The best tips for LinkBuilding

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. The number of links helps Google to know how your site is popular. The number of links pointing to your website is then a strong ranking signal. However, remember that the quality is equally, if not more important than the number.

If a site links to another site, then link authority (link juice) is given from the site linking to site linked.  The more authority we get from our links (number of links and high-quality links) the higher we will rank on Google.

Having bad links on your link scheme can really hurt your ranking so I will describe now what are the criteria to take into account when link building.

Criteria of a good link

• Domain Authority and Spam Score

Domain authority (DA) is a measure of the power of a domain name. Domain authority is based on three factors: Age, Popularity, and Size.

Spam Score metric helps quantify the relative risk of penalization/banning by search engines using a series of correlated flags.

• Anchor text

Anchor Text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink.

SEO-friendly anchor text is succinct, with a relevant keyword to the target page.

• Domain extension

A domain extension is the top-level part of a domain name, like .com or .net.

Links should come from a website with a relevant domain extension for our website.

• Follow tag

If there is a nofollow tag in the code of the link the website is saying to Google bot to not take this link into account and to not give any authority to that website B. So your linkbuilding efforts will not bring you anything*.

To check that the link is “follow” you need to inspect the code link of the link. It’s no mention of “nofollow” then it’s “follow”.

*in reality, it will still bring you some other benefits but no authority so it’s a criterion to take into consideration while choosing a website.

• Sites hosted by another Domain

Several links from the same domain (wordpress, blogspot, blogger, etc.) doesn’t bring us more link authority.

Example:  websitename.hostdomain.com

• Accessible to Robot

The content should be available to Googlebot without requiring Googlebot to log in.

Other criteria: Traffic, Social, Relevance

• A good link from a highly-visited website can lead to an increase in traffic, too.
• A link shared on social media doesn’t bring link authority but does bring visibility, branding, and traffic.
• How relevant a page or site is, according to your content

Outreach strategies for Link Building

Collaboration	Exchange	Criteria
Trade link	– 1 link on their site – 1 link on one of our sites (optional)	– DA <= our DA – Spam Score < 5 – Relevant website
Review product	– 1 link on their site – 1 free product – 10% on the website for a week if shared on social media	– DA <= our DA – Spam Score < 5 – Good looking website
Competition	– 1 link on their site + Social share – 1 free product for blogger + 1 discount code 20€ to give away	– DA <= our DA – Spam Score < 5 – Good looking website – <1K followers + Good engagement
Influencer Post	– 1 free product – At least 1 post about the product shared on their social media	– < 5K followers + Good engagement – Fashion account, good style and good pictures in the whole account
Long Term Influencer	– 4 to 6 free products throughout the year – At least 1 post about each products shared on their social media	< 30K followers + Good engagement Fashion insta, good style and good pictures in the whole account
Affiliate Program (Professional)	– 1 free product – 1 link on their site + social share – 10% discount readers + 10% on products sold at the end of the cooperation	Famous blog or famous influencer (<= 100K followers + Good engagement)
Paid Link (Professional)	– < 10 € – 1 link on their site	DA < our DA Spam Score < 5 Relevant website
	– < 50 € – 1 link on their site – Anchor text with keyword	DA < our DA Spam Score < 5 Relevant website
	– < 250 € – 1 link on their site – Anchor text with keyword	DA < our DA Spam Score < 5 Relevant website Good traffic
	– > 250 € – 1 link on their site – Anchor text with keyword	Famous blogger or Magazine DA < our DA Spam Score < 5 Relevant website Site with high traffic

Some tips to find good links

• Propose a link which is relevant for the website contacted

  • Earning links from pages that already rank for keywords we would like to rank would help significantly.
  • Link to content truly valuable that people find useful or share-worthy.
  • Contact websites that might be interested linking to our content.
  • Choose websites that are likely to make a cooperation with us. Check if they did that kind of exchange with another similar website before.

• Make link building with partnerships / cooperation / competiton

  • Look for website / companies / brand / software etc. with who we already work to place a link maybe with a review, a quote, an interview etc.
  • Look for website which do partnerships (products vs link). Not only bloggers looks for partners but also sport club, magazines, other brands etc.
  • Exchange of good! It’s not only products for a link, we can also trade a link for a link. All the other websites are also looking for links!

• Find websites that make list references

  • Some websites have as purpose to reference companies / brand / blogs etc. Those websites are always looking for new references to add to their list.

• Help websites improve their content

  • Write an interesting content or an added value comment, the website would like to have on their site in exchange for a link
  • Find problems (dead links, images missing, wrong content, spelling mistakes) on websites to make them want to help you in return.

I hope this article will help you in your link-building strategy. I gave you all the ideas I use at the moment but this list might be completed by other articles, later on. So stay connected and don’t hesitate to put your ideas in the comments section below! See also in the article LinkBuilding using linkbird how I use Linkbird to optimize my outreach strategy.