What Is Link Building?

Link building is the practice of acquiring links to your website from other websites. In SEO, these links are called backlinks. Getting backlinks from high-quality sites can pass authority to your site, as well as help you rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

According to Google, an important part of identifying what pages are relevant and trustworthy is “understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content.”

Because of this, it’s important to consider link building when building an SEO strategy.

Why Is Link Building Important?

Say you have a great piece of content, but your website is fairly new and hasn’t earned much authority yet. Getting links from other trustworthy websites is a great way to help Google see your site as more authoritative.

Backlinks are essentially votes of confidence for your site.

And because pages with more backlinks often rank higher, it’s essential to:

Create high-quality content worth linking to, and

Use link building strategies to help bring in more backlinks 

Since link building takes effort, starting the process of link building sooner rather than later will give you a bigger advantage over competitors and bring great benefits to your website in the long run.

How Does Link Building Work?

The best way to boost your authority through link building is to earn backlinks from credible, high-quality websites. If you have tons of backlinks but they are from spammy, irrelevant sites, they probably won’t help you rank any better.

There are many ways to acquire backlinks, including:

Guest blogging

Social media promotion

Manual outreach

Pursuing competitors’ backlinks

We'll get into specific strategies shortly. 

But keep in mind that backlinks aren't everything—first and foremost, you should focus on creating useful, high-quality content. 

When investigating ways to improve your rank, harnessing the power of link building can be a challenge for beginners and experienced professionals alike. However, it can be one of your most powerful tools for organic success.