What is Link Building? Definition and Resources
Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites on the web, primarily for the purpose of improving search traffic on Google.
In this video, I discuss the smaller details of this activity, define it in more depth, and introduce you to some great resources to get on the path of doing it yourself.
Audio Version
Video Transcription
Hi. I’m Ross Hudgens, founder of Siege Media, and today, I want to help you define link building. So what is link building? Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites around the web. So why would you do this?
The point of link building is twofold. One, primarily, the main reason it’s done, is Google uses a popularity ranking factor that, basically, if you link to someone else on the web, you’re giving that website a vote. And the more votes a website has, the more worthy it is of surfacing higher on search results when you search for something.
So businesses undergo link building or link building activity in order to generate more votes and appear more popular to Google. The second factor regarding that is links have actual business value additionally.
Yes, a search is a very powerful engine, a huge revenue driver for most businesses, but referral and just brand awareness and things like that actually occur through link building as well if it’s done properly.
With SEO, companies need to find ways to generate links back to their website in order to build a large presence online in order to be seen as popular enough to be warranted of showing up higher on Google search results.
It’s hard to do link building. It’s not as easy as just word of mouth marketing to someone else who says something about Airbnb or NBC or some great donut shop they like.
Well, link building is a little different in that the kind of websites that link online is not as obvious as how to do word of mouth or just have a word of mouth conversation without someone else.
Certain sites link to certain things. Certain businesses link out. Other businesses don’t link out. It is this kind of idiosyncrasy that creates complexity in this activity and makes it difficult to do.
But in basic terms, it’s about creating something that’s linkable, worthy of talking about in some way, and then aligning it to websites that wil link to it on the web. And that’s just the beginning basics of defining link building.
There are four specific assets or resources I suggest to check out as your next step to learn about link building and how to do it more effectively.
1. Backlinko Beginner’s Guide
The first is from Backlinko. He has a great link building guide that will give you an in-depth starting point of how to do link building, the strategies behind link building, how to think about it, and that’s a good place to start on the web.
2. Jon Cooper’s Link Building Strategies
The second is from Point Blank SEO. Jon Cooper, a really smart link builder and one of the first people to really talk about link building in a way that was progressive and intelligent, created a really in-depth guide and list of different ways you can build links on the web. There are like, 300 plus ways you can generate links for your business on that list. It’s really well done. I suggest you check that out.
3. Builtvisible Blog
And from a specific blog point of view, in terms of who’s doing it right now today and doing it well and has a blog worth following in regards to link building, I specifically like Builtvisible. They’re an agency based in the UK. Really smart people there, and they’re constantly, as well as talking about SEO, talking about link building on an active basis.
So that’s worth a read if you really care about link building.
4. The Siege Media Blog
And finally, kind of biasedly, I’ll say if you like link building, you should check out our blog. Hopefully, some of the videos on our YouTube channel are also worth checking out. We talk about links a lot, and it is kind of the starting point for getting a lot of presence and traction, and we do it a lot through content marketing specifically. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our link building services page.
So, hopefully, this introduction to link building was valuable for you. If you like the video, give us a thumbs up, subscribe, and let me know what you thought. Thanks for watching.
