Developing link building

One of the key pillars of SEO is link building. At the heart of the internet’s design, hyperlinks connect websites and web pages to one another. The more links that point to a domain, the more positive the effect on the rankings. So how do you actively work on building links?

Rel attributes

Not every hyperlink is equally valuable. A link from a news site such as Nu.nl is more valuable than a link from the website of the baker round the corner. In the past, every hyperlink provided value. Things are rather different now… As a web administrator, you can specify whether a hyperlink should pass value to an external link. If not, you apply a rel attribute, such as <a href="https://www.seoninja.pro/" rel="nofollow">SEO Ninja</a>.

More and more websites are adopting this, but in 2019 a few more variations of rel attributes were made available.

• rel="usg". Stands for ‘user-generated content’. These are added via the comment function. Website visitors insert these links themselves in their comments on (blog) articles. It will come as no surprise to you that, in the past, it was mainly SEO specialists who commented very actively on blog articles.
• rel="sponsored". Apply for sponsored links.

No one really knows exactly what Google does with these rel attributes. There is a lot of debate amongst SEO specialists about link building. In our experience, every link has value; it’s just that the amount of value depends on many factors. Of course, a hyperlink without a rel attribute is valuable, but so is a hyperlink with a rel attribute from a popular website. The important thing is that the hyperlink must be relevant. A hyperlink to a garden furniture website must be relevant to the content of the article.

Domain Authority & Page Authority

As mentioned, a score is calculated based on the number of web pages and domains that link to the website. Google used to use PageRank, but now that they no longer actively communicate this information, other parties are trying to step into the gap. Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic examples, each of which also calculates its own scores for Domain Authority and Page Authority.

Domain Authority

The score for all links to a domain, including subdomains and all web pages.

Page Authority

The score of all links to a specific web page.

In many cases, the Domain Authority is higher than the Page Authority. That seems logical, but in some cases the Page Authority is higher. A really interesting article can attract a lot of backlinks, which means that, in the calculation, the Page Authority score ends up being higher than the Domain Authority.

It doesn’t matter to the website which of the two is higher. The main aim is to attract traffic, which must ultimately convert.

Link-building tactics

Now that you know how important link building is, we need to put it into practice. If you do nothing, very little tends to happen. There are several tactics you can employ.

Contacting websites

You can contact Startpagina-style websites (so-called web directories) to request that they include a link. In 2005, it was important to get listed on these sites, as the quality of search engines was often poor and web directories provided useful overviews. You can often submit a hyperlink via a form. Almost immediately, you’ll receive a reply from the administrator asking you to either a) place a backlink or b) pay to be listed on other web directories that he (or she) manages.

Blogging

People who enjoy writing start a blog. To emphasise the content of their articles, they post hyperlinks to internal web pages. They have also enabled comments with the aim of provoking discussion.

Incidentally, you can also start blogging yourself and draw the attention of other bloggers to high-quality articles in the hope that they will include hyperlinks.

Large companies set up their own network of different blogs. Each has its own domain name, its own IP address, is based in several countries, is in different languages and, of course, features advertising blocks (to help recoup that investment). They encourage staff and students to actively write blog posts and publish them on various blogs. All these blogs are linked to one another, creating a link-building platform. As a result, new blogs get up to speed more quickly.

Affiliate marketing

An affiliate provider capitalises on supply and demand. On the one hand, you have bloggers who write articles and want to earn money through hyperlinks. On the other hand, you have ‘advertisers’, who want to reach a wide audience easily and encourage bloggers to include links by offering attractive rewards for leads and orders.

Online PR

Send traditional press releases to newspapers, blogs and news sites. If they republish the article (or use parts of it), there’s a good chance they’ll include a link.

Set up a Google Alert

Keep track of who’s writing about you with Google Alerts. You’ll receive an email as soon as Google adds a web page to its index that contains the keywords relevant to you. From that email, you can click through to the articles, and if you see that no link to your website has been created, you can contact the webmaster and ask them to do so.

Stepping up your link-building efforts is quite a slog. The extent to which you want to step up your link-building also depends on the online competition. If those competitors have a high Domain Authority, you’ll have to work hard to catch up. If you’re already the one with the highest score, you’ll be done sooner. If you’re struggling and want to grow, Please get in touch with us!