Is your link building for SEO strategy ready for 2021? If you want to rank a website on Google in 2021, you can’t ignore the importance of link building and the need to put together a solid strategy that will help you earn high-quality links.
If you’re looking into hiring someone to take care of all link building services or if you want to improve your skills yourself, these rules can be used as an internal checklist for every single link builder.
SEO and link building has changed A LOT since those days but one fact is clear – links are still the most influential ranking factor on Google.
Golden Rules of Link Building
1. Avoid Paid Link Building
Despite being a straight-up violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and a tactic that is clearly defined as a link scheme, paid link building is still relatively common in 2021 for the simple reason that it guarantees results.
Earning links is hard work; there is no denying that. And even manual link building and the wealth of quick-win tactics available still require effort to see results.
If it’s too good to be true or takes less effort than you expect, chances are there is a link scheme at play.
Paid-Link building services are not illegal per se, but buying them is against Google’s guidelines. Google does have penalties if your site has been penalized by these methods, so we wouldn’t suggest doing this.
2. Domain Trust
Domain trust concerns the trust of your domain and the trust of the domain linking to you Trust rank means that link quality is relative: if your domain is trusted, it will respond differently and more quickly to links. If your domain is not trusted, it will take time for it to respond.
It would be best if you only linked to sites with a higher PR than your own, and all of that said: always consider how much quality content they have on their website. If it has no content (just ads), then. Why would it rank well? You can’t just offer links out left and right and expect them to stay there forever. You need to be careful who you link out to because otherwise, your strategy could backfire.
Be careful who is linked WITH you – now and also in the future.
Check out: 6 Important Reasons To Focus On Brand Marketing
3. Link Relevance
A link from a high-authority site is excellent -but only if it’s relevant to your site. If it’s not relevant, it’s not going to have much of an impact.
If you’re running a website about health and wellness and you get a backlink from a fast-food company, Google is going to wonder what the connection is.
If you want your backlinks to make the right impact, they need to be connected to the central theme of your website. So, the golden rule is to concentrate on reaching out to websites within your industry or niche.
Remember that links originally existed on the web to navigate a user from page A to page B, and on this assumption, why would a link take you to something that wasn’t typically related?
It doesn’t make sense, does it? So be sure to follow this stance with your link building efforts.
4. Building Nofollow Links
Don’t be a link builder, be the everyday person building your links.
Your links should look like normal users have built them, and so you should also include NoFollow links.
No-Follow is the HTML attribute that websites use to tell search engine bots not to follow a specific hyperlink. The reason for this is it reduces the effectiveness of spam on search engines and improves search results.
In 2019, we got official confirmation from Google that they would count NoFollow links.
Links contain valuable information that can help Google improve search, such as how the words within links describe the content they point at. Looking at all the links they encounter can also help better understand unnatural linking patterns.
5. Natural Anchor Text
The term “Anchor text” in SEO relates to the text that you attach a backlink to.
Google uses anchor text as a crucial ranking signal.
However, Google’s guidelines clearly state that optimized anchor text (using your main target keywords or commercial terms) violates their guidelines. Excessive use of this is a known contributor towards both manual actions and algorithmic filters being applied.
Naturally, when linking to a website, you would likely reference the brand name, the article title, or perhaps even just use ‘click here or similar.
The link text needs to be relevant, and it needs to appear natural.
Don’t get fooled thinking that you only need to have “the right anchor text.” If you can only influence it on low-risk websites, then just do that.
Your link profile should contain a natural mix, with no obvious spike of links using optimized anchor text.
Check out: How to Execute a Successful Link Building Strategy?
Make sure you do your competitive research to learn the rules for your country, language, industry, topic, sub-topic, keyword group. Many people believe there’s a one-size-fits-all SEO ruleset, but that’s the wrong belief.
Wrapping Up!
There’s no denying that link building is changing and evolving in 2021. No one ever said that link building was easy because it is not. It is the tactic that most SEOs find the most difficult, and any proven successes you can showcase make you all the more valuable to potential clients or employers. But now that you have been given insights into the golden rules to consider and link building tactics that work and those that do not, it is time to get started.
By having a whole host of approaches at hand, you can ensure that you’re ready to drive as many eyes back to your content as possible.
Check out: How To Do link building, And What Does Link Juice Mean