Link building is the piece of the SEO puzzle that truly sets a campaign apart. While SEO and link building are always changing, the importance of link building has never been higher. Read on to find out what link building is and why it’s so important for an SEO campaign.

What is link building?

Link  building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink, usually just called a link, is a way for users to travel from one page to another on the internet. Search engines also use links to crawl the internet, both between the links within the individual pages of a website and links between one website and another. So therefore, link building is the SEO tactic of acquiring these links.  Link building is an important part of SEO, and the need to build high-quality links is now greater than ever if you want to compete and thrive online.

Why is link building important?

1. Links and Popularity

Links are like votes for popularity. Each time a page links to another, it’s a vote for the value of that page being linked to. And if a page is a big source of value to internet users, then it’s more likely to be linked to from other sites.

Google pays a lot of attention to how others talk about a website, through links or inbound social mentions. Links are therefore considered a strong factor in Google’s algorithm and link building is essential because any link from a blog, directory, or other industry site to your website is counted by Google as a vote that your site is important. And the more links you have, the higher you show on the search results for your target keywords.

2. Links and Search Engine Crawlers

Links provide a way for search engine crawlers to discover new web pages. Like was said before, search engines use links to crawl the internet. When a web page has a link, then search engines can crawl that page, extract the content of that page, and add it to their indexes. From there, they decide if they feel the page has enough value and quality to be ranked well for relevant keywords. When the search engines decide this, they look at the content of that page, the number of links pointing to that page from other websites, as well as the quality of those other websites (on-page and off-page SEO).

Quantity, Quality, Authority

So we understand that links are great. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that any old link is a good link. You should try to acquire links from authoritative, relevant and high-quality sites. Links from these are much stronger compared to links from low-quality and unrelated sites. There is also no single best kind of link. If there were, everyone would try to build thousands of that certain kind of link, spamming their way to a higher ranking. This tactic isn’t favorable in Google’s eyes and affects ranking negatively.

Instead of trying to acquire any old link, the best way to get ahead of competition is to pay attention to not only the quantity of links, but also the quality and authority of those links.

So there you have it folks, a quick run-down of what link building is and why it’s important. Acquiring links will set an SEO campaign apart when they are from quality, relevant, and authority sites. The importance of link building is more important than ever, and is a valuable piece to the SEO puzzle.