The Ultimate Guide to Link Building 2024

Every morning when you are checking your email, you probably have a few emails from various marketing professionals asking for a link exchange. It can seem annoying, and there’s a good chance you ignore most.  But, did you know that the more backlinks that you have, the better your website can rank on search engines? Marketers in all industries should take advantage of link building to enhance their SEO strategies. In this article, we are going to go through what link building is, and how to use it to benefit your company.

What is Link Building?

Essentially, link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites that point to your site. This is most commonly done through blog articles. Link building is a fantastic way to build street cred with Google, also known as domain authority. It’s a simple and easy way to optimize your website for search engines, meaning you are more likely to rank higher on search results. Which can result in an increase in website traffic. If you are participating in high-quality link exchanges, your website will seem more reputable. And, the users that click on your link can be highly qualified.

Domain Authority

Like I mentioned before, domain authority is how trustworthy Google sees your site. The more links pointing to your site, the more trustworthy your site will be. As a result, the higher your domain authority will be. To check your domain authority, you can use a website called MOZ. Simply enter in your website, and it will show you what your domain authority is, as well as linking domains, ranking keywords, and spam score. It will also show you what pages are the most linked and the top linking domains.

Quality Over Quantity

Let’s say you are shopping on Amazon. Before you purchase, you’re probably going to look at the reviews. If one product has 2 reviews, while another has over 100, you’re probably going to pick the product that has more reviews. This concept also reigns true when it comes to link building. The more sources your links are coming from, the better. This means that you don’t want the same website to link to yours more than a couple of times. In addition, you want to try to get links from high-quality websites with a good domain authority themselves. If you get links from a lot of sites with low domain authority, it could look spammy to Google.

Three Way Exchanges

When you are doing a link exchange, you want to try to avoid directly linking back and forth to each other’s websites. This is because Google will see that you are simply trying to get backlinks, instead of linking to provide readers more information. Instead, try to get a third party involved. If you have access to another website, try to provide a link back on that website instead of yours. While a handful of two way link exchanges aren’t the end of the world, you want to try to avoid them when you can.

Stay on top of Broken Links

A broken link is a link to a page that can’t be accessed or found. This most commonly happens with 404 errors, when a link is changed or removed. If your website has a number of broken links, it may negatively impact your SEO. A great way to monitor if your website has broken links is to use a broken link checking software, like Online Broken Link Checker or Ahrefs. Checking if you have any broken links every few months can ensure that your website is sharing high-quality content. And, your website visitors will be more likely to return to your site for more information.

Broken Link Building

If there is a website that you want to add a link to, then checking if they have any broken links can help. If you find one that has a broken link, try reaching out to them to see if you can replace it with one of your own resources. You can get their email address using Hunter.io, and send them the following email.

Hey {First Name}

I was reading one of your blog articles about lead generation, and I thought it was fantastic! Thanks for sharing your insight. 

But, I did notice that there was a broken link. If you’re open to suggestions for a replacement citation, I recently published an article that includes the exact same information. It’ll be a great fit for your content.

Here is a link to the article: 

Keep up the great work! 

{Your Name}

Be Relevant

If your company only serves very specific markets, then it can be a good idea to stick within that area for your links. For example, if you only do business within the United States, you might not want to get a link from a company in Italy. Although the link itself may slightly boost your domain authority, it could bring traffic to your site that is not relevant. And, it could ultimately create confusion. Instead, try to stick with companies that are within the US.

Linking Relevant Words

If you are getting a link on another website, you’ll want it to be a relevant word. This means instead of linking your site to “learn more” or “keep reading”, link it to the keyword that your page is ranking for. As an example, if we wanted to do a link exchange for this article, we would want to link “link building”. Not only can it help your SEO, but it can also increase the chances of your link getting clicked.

Check Out Your Competitors

If you’re not sure where to get started, or you want to improve on your current link building strategies, take a look at where your competitors have links. You can use MOZ to search up any website. Simply plug in their website, and you can see the top websites and keywords that they have links for. SEMRush can also show you what pages link to their website. Knowing what your competitors are doing can help you see new opportunities for yourself, and help you gain an advantage from an SEO standpoint. And, we all know that ranking higher on search engines results in more clicks.

Asking for Links

Now that you know all about link building, you may be thinking that you want to start building your own links. To get started, you’ll need to have a list of websites that have a similar audience to yours and write about related topics. If you’re not sure, try to search up topics that you may be interested in and check out some of the articles. Getting links for websites like Hubspot, Salesforce, and other large companies may be difficult, so it’s best to start out with smaller companies. Once you have a company that you want to reach out to, you can use Hunter.io or LinkedIn to reach out to them. Here is an example of an email you could send to them.

Hey {First Name},

I came across your article 10 Ways to Boost Your SEO in 2024, and I must say I am impressed. I loved the part where you talked about checking out your competitors, great insight!

My article, The Ultimate Guide to Link Building in 2024, would benefit your readers. 

Please let me know if you are interested and we can work out a plan that benefits both of us!

Cheers,

{Your Name}

Offer to Write an Article for their Website

A great alternative to exchanging links, is to write an article for another website. We all know that writing content can be very time consuming. But, there are a number of benefits that come along with well written content. So, it can be hard for a company to say no to free content. If there is a website that posts similar content to yours, but is not a competitor, try reaching out to them with a few topics for articles that you can write for them. When you write the article, add in a link to one of your supporting articles. Try not to directly plug your company unless it was agreed upon. 

Visitor Queue for Link Building

If you are looking to build links with relevant companies, and see who is coming to your website from your previous exchanges, Visitor Queue can help. Visitor Queue is a B2B lead generation software that can identify the anonymous companies that visit your website. This can help with your link building initiatives as you can see what companies are reading your blog articles. In addition, we provide an overview of the company including location, industry, size, and any relevant social media channels. We also provide employee contact information like phone numbers and email addresses to help you reach out. You know exactly what companies are viewing, and we provide the contact information to make your lead generation and your link building easy. And, by knowing how each company was referred to your website, you can know how well your link building is going. Start your 14-day free trial of Visitor Queue today to get never-before-seen insight into your website analytics.

Final Words

Link building is a fantastic way to build your website’s domain authority and improve your SEO strategies. By building up links to your website, you prove that your website is reputable and full of good information. While it can take some time to get the hang of link building, it can greatly impact your site over time. If you have any questions about how Visitor Queue can identify your anonymous website visitors for both lead generation and link building, do not hesitate to reach out.