What do Ancient Rome and link building have in common?
"All roads lead to Rome."
As early as 300 BC, the Romans built roads so that both Europeans and North Africans could easily find their way to Rome.
The vast network cemented Rome's importance and made the city powerful due to its strong connections to surrounding trading cities, such as distant metropolises.
Just as Rome reinforced its position through connections, your website needs to be connected to other relevant websites.
These connections are what we in the SEO world call link building.

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1. What is link building?
Link building is about building bridges between different websites.
Taking it a step further, link building is about creating bridges between landing pages that reinforce each other's credibility but can also provide a better visitor experience.
There is both internal and external link building.
Internal link building is 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 for landing pages reinforces the value of each 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 splendor, full of life and activity. Now imagine the same city, with no roads leading into the city, but instead a Rome isolated from the outside world.
The same splendor, but unknown to other cities. Like an ice cream parlor in the Sahara, unknown to stray thirsty desert nomads.
No roads → no traffic → no commerce.
To increase trade, Rome ensured increased traffic by building roads to the city.
The stronger the connections Rome had, the stronger Rome was.
Links into your site are to you what roads are to Rome.
The more websites that link to you, and the stronger those websites are, the stronger your website is.
Every few days, Google inspects the number of links, but also who links to your website.
And if you don't actively provide link building for your website, it's like if Rome didn't build roads.
Also read: 15 concrete tips for writing a great landing page
2. There are quality and quantity links
The variety and quality of links are as diverse as the places you can eat. You can splurge and eat at a great restaurant and remember the good feeling days later.
But you can also choose the seedy restaurant hidden down the side street. It may be cheap, but you're more likely to get food poisoning and end up bedridden.
A good link could be from one of the country's biggest newspapers writing a feature about your business. It's when Rome builds a road to Florence that can attract thousands of visitors.
A bad link is usually one that you are offered to buy in large quantities 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 penalizes your site with a lower ranking.
An example of bad links are links from websites that simply contain lists of companies. One of the classic ones is https://www.megaindex.ru/ (note that we do not link 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 texts for their clients that they link to with the right keywords.
The sole purpose of PBNs is to be used for link building.
Web agencies write articles for their clients, knowing that the articles will never be read.
It's like a mechanic promising that he can make your car go faster. But fails to mention that it's by knocking the side mirrors off the car to create less wind resistance.
You actually get what you're promised, but not in a way you should be happy with.
Read how one SEO expert used PBN in his SEO strategy but stopped because PBN is risky for businesses.
If you find that your web agency is building their own PBNs, have a serious talk with them.
They gamble with your rankings and thus your revenue.
3. Is link building the most important SEO activity?
Let me ask you what's most important when buying a car for everyday use.
Is it the look? Is it the longevity? Is it the driving experience? Is it the price? Is it your partner's opinion? Is it the extras? Is it the car manufacturer?
It's hard to say that one point is more important than another. 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 put more 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 text. And you need to spend time on both.
We like to say that link building is the bread in a traditional burger and text is the steak.
Remove one of the two and you're left with something that's still edible, but nothing like a traditional burger.
You can have a great website without link building. But how many burgers do you think are sold without bread?
4. Can my product and service pages rank high without link building?
Yes, they can.
In the same way that you can lose weight just by exercising and still drink soda every day, it's not impossible to rank for small keywords without a strong link profile.
However, we would by no means recommend that you leave link building out of your marketing strategy. It requires you to write a lot of SEO texts for all your products and services.
And even with that, there's a good chance you'll never hit page 1.
In my experience, your landing pages won't rank highly if you don't do link building.
5. Where should I do link building to get the best links?
The best links are from sites that are relevant to your industry and what your business monetizes.
If you own a restaurant, links from food review websites, kitchen equipment stores, cooking 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 has more value if you, as a restaurant owner, have a profile with a voluntary organization working to reduce food waste.
6. Should you do your own link building?
Your next question is probably whether it's something you can learn quickly.
Amplify has a professional cleaning company cleaning our offices because our time is better spent doing SEO, Ads and Websites - not cleaning.
But I also do SEO for a cleaning company because they make the most money by providing the best possible cleaning service - not by learning how to do SEO and then doing SEO.
The most successful companies are those that prioritize the value-adding activities that their customers demand.
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 paths or links to your website to rank high. But link building is an activity that requires far more than a weekend to accomplish.
Link building is an activity you should do on an ongoing basis. Whether you are the right person to do it is the question.
Confucious said some 2,500 years ago: The man who tries to catch two rabbits catches none.
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
A good start is half done. A bad start is.... well, not good. If you don't have the resources to create a well-thought-out SEO strategy, you are always welcome to send me an email at seo@amplify.dk or contact one of my colleagues at info@amplify.dk.
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