Academy: What Exactly are Links in SEO? – marketgoo

Maybe you’ve heard of links, backlinks or link building and have struggled to understand what they are and why they matter for your website.

Well, think about how a snazzy gold chain can be made up of links — metal pieces that are continuously interwoven.

The concept of a link in SEO is not much different.

Recognizing Links

A link is an element on a page that guides you to a different ‘interwoven’ (read: relevant) page.

Image by Kathy Kato

If you are reading a Wikipedia article, you will sometimes see parts of the text that appear in blue.

This part of the text is called anchor text.

You can click on anchor text, because it includes a link. If you click on it, it will take you to another page or site. This is a link.

Anchor text is text that takes you (“links you”) to another page on the same site (in this case, the link is called an internal link) or to another website (external link).

Let’s see a couple of examples.

In the image above, every single blue text can be clicked on and will take you to a different Wikipedia page.

If you click on the anchor text that says “Solimana”, it’ll take you to the [Solimana Volcano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solimana(volcano)) Wikipedia page._

In the image above, you see a screenshot of one of the blog posts from WPEngine.

If you click on the orange text (in the red rectangle), it will take you to a statistics page on another website by the name of builtwith.com.

That’s another way to say that builtwith.com has been linked to by WPEngine.com.

When you read about a page “linking to” another, or that a “link points” to something, or any other phrasing related to links are all expressions mean the same thing, because a link is a relationship: A links to B, and B is linked to by A.

Internal Links and External Links

We already mentioned that there’s a distinction between links pointing to a page on the same website and links pointing to pages on other websites.

Links of the first kind are called internal links, like when you use Wikipedia and go from article to article, or when you click from one product to another on Amazon.com.

Links that take you to pages on other websites are called external links.

If we tell you to go check out all the other posts in our Academy series with this link, you are not leaving the site marketgoo.com when you go see that page — so this is an internal link.

If we link to this MOZ article here and you click it, you are leaving marketgoo.com to visit a page on moz.com. This is an external link.

So, when another website decides to include a link back to your site, you’ve gained an external link.

These are also known as backlinks, or inbound links.

Both internal and external links are important for your SEO, but we’ll focus on external links for now.

Specifically, backlinks.

What is Link Building?

Search engines like Google have the ability to discover and understand whether pages on the Internet are related to each other and how they are related.

That means that search engines can ‘see’ links between pages, and analyze them.

When you build links, you are using a variety of methods to get pages on other websites to link to a page on your website.

Yes, we know it sounds like a very time-consuming process. It is!

But if you want quality links, spending that time is actually worth it.

What Makes a Link a Good, Quality Link?

You want high quality links, right?

Well, you made a good decision, because linking to a site is like an endorsement and vote of trust for it: when you link to another page from your page, your page’s trust, credibility, and authority are passed on along with your endorsement. Think of it as a ‘vote’ for that site.

That means that a ‘high quality link’ is not just any link you can get.

It’s certainly not the link you asked for, from that friend who has an online flower shop… when you have a second-hand t-shirt shop.

The two sites are unrelated, so how could a user browsing your friend’s shop ever benefit from this link? What interest would they have in a second-hand t-shirt shop?

Google is like this hypothetical user — they will see the link and understand that it’s unrelated and probably randomly added on the first free spot that your friend thought would be nice to place a link to your site. The same can be said of web pages that list your site and millions of others without context.

Well, context is a good thing! Google loves context!

By ‘high quality link’ we mean a link from an authoritative website (a well-known, well established website that doesn’t dole out links like candy) like Bloomberg News.

Although most of us can’t get a backlink from Bloomberg or The Economist, you can still focus on websites that are well known (at least in your industry), have been around for a while (not published a month ago for the first time), and won’t just link back to any site indiscriminately (in this case, being selective is a good thing!).

Also, the anchor text should be relevant. That doesn’t mean that a regular “click here” is a bad idea — it can actually be a good idea if it makes sense, and it helps to maintain a varied and natural-looking backlink profile.

If you don’t know, a backlink profile is the list of all backlinks a website gains over time. Google is very careful when it comes to backlink profiles: a website with too many spam backlinks and links that use only over-optimized anchor text (e.g. “best plumber Atlanta”) raise red flags and your site may be at risk of penalty.

How Do You Search for Sites to Get Links from?

So, after the theory, time has come to do some research and brainstorming.

Fear not, it’s nothing difficult!

There are a number of ways to find high quality sites that you want linking back to your site.

1. Forums

Browse forums in your niche or industry and sign up to the ones you like best so you can interact and access member-only features.

Forum threads usually are not only a great source of content ideas, they’re also a great source of link building ideas, because you can easily get the website and contacts (social, email, etc.) of the best posters.

For example, say you signed up on WebmasterWorld.com and you found this beautiful answer to a thread of interest. Wouldn’t you want a backlink from the website of this person who clearly knows their stuff?

You can do the same on a website like Quora or Reddit.

2. Competitor Backlinks

What sites are linking to your main competitors?

To find out, you will need tools for this one, like Monitor Backlinks or Linkody or Ahrefs.

All these tools offer a twofold benefit:

In marketgoo you can see how many backlinks and referring sites your competitors have, to give you an idea of what and how they’re doing:

3. Trade Associations and Directories

Does your industry have a local, regional or national trade association website?

These websites act as directories and while they will be linking to a lot of businesses, they usually are considered authoritative by the industry and Google will not penalize them for listing links.

For example, this is AWAI (American Writers & Artists Institute)’s directory of writers, each with their own profile that includes a website link:

Note that there’s a difference between trade association listings and some “directories” that look like shady link farms which can get you into trouble with Google.

4. Small Influencers

An influencer is a person in an industry or a niche that inspires others to take action thanks to their speaking, videos, initiatives and charitable acts.

An influencer is “small” when their following is not as big in numbers as top influencers, and they’re generally much more approachable.

If there is at least one, you may want to start building a relationship with this person (for example, commenting on their posts or supporting their campaigns) before you ask them if they would be so kind as to talk about your business on their website in exchange for a freebie (a book, a product they can review, etc.).

For example, if you are an indie publisher, you may want to find book bloggers and bookstagrammers who are willing to read your book and review it. You could easily send them a digital copy of your book in exchange for an honest review, and leave it up to them to decide whether to also link to your site.

5. Customer Testimonials

Can you provide a testimonial for your supplier to include in their website?

Perhaps you’ve used a really good SEO tool (like marketgoo) and you are so enthusiastic about it that you want to write a testimonial.

How to do that?

Simple: contact the tool website and say that you want to send them a testimonial. They will let you know if they’re up to receiving new ones.

Don’t Do These Things!

There are a couple of nays when it comes to link building:

Link Building Techniques

Now that you have some ideas about where you want to see your site mentioned and linked to, think about what you have to offer.

Could you offer the influencer a free sample of your new product so they write an honest review about it? Do you have a short, persuasive description of your business to include in your directory listing?

You will quickly realize that it’s much easier to offer content up for linking when you have a blog. The more quality content you create, the more opportunities will flourish to see it linked to as the go-to resource to solve a specific problem or to better illustrate a concept.

How Do You Actually Get the Links? 8 Easy Link Building Techniques

The first step before we dive into link building techniques, is to gather your best content into a list and understand what kind of links you want for each of those pieces of content.

1. Link Building Outreach

One of the easiest ways to get link opportunities is to find interesting sites in your niche or industry and reach out to the site owner or editor.

In your email, you will offer your content as something interesting and useful, telling the other person that you will greatly appreciate their feedback.

2. HARO & #JournoRequests Link Building

There’s a website that helps brands and businesses to get in touch with journalists and bloggers. It’s called HARO ( HelpAReporter.com).

3. Resource Page Link Building

Imagine that your best content gets featured in a list of helpful resources: what kind of quality would you like to see in the page linking back to your site?

4. Broken Link Building

This technique is based on finding broken links on an existing post or piece of content, and offering your own content as a suitable replacement.

5. Link Reclamation

If you search for your name or business name on Google, you may find that not every page that mentions it is linking to your site using that name as an anchor text.

6. Local Event and Podcast Speaking

If there’s a local event like a conference or a series of webinars and you have the right expertise to give a talk, sign up as a speaker.

7. Syndicate Your Content

Content syndication is the practice of republishing your content (including all the links in the text) on a different website than yours.

8. Infographics

Creating and publishing infographics is another good way to build links.

How to Monitor Your Existing Links

There are (paid) tools that allow you to see a list of all the sites linking to you and to your competitors.

Some of our favourites are:

What Does Link Building Look Like in marketgoo?

In marketgoo PRO, tasks that relate to links and link building are housed in the Popularity area.

marketgoo guides you through every step of the task, telling you exactly what to do, how and where, and it explains why a task is important for your overall SEO strategy.

As you can see, links in SEO can wear many faces, but they are not difficult to handle once you get familiar with them. We hope our guide can help you clear your doubts and get started with link building.

Here’s to your success!