What is Link Building?

Understand what Link Building is and how a backlink strategy can help improve your website's organic traffic and Authority Score.

Link Building is a set of strategies that aim to seek links that point to a particular site or page. These links are called Backlinks. 

The Link Building strategy is a way to build or increase the relevance and authority of a page or domain, in addition to generating traffic and increasing the chances of ranking in the Google top positions for important terms and keywords. 

Backlinks work as “recommendations”. The more quality links a site has pointing to it, the more “recommended” and the more relevant it is to Google. 

That is, the better the origin of the link, the greater the value it will pass to the pointed site.  

On-Page and Off-Page optimization 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) optimization is separated in two parts. Defined by: 

On-Page Optimization: It is the information carried out within the website to offer better content and good usability for the user. For that to happen, there are some basic rules to be followed, how to properly use the Title, Description, Canonical (URLs) tags, keywords, internal links, etc. 

Off-Page Optimization: If On-Page SEO is what comes from inside the site, Off-Page refers to what is outside it, that is, the requirements that make the site have greater authority and credibility, such as backlinks and mentions of other sites to yours. 

Therefore, the Link Building strategy is part of Off-Page Optimization. To learn more about SEO and optimization, check out the guides “Whats is SEO and why is important” and “What a page needs to have to be optimized and complete”. 

Link Building is the final touch for an optimized and complete website. When a website has its Technical SEO structures, On-Page well aligned and quality content, the effects of link building are direct. 

Click here to see how to create quality content for your website.  

Domain Authority 

Domain Authority, also known as D.A. is a metric developed by one of the largest SEO companies in the world, Moz. That identified a series of factors that influence the authority of a page and a domain.  

A website's domain authority is measured on a scale from 1 to 100. The closer you are to 100 the better your ranking is and probably a better ranking will drive more traffic. 

To check which D.A. of your site, just access the Semrush tool, in “Domain Overview” in the side menu. 

 

For building the quality of a domain and improving the Domain Authority metric, always pay attention to the On-Page and Off-Page optimization of your website and pages. It is the On-Page optimization that will show Google how your page is, internally, optimized for the main factors that the search engine deems important for the public. And, after this, working on Off-Page optimization with content and backlinks strategy, you can improve the site's relevance. 

The D.A metric. is based on factors such as: number of visits and website visitors, number of links and their origin, friendly URLs, image optimization, being used as a link on pages of competing sites, among other points related to On-Page and Off-Page Optimization To learn more about how to optimize your website and pages for SEO, check out more guides from Da Vinci Training, like “What a page needs to have to be optimized and complete”. 

So, there are several factors that need to be identified by the Google algorithm, which are part of the On-Page and Off-Page techniques and strategies so that, together, they characterize the Domain Authority of any website, regardless of its niche. 

What is a quality link?  

Quality links are related to domain authority. As seen earlier, the greater the authority of a site that is linking to yours, the greater the weight of your site's "recommendation" to Google. The more authority a site has, the higher the chances of reaching or being as close as possible to the top position of the SERP (Search engine results page). 

Also, a crucial point is that the site that is linking to your content must have some relationship with your business. One of the ways search engines assess a website's reputation is by checking the links it receives. 

In addition, pay attention to creating quality content on your site, but also to the content of the sites that link to yours. The better and more interesting your content, the more people will redirect to you, claiming that your link is trustworthy. 

When another site cites a link to your page, that site is telling its readers that your site is relevant to that topic. As well as for Search Engines, which understand that when several sites point to yours with a certain subject, your site has relevance to the content searched for.  

Definitions and metrics 

Anchor Text 

Anchor Text is the text that appears in a link. Usually, it brings some keywords or a small description of what the user will find on the page when clicking on the link. It is important because it is used by search engines to define the relevance of the landing page of the link to the term contained in it and check if the term described and the linked page address the same subject. 

So, be careful to create an Anchor Text with keywords to help with ranking to reinforce the authority for that term. 

Pay attention! Beware of keyword repetitions. When a term is used insistently in all backlinks, the Search Engine can understand it as a bad practice, what we call Black Hat. The suggestion is to diversify the terms and keywords used. 

Dofollow and Nofollow 

The “dofollow” link is when a site or page allows search engines to index that link, so it will be found by people who search for that term. 

“Nofollow” is an attribute (rel=“nofollow”) that, when included in the link tag, is not considered by search robots. This means that you are asking the search engines that you don't want that link to be followed, but the content of that text can still be found. 

“Nofollow” is used, for example, when you are going to quote something that is relevant at that moment, within your text, through a link, but that is not the same subject or niche that your company addresses. 

It is important to remember that if “nofollow” is not inserted, search engines will understand the link as “dofollow” automatically. 

Guest Post 

Guest Posts or Guest Blogging are exchanged between two partners. They are known as invitation articles, that is, when a person is invited to write on a website that is not theirs. Remembering that these contents must be unique and original, being different from each other. Equal content can generate duplication problems. 

This strategy is a good opportunity to gain new links and strengthen Link Building, because when you have an article on a partner site, your site will receive a reference from it, either by linking the content of your site or the author's name. In addition, it is important to remember that it is also possible to insert keywords in the text. 

Moreover, this practice benefits both sides and offers greater visibility, as in addition to attracting more visitors with the audience that already accesses the contents of your Guest Post partner, it is also a way of offering original content, increasing the number of hits on the pages and winning more credibility for the brand in search engines. 

Link Baiting 

We can say that Link Building actively conquers Backlinks. Link Baiting, on the other hand, searches for external links passively, that is, it is when other sites cite yours without a request for a partnership or exchange of links, but the quality of its content. Therefore, in Link Baiting, the objective is to naturally attract links from other domains. 

Therefore, the function of Link Baiting is to attract attention with content that can go viral and attract organic traffic. Remember that users and search engines value authentic content with relevant information. You can use diverse types of content for this, such as: 

• Use of first-hand information; 
• Evergreens content - which makes sense regardless of the period; 

• E-books; 
• Survey; 
• infographics; 
• Lists: they make all the difference in a text, as they are able to answer the reader's doubts in an objective way; 
• Maps; 

• Recommendations; 
• Research; 
• Questionnaires. 

 

Thus, Link Baiting can be considered quality content with high linking and sharing potential. 

Black Hat 

“Black Hat” is a term used to designate techniques performed with malicious intent and, in some cases, even illegal. 

Techniques intended to deceive search engines are considered Black Hat, for example: 

• Keyword stuffing - Exaggerated keyword repetition; 
• Hidden content - like applying the text in the same color as the site's background, or changing the font size to 0; 
• Duplicate content - Any page that has content identical to another already published is considered duplicate content; 

• Cloaking - Pages created just for search engines to trick them into ranking; 
• Doorway page or gateway page - It is like Cloaking, but uses several pages, each with a keyword; 
• Private Blog Networks (PBN) - PBN is a network that is made up of several blogs and websites that generate links to the website that needs to raise in Google rankings; 
• Paid links - Payments for other sites to link to yours; 
• Blog SPAM - Insert links in comments on Blog pages with the intention of generating links; 

• Negative SEO - Apply techniques that harm competitors, such as inserting negative comments on Google My Business, or generating low-quality links to their sites (called toxic links); 
• Linkfarm - is a set of sites that aim to generate links to each other to improve ranking but are full of links to sites with no relevance. Like this: 

 

 

White Hat and Gray Hat 

White Hat is the best practices is the name given to the best practices carried out to improve the ranking of a website in the search engines. 

White Hat strategies always adhere to Google's guidelines and put the user first. 

Gray Hat SEO is a mix of White and Black Hat. As if you had a website using as best practices (White Hat) but eventually use Black Hat for short periods to avoid Google punishment. Be careful! This technique is as wrong as the black hat! 

These cases can generate several types of punishment for your sites, such as difficulty in indexing or positioning, loss of rankings, de-indexing of pages, and even domains. 

Link Building and Black Hat 

One of Google's biggest goals is to offer the best content to answer users' questions. That's why in 2012 Core Update Penguin was released, which caused low-quality content with lots of unnatural links to drop from the SERP rankings. 

For more information about Google Core Updates, see our guide.  

Since then, what we call “artificial link generation”, such as link buying and PBN, is seen as an attempt to manipulate Google - Black Hat - and is also punishable. Therefore, currently the number of links pointed to the site is not as significant as the quality, relevance and naturalness of the links that are pointed to it. 

So, stay away from services that offer link building sales! They can even be attractive, as they deceive the algorithms and bring fast results, but this causes strangeness on the part of search engines. And, of course, no one would like to be punished and hurt the performance of the site in general. 

Work with good practices: optimize your website, invest in quality content, make frequent updates, maintain a presence on social media and spread your links there too! 

Also, maintain a good relationship with people in your niche and who produce content like yours to naturally create good partnerships. This will ensure an honest relationship with your audience and search engines. 

Link juice and Links evaluation 

Once again, let us talk about the importance of gaining quality links, with quality content. 

As we saw earlier, when a page mentions another page in its content, it ends up transferring some authority. It is like a vote of recommendation from that site pointing to another. 

This authority transferred from one site to another is called Link Juice.  

 

The higher the authority of the site that points a link to yours, the more authority it will transfer through Link Juice. That is why it is not enough to just win links. You need good links, with relevant content and good authority. Remember that the closer to note 100 in D.A. (Domain Authority) the greater the authority of the site.  

Also remember that the content on the website needs to be from the same semantic field as yours, that is, from the same niche. That way you will get better results. 

You should always assess the following points: 

1. A domain authority (D.A.); 

2. The segment of the website that uses your link; 

3. The context in which your link appears and the quality of the content; 

4. The text that appears in the link - Anchor text and keywords; 

5. See the link is Dofollow or Nofollow. 

 

If the chosen Backlink fulfills all these requirements well, we can say that it is a quality link. 

How to measure your website backlinks 

Before starting any link building strategy, it is important to know the big picture of your website and understand the relationship with the links that point to it. For example: 

• Check how many backlinks your site currently has; 

• Analyze which sites are linking to your site; 
• Check the reputation and authority of the sites that link to yours; 
• Analyze which pages on your site have the most links and which are more likely to receive links. 

 

You can do this analysis through the Semrush tool. See how:

Backlink Audit on Semrush 

Search for “Backlink Audit”, in the “Link Building” category in the side menu or click here. 

 

1. Overall Toxicity Score: Check the “health” of the links and see which links are toxic. 

2. Referring Domains: Total number of active referring domains that contain at least one link leading to a parsed domain, subdomain, or URL. 

3. Analyzed Backlinks: Total number of active backlinks going from the referring domains to the analyzed domain. 

4. Authority Score: Same as Domain Authority. Used to measure the overall quality and SEO influence of a domain. 

5. The cards at the top of the page are like alerts about the Backlinks of the analyzed site. 

 

 

In the report above you can check the complete list of Backlinks and use the filters to analyze toxic Backlinks. 

 

Backlinks to Review: Analyze the most toxic backlinks, which can trigger Google penalties. 

Backlink Removal Requests: Google Guidelines require you to ask the owner of the “toxic” website to remove the link pointing to your domain. To make the process easier, you can get some help from the Backlink Audit interface. Semrush automatically finds the website owner's email and provides it to you, so you should create a takedown request email template and send it to all domain owners in just a few clicks. 

To insert Backlinks in the removal list, simply click on the “Move to Remove List” button in the Toxic Links list. 

 

Items to Disavow: Insert the domains and URLs you want Google to ignore here.  

If you have artificial links that violate Google's guidelines, ask the other site to remove these links. 

And, if some links cannot be removed even after contacting the site owner, you need to submit them to the Google Disavow tool. 

 

You can do this in the Backlink Audit interface, importing the list you analyze in the tool. Just integrate Semrush with Google Search Console, as in the image above.  

 

After this, you just need to click on “Move to disavow list” in your list to removal. 

Top 100 Referring Domains: Best domains for partnerships, based on D.A. (Domain Authority). 

Top Referring Domain Categories: Distribution of reference domains by category. It can help you with insights into which niches are of greatest interest to work. 

Referring Domains by Authority Score: This helps you understand the overall quality and strength of the analyzed domain's backlink profile. The more domains with a high Authority Score, the better.  

Backlinks by Anchor Type: Breakdown of backlinks by their anchor type. 

Top 100 Anchors: The most popular anchor texts linking to the analyzed domain. The popularity of each anchor is determined by the number of backlinks that use it. 

Top 5 Target Pages: Top performing pages for Link Building on the site. 

Backlinks by Link Attributes: The proportion of follow vs. nofollow, sponsored, and UGC links (User-Generated Content) is one of many metrics that a search engine can look at as an indicator of guideline violation. 

Sponsored and UGC [tags are designed to identify the origin of links and specify the relationship between your site and other sites you link to. Real tags have three different values: “nofollow”, “sponsored”, and “UGC”. 

Each of them is used for a specific purpose: rel="sponsored" for links involving advertising, sponsorship, or any other paid activity, while rel="ugc" is used for content created by a user. 

For do-follow links, there is, however, no need to add a rel attribute. 

Backlinks by Link Type: This chart shows the distribution of text, image, form, and frame links. Analyzing image backlinks can help you decide if you should try to promote your product or service with better photos or visual content to gain more image links to your domain. 

Other Semrush Link Building reports 

As seen above, the Semrush tool's Backlinks audit report provides a summary of your site's overall Backlinks picture. 

But, in addition to analyzing the scenario in which your site is in relation to Backlinks, it is important that you also check your competitors. 

Analyse points like: 

• Current number of backlinks and by periods (focus on quality Backlinks) - how many Backlinks were received in the last month or quarter, for example; 

• Sites that link to your competitors but do not link to yours; 
• Which pages and content categories of your competitor get the most links - this will help you get insights for new content on your site! 

 

Get to know other Semrush tools that will help you with competitor analysis. 

Backlink Analytics 

You will find this report in the left-side menu in the category “Link Building”, above “Backlink Audit”. If you prefer, click here.  

After insert the domain you want to analyze, whether yours or a competitor's, in the Overview of this report, you will see that the information is like the Backlink Audit report. 

Remember that the tool provides information about the reports by clicking on the “i” icon of each part, as in this example: 

In addition to the Overview of the Backlink Analytics report, you will find, at the top of the page, several tabs to analyze the information separately. Look: 

• Backlinks: Check the list of backlinks from the searched domains, what types of backlinks they contain, the link attributes and analyze the toxic or potential domains. 
• Anchors: Which anchor texts are used for the domain and which backlinks do they come from. 
• Referring Domains: Total number of active referring domains that contain at least one link leading to a parsed domain, subdomain, or URL. 

• Referring IPs: Where the main Referral Backlinks come from. 
• Outbound Domains: Know where the analyzed domain is sending the backlinks, how many are sent and what the external links are.  
• Indexed Pages: Check which pages are indexed by search engines and filter for 404 error pages.  
• Competitors: In this report you will find the top competitors for Link Building and information such as: the number of backlinks from each competitor to a given domain, the level of competition and the total number of competitors' domains, including common referring domains. 

Link Building Tool 

This report can also be found on the left-side menu, in the “Link Building” category or by clicking here. 

The Link Building tool helps you find and get the quality backlinks in your niche. It helps you collect a list of link building opportunities for your domain and provides a management interface to run an outreach campaign to acquire links. 

 

• Overview: It is a summary of the tool's actions, so you can analyze all the information from the items below in a single report.  

• Prospects: Search and analyze the best possibilities of backlinks and use filters such as keywords, competitors and mentions.  
• In Progress: Once you have selected the best opportunities, you can use this list to organize the backlinks you want to get.  
• Monitor: Once you get a backlink, start monitoring its status. 
• About: Find more information about Semrush's Link Building Tool. 

Bulk Analysis 

This report can also be found in the Link Building category in the side menu or by clicking here. In this, you can enter different URLs to analyze an overview of information about the domains. 

 

To use it, just enter up to 200 URLs (one per line) in the box, as shown in the image above. The table will be populated with data on how many backlinks and referring domains point to each URL. 

Information contained in the report for analysis: 

• AS: Authority Score (the same as Domain Authority – D.A.); 
• Backlinks: Number of backlinks pointing to the respective domain; 
• Domains: Number of domains pointing to the respective domain; 
• Monthly Visits: Number of unique visits to the root domain in the last month; 

• Follow / Nofollow: Links tagged follow and nofollow; 
• Text: Quantity and what content links to your domain; 
• Image: Quantity and what are the image backlinks; 
• Form: Quantity and what are form backlinks; 
• Frame: Quantity and what are the frame backlinks; 

• Info: Brings additional information about the backlink's niche, such as government, education, etc. 

 

Comparing your backlink profile to competitors is an important part of your competitive analysis as it can highlight link building opportunities in your direct niche and give you an idea of how ahead or behind the competition you are. 

Backlink Gap 

You will find this report in the “Competitive Research” category or clicking here. 

In it, you can enter your domain and that of your main competitors (up to four) to compare the Authority Score, the number of visits, and matches (total number of analyzed domains to which this referring domain points). 

To make it easier, you can use filters and identify the sites that are linking to your competitors. Filters are separated into: 

• Best: Domains that point to all competitors but not your domain. 
• Weak: Domains that point to your domain less than to competitors. 

• Strong: Domains that only point to your domain. 
• Shared: Domains pointing to all analyzed domains. 
• Unique: Domains that point to only one domain. 
• All: All perspective domains found. 

 

Added competitors can be root domains, subdomains, or URLs. This means that you can compare multiple subdomains or URLs on the same domain. 

Conclusion 

The Link Building strategy is a great tool to improve your website ranking, if you work on the correct implementation of basic SEO rules to offer the best user experience through best practices (white hat). 

Before carrying out a backlink strategy, you should do a thorough link building analysis on your website, competitors, and potential backlinks. 

Working on this analysis will make it easier to understand, for example, some reasons why your competitor is managing to rank better or with what content. That way, you can get more insights for improvements or current ideas, and you will not be hampered by toxic links.