The scale of business competition keeps growing exponentially. Setting up a company with a website is just a tiny step compared to the way required for growth in the digital dimension.
When website development is in focus, everyone aims to hit the top spot on the search engine listing, which requires a strong and substantial linking network.
How to create a long-lasting linking profile and turn it into financial benefits? Let’s follow the guide.
What is Link Building?
Link building is a synthesis of methods that are used to improve the authority and credibility of a particular site, helping it reach a better placement in the search list. This strategy is based on obtaining backlinks from other websites that point toward your resource. The more quality backlinks lead to your website, the better exposure it gets in the search engine and, thus, better visibility for the users.
Link building is an efficient SEO practice that is outlined within ethical search engine regulations and stimulates the growth of organic traffic and domain authority.
What Are the Types of Link Building?
Link building chases one main goal – high ranking and domain authority in the relevant niche. As the means of getting there differ from each other, we can distinguish three main approaches to creating a strong backlink profile.
White-Hat Link Building
White hat link building service is the one to follow when the website’s influence and reputation are the first on the list. White hat is a so-called “good guy” in the world of SEO, as all the techniques are approved by search engine regulations. The idea is to bring and boost traffic through legitimate techniques based on creating high-quality content and gaining inbound links from reputable and authoritative sources. Such an approach helps to enhance a search engine results page ranking and attract a wider audience to your source.
Though the white-hat strategy brings numerous benefits, it also has a significant downside – time. It takes time to build top-notch content and develop meaningful connections with the websites of the relevant niche. The desire to take a shortcut and not to ‘waste’ time brought about a completely opposite approach – black hat backlinking.
Black-Hat Link Building
Black-hat linking, or a ‘bad guy,’ is often characterized as being annoying, as it is built on the low-quality but high number of backlinks, spamming, keyword flooding, content spun, paid-for links, etc. The black-hat link building is often referred to as an aggressive one, as it leaves the user with no choice but to follow the links. As long as this approach doesn’t perform within the accepted norms and regulations, the websites under question can be penalized or banned by the search engine algorithms, which will eventually cancel all the input into its development.
Gray-Hat Link Building
Gray-hat links are technically good guys, yet they employ techniques from both approaches. It includes the usage of a big number of links (yet not spamming), the purchase of domains with a big number of inbound links, questionable partnerships, and the usage of PBNs.
Gray-hat links are better than black-hats, yet they are not the best choice when in doubt. When any business aims for a long-term existence, it is highly recommended to opt for a white-hat approach, as it helps to build a strong reputation and makes the basis for successful development and performance.
White-Hat Link-Building Techniques
1. Guest Posting
Guest posting, or blogging, is a widely-used technique and a perfect example of a white-hat approach. Basically, you need to create high-quality content for various web sources and insert the backlinks to your website into the body of the text. The articles are offered to the websites of a relevant niche. Such cooperation offers two-way benefits – the ‘accepting’ websites get good and free content, update their website, and you get all the link juice from them. Guest posting is rather laborious as you need to create all the content from scratch, yet it works perfectly for building your brand and establishing your online image. Besides, it is the best way to showcase your level of expertise and keep control over all the content posted on the Internet.
Guest posting is on the ‘good side’ until it is based on a mutually-beneficial agreement. Once it crosses the line of payments or link trades, it turns into a grey or black-hat approach.
2. Link Reclamation
Link reclamation is one of the white-hat link-building forms, which is less labor-intensive compared to guest blogging. The links can be reclaimed in two main ways:
– Brand mentions – when you find web resources that mention your brand without linking to it, you can contact them and ask to insert the link.
– Broken links – when finding the pages that are related to your niche with broken links (404 error), you can contact the webmaster and offer a workable replacement with the link to your website. However, such matching can only be done when the anchor text and the content are high-relevant to each other.
Link reclamation is an effective and quick solution regarding the time/result ratio. However, you have less control over the content, as you need to insert the links into the already-existing material.
3. Content Uniqueness
Being unique is not easy, especially now when all the information is within easy reach. When planning on a specific enterprise, it is important to single out the features that will set you apart from others; otherwise, what will make you different?
Uniqueness doesn’t come only with the texts that are presented on the websites or the goods and services provided. Uniqueness can come down to the tone of voice, a specific form of service, a distinctive vision on a regular matter, etc. It is crucial to find such a feature and build your image around it. If you present value to the partners and users, they will choose you over other providers of similar content.
The bottom line
The successful performance of any company is based on connections, either in the physical or in the virtual world. Given the fact that the virtual environment has taken its lead nowadays, building connections within is vital.
The link-building approach is the strategy behind every successful business, as it creates a network of link-connections in the relevant niche and promotes the importance of the website in the eyes of search engine algorithms and, thus, the users. White-hat link-building technique ensures the usage of high-quality backlinks without violating the web world rules, thus, creating a solid foundation for successful performance.
