If you want to improve the ranking of your website in the Google SERP, SEO On-Page is not enough. It is indeed crucial to develop and create a proper SEO Off-page strategy which is very useful when it comes to optimising the links and other outer elements that are not present on your website.
One of the most common and helpful Off-page SEO strategies is link building, which consists in creating and obtaining useful links from other authoritative websites and platforms. The aim of a link building strategy is in fact to enhance your website’s prestige and authority to improve search engine visibility and Google rankings.
Which link building factors does Google consider for SEO ranking?
In terms of ranking and positioning of websites, Google takes into consideration two very important aspects: quality and quantity. The search engine uses a method for classification based on relevancy and authority of a website and proceeds to evaluate the quality and the quantity of the inbound links. According to these specific measurements a page rank is then defined and a score on a scale from 0 to 10 is assigned to every web page.
But what do we mean with “quality” of a link?
To evaluate the quality of an inbound link, Google takes into account many aspects such as: popularity, relevancy and authority of a website. Other features that have to be taken into consideration include relevance of contents, the level of trust of a website as well as the freshness of a link, the newer the link, the more it will affect content quality. There are certainly other more technical factors that Google takes into account regarding the way a backlink is promoted.
For instance, many digital experts consider the position of a link in the content essential, that is to say that a link placed high in the body of the page carries more weight than one buried in the footer.
Another element that has to be considered is the Anchor Text, the text on which the inbound link is positioned. Due to past inappropriate behaviour, nowadays Google tends to punish all of the pages that use a link with an Anchor Text with direct correspondence to the main keyword that we want to rank.
But how is it possible to obtain a valuable link for your SEO strategy?
When it comes to optimisation and rankings, link building tactics are considered to be a fundamental resource for better results in SEO strategy. As a matter of fact, links allow Google to understand how authoritative, trustable and valuable your website could be for users, with the aim of positioning it in the first few results.
There are numerous ways to obtain valuable SEO backlinks.
The first, easiest and most natural strategy is link earning. The tactic consists in the publication and sharing of valuable links on your website. By sharing interesting contents it is possible to improve the engagement of a website, hence turning the website into an authoritative source and, consequently, more likely to be mentioned on other websites. For this reason it is important to plan and develop an effective content marketing strategy capable of suggesting useful contents for your community.
Another strategy is about sending links to another website or author to get noticed. In case of services or products, the plan could be to release testimonies and reviews on a specific product that has been bought and tested with the aim of obtaining more inbound links.
Regardless of the chosen strategies, it is essential that the links used are ‘Dofollow Links’ since they allow the connection of two websites organically and can be crawled and indexed.
To sum up, as Google expert Matt Cutts highlights, having backlinks inside a website remains a priority for SEO optimisation and improvement. Therefore, we recommend developing an effective link building strategy and integrating it into your content marketing plan in order to maximise your results.
How do you audit the links you already have?
Before chasing anything new, look at what points at you now. Google Search Console carries a links report listing your top linking sites, your most linked pages and the anchor text people use. It is free, it is the search engine's own view, and it is the only list that reflects what Google has genuinely seen.
Read it for three things: relevance, whether these sites have anything to do with what you sell; concentration, since one domain supplying hundreds of links is worth far less than the count suggests; and anchor text distribution, because a stack of identical commercial phrases is a pattern you created rather than one that happened.
The quickest win usually hides in your own errors. Links pointing at pages that now return a 404 pass nothing at all. Find them, then 301 redirect each retired address to the closest live page, and you reclaim value you had already earned.
Which link building tactics are worth the effort?
The tactics that last are the ones where the link is a by-product of something useful. Original data from your own operations, a genuinely better reference page on a narrow topic, a tool your industry keeps needing: these get cited because the person citing them has a reason to.
- Relationships you already hold: suppliers, distributors, trade associations and the customers you serve.
- Places your business really appears: event listings, exhibitor pages at trade fairs, sponsorships, awards and professional registers.
- Pages linking to broken resources on your subject, where you can offer a working replacement.
- Trade publications and journalists, who need a source with something specific to say.
If you sell in more than one country, add a rule. A link matters most when it comes from a site in the language and the country you are trying to rank in, so one placement in a well read trade title in your target market usually beats a dozen from unrelated English language blogs.
Which links should you refuse?
Anything sold by the link rather than by the work. Google's spam policies treat links exchanged for money, goods or reciprocal placement as link schemes, and the risk sits with the site receiving them, not the site selling them.
- Packages promising a fixed number of links a month for a fixed fee, with no named sites.
- Networks of sites that exist only to host outbound links.
- Mass directory submissions and spun articles.
- Guest posts on sites that publish anything, in any sector, for a placement fee.
- Widespread reciprocal swaps, the link to us and we will link to you arrangement.
If you inherit a profile like that, the disavow tool exists, but treat it as a last resort rather than routine hygiene: it tells Google to ignore whole domains and is not something you reverse quickly. For most sites the better answer is to stop, earn genuine links, and let the ratio change.
FAQ, link building for SEO
How many backlinks does a page need to rank?
There is no number, and a supplier who gives you one is guessing. What matters is how your profile compares with the pages already ranking for the term, on relevance and on the standing of the sites involved. A handful of links from respected names in your sector routinely outranks hundreds from unrelated ones. Look at who ranks now, look at who links to them, and set your ambition from there.
Do nofollow links have any value?
Yes, though not the value people expect. Google treats the nofollow attribute as a hint rather than an instruction, so some are weighed, but no strategy should rest on that. Their real worth is exposure: a nofollow link from a publication your buyers read sends people who enquire, and coverage in one place often leads to a followed mention somewhere else. Judge a link by whether real readers will see it.
How long does link building take to show in rankings?
Longer than clients expect and longer than proposals imply. A link has to be found, crawled and assessed before it counts for anything, and the effect on a competitive term accumulates over months rather than days. Honest planning treats it as a programme across two or three quarters, measured by referring domains gained and positions moved. No supplier can guarantee a ranking, whatever the timeline.
Is buying links ever safe?
Paid links that pass ranking signals break Google's spam policies, whatever the seller tells you. If you do pay for a placement, a sponsorship or an advertorial for instance, the link should carry the sponsored attribute so the arrangement is declared. You keep the coverage and lose the risk. The uncomfortable part is that the paid links which look safest, on real sites with real readers, are exactly the ones detection is trained on.
What does a natural anchor text mix look like?
Mostly your brand name, the bare address and ordinary descriptive phrases, with only a small share carrying the term you want to rank for. Genuine links use whatever wording suits the sentence they sit in, so variety is itself the signal. If most of your inbound anchors are the exact commercial phrase you are chasing, you have described your own campaign to Google in its own vocabulary.
