In this article, we will discuss why link building is important for SEO. So, keep reading.
If you haven’t been ignorant to market your product digitally, chances are you already know what link building is. If not, let us give you a walkthrough. Link building is an essential aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that involves placing hyperlinks within your content. In today’s marketing world, there are a hundred-and-one practices to improve your online visibility. Even with social media, blogging, PPC, and content marketing, link building hasn’t lost its credibility.
Before you can learn why link building is important for SEO, let us tell you what a link is. It is a web address strategically placed to connect one web page with another. It can be a text or an image that facilitates easy navigation between the linked web pages. The image or text, called anchor, is usually relevant to the page it redirects the user to. Different search engines use links to rank search results and discover new pages. Links tell them that a new page will follow the first one, so they rank such pages higher. It is indeed the easiest way to rank higher in search results.
There are two types of links: internal links and external links. Internal links connect one web page to another on the same domain. They make it possible to find content on a website. For example, the links in the menu are all internal, which makes it easy to navigate any site. However, you can also place internal links within the website content to divert your audience’s interest towards related and more exciting content.
External links, on the other hand, connect one web page to another on a different domain. They can be either inbound or outbound. Inbound links are links to your website that show up on other domains and help drive traffic towards you. They show up as hyperlinks that other domains place within their content to help promote yours. Further, outbound links redirect users from your website to a target page on another domain. When it comes to page ranking, external links have more value than internal links. They serve as votes from impartial third parties in favor of your site. Otherwise, anyone could build thousands of internal links to improve their ranking.
Now, let’s see why link building is important for SEO.
1. Helps Improve Your Ranking
Link building plays a vital role in making your website successful. Links are the main ranking factor built into the core of every search engine’s algorithm. When people search their queries on a search engine, they are more likely to open any of the first three results. While your content may be high in quality and relevant to the search, perhaps without links, the search engine won’t rank it high enough.
On the contrary, if your content has some external links to high authority sites and quality content, it will automatically improve your ranking. And it goes around both ways. Once you start getting inbound links to your website, your page ranking will automatically increase.
2. Increase Traffic On Your Website
Looking to increase the traffic on your website? Put your efforts into link building. It helps improve your search engine ranking and indirectly drives more traffic to your website. When it ranks high on the search engine results, preferably on the first page, your website has more chances of getting clicked. Thus, more people will read your content. If you manage to capture their attention with strategic internal links, chances are they will stay on your site longer and explore more.
Similarly, when you place outbound links to known authority sites on your website, it improves their chances of getting more clicks. Hence increasing your engagement with the audience. Likewise, when they backlink to your website, it drives their traffic towards your website as well.
3. Increases Your Brand’s Exposure
Link building also helps increase your website’s exposure. Any website’s ultimate long-term goal is to become known among the general audience, a source that people trust to find reliable information. Running a successful link-building campaign helps increase your brand’s awareness and makes it a go-to for your audience.
To do so, first, you have to build your domain’s organic traffic by adding quality content and strategically placing some internal and outbound links on your website. After this, you have to find a few high-quality external sources to link back to you. When you show up on their domain, their audience will likely open your links as well. Doing this will put many eyes on your website, increasing the search volume and visibility tenfold.
4. Lowers Bounce Rates
In SEO terms, bounce rate means the number of single-page sessions by visitors. In other words, it refers to the number of visitors who viewed one page of the website and left before exploring other pages. That’s where internal links come in. Link building isn’t just about external links. You have to place a mixture of both internal and outbound external links to make your link building look organic.
Notably, internal links make it easier for both users and search engines to navigate your content. However, creating interesting and attention-grabbing content is the key to making users stay longer on your domain and, hence, decreasing its bounce rate.
5. Helps In Getting Indexed Quickly
Indexing is the process by which search engines gather information before starting a search. Imagine how difficult it is to find a relevant topic inside a book without its index. Similarly, searching through individual pages for relevant keywords is a time-consuming task for search engines, so they use an inverted index system to identify individual pages.
Unlike a regular index, an inverted index saves text elements and document pointers to save a web page. Search engines use this information to create a database. Whenever a new search begins, they check their database to display relevant results.
Furthermore, getting indexed helps search engines reach your website easily. If you have carefully built several valuable links within your content, they will also use them as a pointer to your web page. Link building enables you to get indexed in search engine databases quickly.
The Bottom Line
Links are the foundation of the internet. Without adequately placed links, pages strewn in an unorganized manner would be difficult to navigate. Links are the essence that tells search engines how important a page is. Over the years, SEO strategy, marketing techniques, and even search engine algorithms have changed, but one thing that has remained unchanged is the importance of link-building.
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