1. What is link building?
Link building is about building bridges between websites.
Taking it a step further, link building builds bridges between landing pages. These bridges increase the pages' credibility with each other and can give the visitor a better experience.
Link building comes in two forms: internal and external.
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.
Links to a landing page increase the page's value. Google takes that value into account when your landing page has to rank against your competitors.
Let's head south to Rome again. Imagine Rome in all its splendour, full of life and activity. Now imagine the same city without a single road leading into it. A Rome cut off from the outside world.
The splendour is the same, but no other cities know about it. Rome is like an ice-cream stall in the Sahara that the thirsty nomads lost in the desert never hear about.
No roads → no traffic → no trade.
Rome wanted more trade. So the city built roads and got more traffic.
The better Rome's connections, the more power the city had.
Links to your site are to you what roads were to Rome.
The more websites that link to you, and the more authority they have, the more weight your website carries.
Every few days, Google checks how many links you have. Google also looks at who is linking to your website.
If you don't actively work on link building for your website, it's as if Rome had never built its 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 quality as the places you can eat. You can splash out on a good restaurant and remember the good feeling for days afterwards.
You can also choose the grubby restaurant hidden down a side street. It may be cheap. On the other hand, you're more likely to get food poisoning and end up in bed.
A good link can be a mention of your business in one of the country's biggest newspapers. That's like Rome building 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.
With these, you risk giving your website food poisoning. 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 only 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 types of bad link is Private Blog Networks (PBN).
In short, web agencies buy catchy domains like “best news about everything”. Then they write mass-produced copy for their clients and link to them with the right keywords.
The only purpose of PBNs is to be used for link building.
The web agencies write articles for their clients, knowing full well that no one will ever read them.
It's like a mechanic who promises to make your car go faster. He just forgets to mention that he'll do it by knocking the wing mirrors off the car to reduce wind resistance.
You do actually get what you're promised. You just have no reason to be happy with how it's done.
Read how an SEO expert used PBNs in their SEO strategy and then stopped, because PBNs are risky for businesses.
If you discover that your web agency is building its own PBNs, 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 us answer with a question: 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 point to one thing that outweighs the others. After all, you don't want a cheap, fast car that only lasts six months.
It's the same with a website. It needs to be clear and inviting for your visitors. People also need to be able to find it.
Link building is one of the activities that get Google to put more of a spotlight on your website and rank it higher. At the same time, there are more than 200 ranking factors, as SEO expert Brian Dean writes.
So the answer is that link building is an important factor and one of the most important. The other is writing copy. You need to spend time on both.
We like to say that link building is the bun in a traditional burger, and the copy is the patty.
If you remove one of the two, you can of course still eat the rest. It just doesn't resemble a traditional burger.
You can have an excellent website without doing link building. How many burgers without a bun do you think a burger bar sells?
4. Product pages and high rankings without link building
In short: Yes, your product pages can rank highly without link building.
You can lose weight by exercising alone and still drink fizzy drinks every day. In the same way, you can rank for small keywords without a solid link profile.
We in no way recommend dropping link building from your marketing strategy. Without links, you'll need to write lots of SEO copy for all your products and everything else you offer.
And even then, there's a big risk you'll never reach page 1.
Our experience tells us that your landing pages won't reach a high ranking if you don't do link building.
5. The best places to do link building
The best links come from sites that are relevant to your industry and to what your business makes money from.
If you own a restaurant, the ideal links are from food review websites, shops selling kitchen equipment, cookery schools, recipes, travel guides, food blogs, online lifestyle and leisure magazines and the like.
A link from your local bridge club, where you have a profile on their website, still has value. As a restaurant owner, though, a profile with a voluntary organisation working to reduce food waste gives you more value.
6. Should you handle link building yourself?
Your next question is probably whether you can learn it quickly yourself.
At Amplify, we use a professional cleaning company to clean our offices. Our time goes further when we spend it on SEO, Ads and Websites. We leave the cleaning to those who know how.
At the same time, we do SEO for a cleaning company. They make the most money by delivering the best possible cleaning. They don't make it by first learning SEO and then doing it themselves.
The most successful businesses prioritise the tasks that deliver the most and that their customers are asking for.
The French theologian Alain DeLille 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. Link building does, however, take far more than a weekend.
Link building is a task you should work on continuously. The question is whether you're the right person to do it.
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 lack the resources to put together a well-thought-out SEO strategy, you're always welcome to drop us an email at seo@amplify.dk. You can also get hold of one of our colleagues at info@amplify.dk.