One of the most crucial steps in any SEO campaign is high-quality link building. Links directly impact a website’s visibility, exposure, and its ranking on Google, but what exactly are these links? How do they work, and how do you create them?
Link Building for Websites - The Difference Between Internal and External Links
The first thing to understand is the difference between external links and internal links, and the distinct roles that each type of link plays.
Internal Links on an E-commerce Website
Creating internal links is among the first topics an SEO specialist should address when working on an optimization process for your website. Internal links are links that guide users from one page to another – within your own site.
For example, a user who visits an online store and wants to read about the different types of products before choosing the right one (e.g., protein supplements for athletes) can read about the different products in an article on the site, but if that article also contains links leading to the product’s sales page, the site owner benefits in three ways –
- It’s easier to reach the sales page, making it easier to drive users to purchase.
- Proper, high-quality internal links strengthen the site’s authority in Google’s eyes, helping to promote it.
- Users stay on your site longer, signaling to Google that the user had a positive experience, interest, and relevance, earning you extra ranking points from Google.
Internal Links on a Corporate Website
Internal links can also appear on a corporate/branding website (a non-e-commerce site) and provide the owner with similar benefits. Since our goal in this case is often to encourage the user to reach out—via a Contact Us page, for instance—you can create internal links leading to the contact page for submitting details, or to another informative page that expands the user’s knowledge with related or complementary topics. On a digital marketing agency’s website, for example, you can link from an article about building a backlink profile to another page covering other optimization methods like speed optimization, fixing broken links, or an article discussing “How to bring more traffic to your website?”, and so forth.
So now that you understand what internal links are and how they work, let’s move on to external links.
External Links
So why do you need links to your website from an external source? Google’s algorithms are designed to predict and anticipate user behavior. All of Google’s actions lead to one place – meeting user needs, being attentive to what users “tell” them through various browsing preferences. Therefore, one of Google’s earliest algorithms was built similarly to how real-world recommendations work. When you want to evaluate a particular service or product to see if it’s worth investing your money in, you look for recommendations. Right? While not all websites appearing on Google are trying to sell something, even if you just want to launch a personal blog or a portfolio site, Google constantly runs tests to see if users like your site. Accordingly, it raises or lowers its ranking.
One of the considerations for boosting a site’s ranking is recommendations for your site on other authoritative websites. These recommendations don’t have to be a direct endorsement to visit your site, but rather articles and other content that include an embedded link leading to your site. The more of these external links you have from other trustworthy websites pointing users to your site, the more Google’s system understands that your site has left a good impression on administrators of other reliable sites, and therefore merits a higher ranking.
What Are Authoritative Websites?
Authoritative websites in Google’s eyes are prominent sites in their niche that have traffic—the more, the better—where a large number of visitors pass through daily. Additionally, certain types of sites are inherently considered trustworthy by Google, such as government sites, academic institutions, hospitals, and more. When such a site publishes an article containing a link to your website, Google treats this mention as an endorsement of your site and consequently boosts your ranking (to put it simply). Thus, according to Google’s algorithm, external links are recommendations from trusted entities to visit your site.
Rules for Building External Links That Work
1. Using Natural Anchor Text
Anchor text is the phrase or word in which the link is “embedded”. The phrase should naturally fit into the article’s context and convey, as clearly as possible, where the user will land after clicking the link. As part of the web design process, and specifically a proper website development process, links in content should be distinguished with a different color, underline, or bold text so the user can easily spot them, find them useful, and click through to the destination page if interested.
2. Linking to a Natural Page on Your Website
For an external link to work optimally, it’s advisable to choose a new and highly relevant destination page on your site that matches the article’s topic. Why is this beneficial?
- When the publishing dates of both articles are close together, it creates a more natural impression on Google.
- A topical match between the two articles strengthens the link and its perceived quality in Google’s eyes.
Note – Another great option is to link to the homepage – in most cases, this is also my recommendation.
3. Matching Link Style to the Publishing Site
In most cases, it is common practice to use anchor text—a specific phrase within the article formatted as a link. However, on certain types of sites, it is better to use the natural format of a link, which is a naked URL without anchor text, such as: https://nirazo.co.il/
Such sites might include forums, where anchor text is not customary, as well as blog comments and similar platforms.
4. Adding Links on a Regular Basis
Your site might have plenty of high-quality external links from other websites, but Google also looks for “fresh” links to maintain your site’s high ranking over time. Therefore, when building a link profile, it’s important to refresh it with new guest posts every month!
On the other hand, you shouldn’t overdo it with too many links all at once, which could raise “unnatural” red flags with Google. Instead, aim to maintain a steady, consistent frequency aligned with your site’s popularity and relevance.
5. Updating Old Content to Add New Links
Actually, you don’t always have to write brand new articles. It is often enough to take an existing article on the publishing site and refresh it by adding at least one paragraph so a new link can be inserted, without replacing the entire article.
6. Choosing the Right Website to Publish Your Links
Although you can’t publish links on every site, it is crucial to choose a trustworthy site where all links are active and high-quality. If the link to your site appears on a website that doesn’t comply with Google’s quality guidelines, at best you won’t benefit from the link equity it could have passed; at worst, Google might interpret it as an attempt to manipulate rankings, putting your own site at risk.
Conclusion
I sincerely hope you now understand why building a quality link profile for your website is essential. However, it is important to note that the rules for building a quality backlink profile today did not exist in the past. In fact, Google understands how SEO experts think and regularly updates its guidelines and algorithms to ensure its system remains as reliable and effective as ever. Therefore, it is important to stay updated with Google’s latest announcements and best practices to build a link profile that truly improves your rankings in Google search results.
About the Author
Nir Azoulay, digital entrepreneur, holds a BA in Information Systems and Economics, SEO consultant and expert with over 10 years of experience building digital marketing strategies that deliver results.
