Link Building And User Experience Go Together

Link building has always been significant for SEO. Some people think it should be avoided, whereas some think the opposite. Google has more than 200 ways to rank a page. The fact is Google considers links as part of its algorithm but other SEO factors should not be ignored. If you focus only on link building than it will surely get you in trouble.You should also focus on other aspects like the presence of keyword in URL and title, using alt text for images and making the content keyword rich.

No doubt links are important but it has to be done in a proper way. Here are few points you can consider during link building:

1. Links are important for people

Even if you overlook the ranking factor, the fact remains that people need links. Take for instance you are reading an article and you are anxious to know about particular person or tool mentioned in it. In this case if the article contains links, then you just need to click on it to find more about it. Where as if the article doesn’t contain any link then you have to browse for that particular word separately which is pretty annoying. Thus having links provides user a better experience.

2. Internal Links Building

Your website is the starting point of your link building. You must provide internal links in your website so that the visitors can easily go where they want by simply clicking on the links.

The most important links should be present in the header and the footer bar of the website. Audit the content of your website. Link the important pages of your website with keywords and anchor text. Internal links are important and Google want you to build them. You can confirm the weightage of internal links by visiting the Google Webmaster Tools.

3. External Links Building

Incoming links has got its own share of value. It is always beneficial for your website to get links from other websites. You need to make sure the links that you get are quality links and not spammed. Most of the websites that rank first in the search result have valuable incoming links from various relevant sources.

You can get great incoming links by following ways:

• Content Contribution

To get links from other websites can be pretty tricky. Say for instance you offer SEO services than you should contribute to sites like Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch or Search Engine Land. You can also contribute to other well known authorized sites that publish topics related to your industry. Eg: Entrepreneur, Forbes etc.

Even though guest blogging is considered dead for link building, it is definitely a good way to get exposure for your business. Select your publication properly and write for reputed publications. This way you will earn links and traffic as well from those top publications.

• Links from Competitors

A great way to discover useful links is Competitor research. You might not get all the links that your top competitor has, but it will give you a fair idea about the links that are best for you. You need to pick your competitors by doing proper research. Search the competitors that rank on the first page for your target keyword.

Quick Backlinks Report can help you find the strongest links of your competitors. For backlink analysis you can choose amongst the best online backlink checker tools here. I usually go for Ahrefs tool.

What you need to avoid in Link Building:

There are various things you need to avoid in link building. This includes:

• 1. Exchanging links
• 2. Buying links
• 3. Over-optimized keyword anchor text
• 4. Spamming

You can avoid keyword optimized anchor text and still optimize your link for the target keywords. You simply need to include the keyword without making it a part of your link. You can create a sentence which can be used in most of the places like:

• 1. Your business or Your product is your keyword phrase.
• 2. You are your keyword phrase.

It is evident that link building has lot of value and if you approach it properly, you and website will surely get higher rank.