What is Link Building?
Link building is a process where a website obtains links from other websites. This is done in order to improve the visibility of the website in Google’s search results. Link building also helps to establish the trustworthiness of a website for Google. The more links a website has, the higher the chance it will have of being ranked highly in search results.
The votes of confidence that your client’s link gets when it appears on other websites is not the only thing that matters for link building to be effective. The content must be credible and relevant as well.
Google’s algorithms cannot yet make qualitative decisions about websites. The algorithms can determine what a website is about, but cannot determine if the website is important or useful just by reading the site. One of the main factors Google’s algorithms use to determine importance is backlinks, because backlinks act as “votes of confidence.” If the algorithms trust the sites linking to you, you get a portion of those referring sites’ trust.
We all know that Google’s algorithm is always changing and there is no one guaranteed way to have a high search ranking. However, the best way to go about it is to have excellent and relevant content.
The credibility and informativeness of your client’s content is even more critical for link building than for other web sources, making it easier to do link outreach.
According to Rhoades, rich, relevant content and trustworthy links are an excellent recipe for ranking success. He explains that link building is still the most effective way to improve SEO rankings, even with new changes to the algorithm that focus more on user metrics.
What makes content linkable?
The content you create will depend on the type of business you have, who your target audience is, and what you’re trying to achieve. There are many different types of content, like blog posts, articles, white papers, eBooks, listicles, videos, photos, and case studies. The kind of content you create depends on your business, your target audience, and what you want to achieve.
But not all types of content are link-worthy.
If you want to include links as part of your marketing strategy, you should plan your content accordingly so that it serves the right purpose (awareness, education, conversion, etc.).
If you want your website to be successful, you can’t just create content and hope that people will find it. You need to have a plan for getting people to link to your site.
What makes content link-worthy?
The reason people typically link to content is because they find it useful, entertaining, unique, insightful, or valuable.
Google uses links to trusted authorities as a signal of trust in their algorithm. Authoritative sites typically have larger audiences and visibility, making it easier to acquire links. If your site is relatively unknown, you may need to devise a strategy to tap into someone else’s audience to aid your link development efforts.
This means that some content formats are more likely to be shared and cited than others.
1. Original research/data
Data that is original and cannot be found anywhere else is more likely to result in links from other websites. This is because when a website wants to cite information from your study, you are the only source they can link to.
When planning your content strategy, you should keep in mind that research is a great source of citation because it is based on data instead of opinion.
Research shouldn’t only be done for content and links. It should serve a greater purpose of revealing informative details about a company or topic, providing value to an entire industry, and answering questions important to an audience. Research projects are more than just a content initiative; they’re an investment for a business.
Before beginning any research, it is important to have a clear idea of what goals and key performance indicators you hope to achieve. Otherwise, gathering the necessary information can become a very time-consuming process.
You need to have answers for all these questions:
- What questions does my study aim to answer?
- Will this data make anybody’s job/life easier?
- Who might be interested in my findings?
- Does my study build upon a previous study or experiment?
- What is my hypothesis for how the test will unfold?
- What if the data is different from what I expect?
Although you won’t be able to control the outcome of your research, it is important to have a few different ideas and perspectives for your project.
If you plan your content and have a backup plan, your original research will help you get relevant links.
2. Expert opinions/quotes
If you want to create content that will earn you links, consider featuring expert insight.
If you want your content to be seen as more credible, try adding perspectives from experts in the field. This will also help you reach a wider audience, which could lead to more people linking to your content.
It’s important to be choosy about who you take advice from. Connect with influencers who are qualified and have the life experiences to share valuable insights. These are more useful than tips or general best practices.
It is usually necessary to establish real connections with people and explain your content plan and goals to them before they will agree to share their stories with you.
3. Collaboration
When you feature experts or collaborate with other leaders in your industry, you can reach a larger audience and get more link prospects. Working with others also usually results in getting links from them, which strengthens your relationship.
Building positive connections in your industry also offers benefits beyond links, including:
- future promotional support;
- improved industry reputation;
- new partnership opportunities;
- brand development;
- referral business; and
- increased authority.
When you work with someone else, you can combine your resources to create something that is better than what either of you could create on your own. This often results in content that is the best in its class and gets a lot of links. You will also get twice the promotional effort, since your partner will also want the content to be successful.
Unique imagery/video
Content with images is often more linkable than text-only content.
During content ideation, consider how to inject visual elements into your content to make it more valuable and link-worthy. Some different ways imagery can add value are:
- Humor. Memes and GIFs help you connect with your audience on a human level, making your content more relatable.
- Visually striking. Breathtaking photography will often earn links itself, if the imagery is powerful enough.
- Charts/graphs. Humans are visual learners, and charts and graphs help people better understand the information in your content.
- Screen shots. Real screen shots lend validity to your content, often making abstract concepts more tangible.
Your audience can access your content through videos, which is helpful for reaching people who would rather watch than read. With mobile devices becoming more commonplace, video content will become increasingly important, since people may not want to read long blog posts.
The Best Link Building Tools for Your Agency
In addition, they can help you find new opportunities for link building. If you’re looking to build links quickly and easily, or if you want to be able to track your progress and measure your results, a dedicated link-building tool may be a good option for you.
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular platform among agencies because it has a index of over 3 trillion backlinks and refreshes every 15 minutes. This allows agencies to keep their clients up-to-date with their link building game in real-time.
Features to Note:
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The Backlink Checker allows users to see which websites are linking to their competitors and what kind of link it is. This information can be used to adjust a website’s own linking strategy. The tool also has a spam filter which can remove links from emails and other sources that are not trusted.
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Rank Tracker: Monitors Google ranking and competitor keywords
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, sitemap issues, duplicate content, and more A site audit is conducted in order to check the SEO health of a website. This includes finding broken and no-follow links, sitemap issues, duplicate content, and more.
Ahrefs is a great choice for agencies that have many clients and need to build and monitor a large number of links. Ahrefs also does a good job of finding and fixing broken links. AgencyAnalytics integrates well with Ahrefs, making it easy to generate reports for clients. If your clients are interested in a wide range of SEO services and link building, Ahrefs is worth considering.
The Ahrefs’ Lite Plan starts from $99 per month, with the option to upgrade to the Enterprise Plan for $999 per month. There is no longer a 7-day trial available, but they offer a few free SEO tools, such as a Free Keyword Generator and a Broken Link Checker.
2. Moz
Moz is a widely used SEO tool that can also help with link building. Its Link Explorer feature (shown below) is very useful for improving your visibility on search engines.
Features to Note:
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Link Explorer is a tool used for research competitor links and observing content performance. It can also be used to monitor spam scores and keep track of lost links.
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The Keyword Explorer Tool can be used to create keyword lists, monitor competitor keywords, and track keyword metric performance. This tool can be used to help you improve your website’s ranking in search engines.
Moz is a great platform for managing a lot of different clients with various SEO needs. It also gives you on-page optimization scores to help you with content ideas.
Additionally, you can create detailed dashboards with the Moz reporting integration, which will include all of your Moz backlink data along with data from 70+ other marketing platforms.
Moz’s standard package starts at $99 per month and goes up to $599 per month for their premium package. One of the main differences between the two is that premium clients have access to ‘Speed Crawl,’ which allows websites to be crawled significantly faster. If you’re not sure if you want to subscribe without trying it first, Moz offers a free 30-day trial that includes a complimentary overview with an SEO Specialist.
3. AgencyAnalytics
AgencyAnalytics is a great choice for marketing agencies as it has excellent SEO tools to keep you at the top of your link building game. Our automated client reporting tool streamlines the entire SEO tracking process.
We have a Backlinking Monitoring Tool as part of our suite of SEO tools to help you keep track of your client’s link building campaigns, which comes with a white-labeled reporting format.
Features to Note:
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Backlink Monitor is a tool used to track link building campaigns, analyze link profiles, track detailed backlink KPIs, identify high authority domains, and share real-time updates with clients.
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Fully customizable, white-labeled reports that track advanced metrics, such as Trust and Citation Flows.
Best for: Agencies who value report automation and in-depth, advanced backlink monitoring. AgencyAnalytics streamlines marketing reporting efforts in a consolidated format and is invaluable for agencies scaling and juggling multiple clients.
AgencyAnalytics is available for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. The rates for AgencyAnalytics start at $12/month for freelancers, and $18/month for Agency packages. If you are a larger agency looking for an Enterprise rate, you can contact us for a customizable package.
4. Semrush
The Semrush SEO tool provides marketing insights regarding link building, with key features such as Backlink Analytics and a dedicated Link Building Tool.
Features to Note:
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A geographic distribution report is a report used to showcase website traffic according to geographic region. This report can be used to show which regions are sending the most traffic to your website, and can be used to target specific marketing campaigns to specific regions.
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Backlink analytics is the process of assessing the quality and quantity of inbound links to a website with the goal of improving the site’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). A backlink audit is a similar process with the goal of identifying and removing bad or low-quality links. A link building tool is a software application that helps automate the process of building links.
This tool is best for agencies whose clients rely heavily on local SEO. It tracks the top performing links according to geographic region and competitor analysis. Semrush is a powerful SEO tool that can help your clients achieve their goals.
Semrush has three different priced packages, which are the Pro package for $119.95 a month, the Business package for $449.95 a month, and the option to create a customized plan. All tiers have the option for a free 7-day trial.
5. Majestic
Majestic is a greatchoice for a backlink checking tool if you don’t want all of the other SEO bells and whistles. The platform also features ‘Flow’ scores which rate websites on trust, citation, and visibility. Again, these all feed into a link building strategy as meaningful content plays an important role.
Features to Note:
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The Bulk Backlink Checker is used to check the status of up to 1,000,000 URLs simultaneously.
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This text explains how to use the backlink campaigns feature in the software. This feature allows users to group websites and check for periodic updates.
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The Topical Trust Flow metric measures the degree to which a website is considered to be an authoritative source on a particular topic. This is determined by analyzing the industry or topic that the website has the most influence in.
If your agency is focused on backlink checking, Majestic is a great option. It has a feature called ‘Tropical Trust Flow’ which is great for finding influencers in a particular industry. The Bulk Backlink Checker is also handy for implementing scalable link building. With this feature, you can easily find broken links and link building opportunities for a large number of backlinks at the same time.
Majestic has a Lite plan that starts at $49.99/month and an API plan that is $399.99/month.
As your client’s efforts to build links continue to be successful, you will need to keep track of the new backlinks and include them in your client’s SEO KPI reporting. This is where an automated reporting tool comes in handy.
Our reporting feature allows you to clearly see the progress of your backlink building campaign, as well as the growth thereof. You can also customize the report to show only the information that you want to see, and brand the report with your own logo and branding. Best of all, this can all be done with just a few clicks.
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