1. What is link building?
Link building is about building bridges between different websites.
If we take it a step further, link building is about building bridges between landing pages that strengthen each other's credibility and can also give the visitor a better experience.
There is both internal and external link building.
Internal link building is, for example, when a shop links from a product to a blog post that explains how best to use the product.
External link building is when you link from your blog post about a product to an article about a user who has used the product to achieve something extraordinary.
Link building to landing pages increases the value of the individual page, which Google takes into account when ranking your landing page against your competitors.
Let's head south to Rome again. Imagine Rome, majestic in all its splendour, full of life and activity. Now imagine the same city without any roads leading into it, a Rome cut off from the outside world instead.
The same splendour, but unknown to other cities. Like an ice cream stand in the Sahara, unknown to lost, thirsty desert nomads.
No roads → no traffic → no trade.
To increase trade, Rome secured more traffic by building roads to the city.
The stronger Rome's connections, the stronger Rome stood.
Links to your site are what roads were to Rome.
The more websites that link to you, and the stronger those websites are, the stronger your website is.
Every few days, Google checks the number of links, but also who is linking to your website.
And if you don't actively work on link building for your website, it's like Rome not building roads.
Also read: 15 practical tips for writing a good landing page
2. There are quality links and quantity links
Links vary as much in type and quality as the places you can eat. You can treat yourself to a meal at a good restaurant and remember the good feeling for days afterwards.
But you can also choose the grubby restaurant hidden down the side street. It might be cheap, but you're more likely to get food poisoning and end up in bed.
A good link can be from one of the country's biggest newspapers writing about your business. That's when Rome builds a road to Florence that can attract thousands of visitors.
A bad link is usually the kind you're offered in bulk at a low price.
These are the ones where you risk giving your website food poisoning, because Google can see that you're buying bad links and penalises your site with a lower ranking.
One example of bad links is links from websites that simply contain lists of businesses. One of the classics is https://www.megaindex.ru/ (note that we're not linking to it).
One of the better-hidden bad links is Private Blog Networks (PBN).
In short, it's when web agencies buy catchy domains like “best news about everything” and write mass-produced copy for their clients, linking to them with the right keywords.
PBNs exist solely to be used for link building.
The web agencies write articles for their clients, knowing full well that the articles will never be read.
It's like a mechanic who promises he can make your car go faster. But fails to mention that he'll do it by knocking the wing mirrors off the car to reduce wind resistance.
You do get what you're promised, but not in a way you should be happy with.
Read how an SEO expert used PBNs in their SEO strategy but stopped, because PBNs are risky for businesses.
If you discover that your web agency is building its own PBNs, you need to have a serious talk with them.
They're gambling with your rankings, and with them your revenue.
3. Is link building the most important SEO activity?
Let me ask you instead what matters most when you're buying a car for everyday use.
Is it the looks? Is it how long it lasts? Is it the driving experience? Is it the price? Is it your partner's opinion? Is it the extras? Is it the manufacturer?
It's hard to say that one point matters more than another. After all, you don't want a cheap, fast car that only lasts six months.
A website needs to be clear and inviting for visitors, but it's also important that it can be found.
Link building is one of the activities you can use to get Google to shine more of a spotlight on your website and rank it higher. But as SEO expert Brian Dean writes, there are more than 200 ranking factors.
So the answer is that link building is an important factor, and also one of the most important. The second most important is writing copy. And you need to spend time on both.
We often say that link building is the bun in a classic burger, and the copy is the patty.
If you remove one of the two, you're left with something that's still edible, of course, but doesn't resemble a classic burger.
You can have an excellent website without doing link building. But how many burgers do you think get sold without a bun?
4. Can my product and service pages rank highly without link building?
Yes, they can.
In the same way that you can lose weight just by exercising while still drinking fizzy drinks every day, it's not impossible to rank for niche keywords without a strong link profile.
However, we would in no way recommend leaving link building out of your marketing strategy. Doing so requires you to write lots of SEO copy for all your products and services.
And even then, there's a high risk that you never reach page 1.
My experience tells me that your landing pages won't reach a high ranking if you don't do link building.
5. Where should I do link building to get the best links?
The best links come from sites that are relevant to your industry and to what your business earns its money from.
If you own a restaurant, links from food review websites, shops selling kitchen equipment, cookery schools, recipes, travel guides, food blogs, online lifestyle and leisure magazines and the like are ideal.
A link from your local bridge club, where you have a profile on their website, is still valuable. But it's worth more if, as a restaurant owner, you have a profile with a voluntary organisation working to reduce food waste.
6. Should you handle link building yourself?
Your next question is probably whether it's something you can learn quickly.
Amplify uses a professional cleaning company to clean our offices, because our time is better spent on SEO, Ads and Websites, not on cleaning.
But I also do SEO for a cleaning company, because they make the most money by delivering the best possible cleaning service, not by learning SEO and then doing it themselves.
The businesses that see the greatest success are the ones that prioritise the value-creating activities their customers ask for.
It was the French theologian Alain DeLille who said in the twelfth century: A thousand roads will forever lead people to Rome.
You don't need to build a thousand roads or links to your website to rank highly. But link building is an activity that takes far more than a weekend to carry out.
Link building is an activity you should carry out on an ongoing basis. Whether you're the right person to do it is another question.
Confucius said some 2,500 years ago: The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.
If you choose a web agency as your partner, together you can make sure you catch both rabbits for your business.
Get help with your SEO strategy
Well begun is half done. Badly begun is…. well, not good. If you don't have the resources to put together a well-thought-out SEO strategy, you're always welcome to drop me an e-mail at seo@amplify.dk or get hold of one of my colleagues at info@amplify.dk.
