Link building — what do you need to know? Key information

Link building is an excellent way to boost the visibility of your company’s website, and thus an opportunity to increase profits. How can you achieve this? Find out what link building is, how to use it, and where you can use it to promote your business online.

Link building — what is it?

Link building is one of the strategies used to achieve the best possible ranking for a website in organic search results. It involves acquiring backlinks to the website being promoted. This means that, unlike sponsored links, what matters here is naturally signalling to Google’s algorithms that the site is of value. Importantly, SEO link building currently focuses specifically on this search engine. The reason for this is its popularity amongst Polish internet users, of whom only around 2 per cent use other search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo.

Link-building activities essentially involve placing links to a particular website on your own or another website. Recommending content signals to Google that the site contains content of value to the reader. Nowadays, this is extremely important for the success of promoting a brand and its products online. The reason for this is the strategy of the search engine giant, which is increasingly focused on ensuring that the top rankings are occupied by links to content that is genuinely useful from the user’s perspective.

Link building in SEO — why is it so important?

Link building not only boosts a website’s visibility, but is in fact essential. It builds a domain’s authority as a source of content that is useful to the average reader. Without such efforts, achieving top positions in search results is only possible in theory. In other words, even the most informative text, further enriched with keywords entered by internet users, will almost certainly get lost in the sea of content.

A link-building strategy is also the best way to showcase your brand to people who haven’t found your website through organic search results. After all, it’s very common for a user to type in a search phrase that directs them to a website completely unrelated to the subject matter of the linked site. A sponsored link increases the chance that they will visit the promoted site if they find the content there interesting. What’s more, such links also allow you to reach people who mainly browse websites saved in their browser bookmarks.

What types of links are there?

Firstly, it is important to clarify what a link is. A link can be not only text, but also an image. An image included within the content therefore serves a threefold purpose. Firstly, it enriches the content with an aesthetic element or serves to illustrate the topic being described, making it easier to understand. Furthermore, it allows a website to be found not only in organic search results for text, but also for images. What’s more, once an alternative description has been added for Google’s algorithms, it also becomes a text anchor.

An anchor, in turn, is one type of text link. It is a highlighted, clickable hyperlink within a section of an article or a category page in an online shop. As it forms part of a sentence, using it for linking helps to maintain the coherence of the text. Consequently, an article, product description or other type of content remains reader-friendly whilst fulfilling its purpose. There are four types of anchors, three of which take the form of a word or phrase suggesting the subject matter of the linked text.

These are:

• Exact Match Anchor (EMA) – a link that precisely describes what the content is about, usually leading to an article on that topic, a product description or a category, e.g. send a parcel;
• Brand – a link containing the brand name, usually redirecting to its homepage, e.g. InPost;
• Partial Match Anchor (PMA) – a link containing advertising content designed to encourage clicks, which generally takes the user to a sponsored article, product description or category page, e.g. ways to arrange fast parcel delivery.

In addition, the following are also used:

• Zero Match Anchor (ZMA), i.e. a link with no text of its own, the content of which is indicated by the preceding sentence, e.g. you can find the best car brands HERE;
• A URL – which is simply the address of the linked web page – as well as information about what the reader will see when they click on the link, may be included in a previous sentence; for example, detailed information on this subject can be found at inpost.pl.

What attributes do links have — what is their role?

The subject matter of a link should be communicated not only to the reader, but also to the Google bots responsible for classifying and ranking them. For this reason, SEO specialists attach great importance to tags, i.e. attributes (parameters) embedded in a webpage’s HTML code. These take the form rel=”information for Google’s algorithms”. The full address written in HTML might look like this: <a href=”examplepage.pl/” rel=”dofollow”>examplelink</a>

From Google’s perspective, the key information is precisely attributes such as ‘dofollow’ and ‘nofollow’. The former indicates that the linked page is relevant to the content of the page on which the link is placed. The opposite of this is ‘nofollow’, a directive indicating that the content on the linked website is not particularly relevant to the page on which the link is placed. It is worth bearing in mind that links without the ‘dofollow’ attribute are, by default, treated by Google as redirecting to a page with similar content. However, for better search engine optimisation, it is recommended to include both attributes. In this way, the site gains credibility ‘in the eyes’ of the algorithms, indicating where the user will find content that is best matched to their search queries.

Another attribute of links includes, amongst others, rel=ugc, which stands for user-generated content. This parameter indicates that the link was shared by a user in a comment. Such links can be found both beneath content published on social media platforms and, for example, in product reviews on online shop websites.

In addition, there is the rel=sponsored attribute, which informs Google’s crawlers that the link contains sponsored content, rel=noreferrer, which informs the algorithms that the site does not pass on the referring page’s URL, and rel=noopener, which blocks potentially harmful sites from accessing the page linked to. The latter two attributes are set for security reasons. Importantly, they do not have a negative impact on search engine rankings. On the contrary, a secure website will rank higher in search results than one about which Google has concerns.

Link-building ideas — where to get links, how to build them, and where to place them on your own website?

Link building for the target website should cover all areas of the internet. It is worth promoting your site through sponsored articles. Popular websites and blogs, in particular, offer excellent visibility. However, publishing content on these platforms comes at a high cost. For this reason, a company’s marketing strategy should also take into account websites with fewer readers.

This tactic allows for a two-pronged approach. Popular websites attract genuine readers, which offers a great opportunity to acquire new customers, even though linking to only a small number of articles does not build sufficient authority for the site. Conversely, less prominent websites will agree to publish sponsored content for a lower fee than those visited by large numbers of internet users. This makes it possible to publish articles with links on dozens of websites, thereby signalling to Google that the company’s website is frequently recommended and is therefore authoritative.

How else can you build backlinks? It’s worth being active on social media. Including links in comments on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube is a chance to attract the attention of thousands of people. Forums bringing together enthusiasts of a particular topic can also help build a website’s visibility. Such platforms are particularly important when promoting a specific product or service. They are less relevant when marketing focuses on the brand itself. This is because the threads started on forums are, for the most part, intended to provide advice on a given topic or answer questions, rather than to exchange opinions about brands.

External linking, to which all the above ideas refer, should be supplemented with internal linking. In other words, links between individual subpages are essential for effective search engine optimisation. This ensures that not only the promoted product but also other items in the range will be more visible in search engines. Building links to the website also paves the way for customers to take an interest in other items in the range.

The most common mistakes made in link building

Simply knowing how to acquire links to a website is not enough to ensure they help with its search engine optimisation. It is also essential to embed them skilfully within the text. For this reason, it is important to ensure that EMA and PMA links are included in phrases that are relevant to the content to which they lead. It is a mistake to add a hyperlink that is loosely related or has no connection to the topic at all. For example, the phrase ‘passenger cars’ should not lead to a text describing the problem of a lack of parking spaces in a particular city.

A similar mistake can be made when using a brand link. A hyperlink containing the brand name should lead to the brand’s homepage or to an article in which it is described. The most difficult thing is to place ZMA and URL links incorrectly, which stems from the inevitable need to refer to them in the sentences preceding them. In addition, care must be taken to describe infographics and photos correctly. It is a mistake not only to use text that does not correspond to their content, but also to omit the text altogether.

How much do link-building activities cost, and what determines the price?

The cost of link-building activities depends, amongst other things, on the number of links to be included in the articles. The price is also influenced by the type of content in which they will appear and the site on which they are published. The cheapest option is simple text posted on websites with low traffic. Expert articles cost considerably more, particularly those likely to be read by thousands of internet users visiting a well-known portal.

These two factors, combined with the varying number of links ordered by individual companies, mean that it is impossible to determine the cost of link building with any certainty. You can spend anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand zlotys, or even tens of thousands, on working with an SEO agency. So, in reality, it depends entirely on the company’s financial resources.

Link building is one of the most important steps you can take today to promote your business online. Without it, the chances of ensuring your company’s website is visible drop significantly. Rather than risking failure in the battle against competitors who rank highly on Google, it is better to invest in building your website’s authority and thus always stay one step ahead of the rest.