modify the title and the meta description (important in order to improve the CTR) and control (among other things), the density of keywords.

In addition, it integrates a functionality similar to that of Google XML Sitemap so that by using it, you save the previous one.

Schema

Schema: Google is smart, but it doesn’t know everything either. Therefore, this plugin allows you to provide more information and context to the search engine about your website.

It could be said that Schema tells Google exactly what your page is about so that it knows in which results you should appear with greater relevance and thus improve your indexing.

All in one Schema Rich Snippets

All in one Schema Rich Snippets: have you noticed that sometimes Google shows posts with little stars? Those are the rich formats and also help to improve the CTR.

Table of Content Plus

Table of Content Plus: it is the table that you see in many posts (this one, for example) and that refers you directly to certain parts of the post. It helps improve the number of page views, since every time a user clicks on a link, Google understands that they have visited another page.

There are many more interesting plugins, for example, Broken Link Checker (to fix broken links), Smush it to reduce the weight of your images or WP Minify (to improve loading speed); but with those that we have put you, you have more than enough to give your website an extra SEO boost.

And on top of that, they are all free. ?

Other link building software and SEO tools

Do you want more SEO tools?

Well, let it not be said.

Here you have an extra batch of programs to improve your positioning.

SEMrush

SEMrush is one of the best SEO tools, if not the best out there.

It is a suite where you can analyze your website and those of the competition. Of course, it shows you a lot of information about links and link building. Here’s a walkthrough: Check out web design services.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest a free tool to help you do good keyword research (gives search volumes). Also, since Neil Patel bought it and completely redone it, it’s amazing what he gives you for free:

Here is a video of how it works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhCdqS4xaxw

The video is in English (there are still few in Spanish), but remember that you can activate automatic subtitles and translated into Spanish in the YouTube player wheel.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is an essential tool that gives us a lot of information. In this post you have how to use it to find keywords and, in this other, to prevent a negative SEO attack.

Ahrefs

If you want to delve deeply into the world of link building, you need Ahrefs this tool yes or yes. All the information about the links to your website and those of the competition is at your disposal with Ahrefs.

Sreaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a desktop software with which you can track almost all the urls of a website and find possible errors on the page. This program will create a kind of report so that you can see the state of health of the website that you are analyzing.

As in the previous case, there are many more SEO tools, but it is not worth complicating your existence. Go little by little and as you learn, you will be incorporating new tools.

Now tell me: ready to build a good link strategy?

And now yes, the great moment arrives in which it is your turn to tell me if I have managed to make SEO and link building less scary for you.