Websites have been slaughtered lately with the algorithm updates by Google.

In particular, Google made it very clear in the March 2024 update that they were not tolerating AI content that was intended to manipulate search engines – human curated or not.

Along with the link spam update rolling out in a few months.

Now chances are – you probably already know what link building is.

It’s among the key drivers of organic traffic to any website. In fact – according to statistics by uSERP, 67.5% of website SEOs believe that link building has a huge impact on their search engine rankings.

But then thing is, you really need to do it right.

While link-building is really as simple as having other websites link back to your site, many people fall into the trap (whether out of ignorance or laziness) of spammy and low-quality link-building strategies. This could be detrimental to your online business as users continue to choose relevant, authentic, and quality content. 

So if you’re doing anything less than building relevant, high-quality links, then know that the Google algorithm will come your way in June 2024. They are seriously cracking the whip and penalising sites for low-quality link-building techniques.

That’s why I’ll be breaking down the importance of link building and how you can start to building genuine links in 2024.

Let’s get started.

So, What is Link Building?

Link building is a strategy that involves acquiring high-quality links from other websites to your site.

To understand link building, we must first define a “link.” Also known as a backlink or hyperlink, a link connects two sites for easier navigation. 

Links can be in the form of texts or images. The web page or site it directs you to is usually relevant to the text or image. The text that contains the link to another web page is referred to as the anchor text.

During the link-building process, you create and increase the number of inbound links to your site.

Why is Link Building important?

Search engines use backlinks to discover new web pages to recommend on their result pages. Your backlinks also determine where your website ranks on the search results. 

Think of backlinks as votes of confidence for your online business. Search engine algorithms view backlinks as a measure of your site’s authority. The more recommendations your site has through backlinks, the more trustworthy your business is in the online space.

As I mentioned earlier, quality link building involves more than posting generic backlinks to your site everywhere online. Not all links are good links, and more does not always mean better (see here for how many backlinks you really need).

In addition to backlinks, Google and other search engines consider many other factors when crawling your website.

Some of these factors include the authority of the site, the relevance of the link and anchor text.

For example, let’s say your business is in the AI chatbot niche. A good link would be: 

• From a high Domain Rating (DR) site in the chatbot space.
• The link would be placed in a relevant article like “2024 chatbot trends”, and
• The anchor text would semantically relate to the linked article itself. 

Quality link building, also known as white-hat link building, involves placing backlinks to your website only when it’s relevant and helpful to the user. 

As such, you need to ask yourself the following questions when you’re link-building for your site:

• How authoritative is the website you’re placing your link in? Is the site relevant to the niche?
• Does the article where you place your link cover the same topic as your site?
• Is the site itself a high-quality site you’d be proud to be featured in? I call this the common sense check since you definitely have sites hacking the authority game with really bad sites.

Link building remains one of the biggest strategies in search engine optimization. Quality backlinks could make a difference in helping your site rank ahead of your business competitors.

It’s also a key strategy now more than ever as Google tries to differentiate a “quality site” in a world full of spammy AI-generated content.

So, what are the main benefits of link building?

4 Benefits of Link Building

Now that you understand why link building is important, let’s look at some of its main benefits. Link building can:

1. Boost your ranking on search engines
2. Bring more organic traffic
3. Build brand credibility
4. Minimize bounce rates

1. Boost Your Ranking on Search engines

As I mentioned, backlinks are some of the essential factors that determine your rankings on search engine result pages. In fact, they’re among Google’s top 3 ranking factors.

You might have some of the most valuable web pages online, but your site won’t rank on search engines without high-quality backlinks.

Yes, it’s possible that if you have valuable and relevant information, then other site owners will eventually find your site and link back to your web pages. 

But it’s 2024 and this simply won’t work unless people already know your website. Either way, you’ll still need to direct great effort into link building before you get to that point.

Keep in mind that most people start their online searches on search engines. In addition, many of them only click on the first three results. You definitely want your web page to be among these three sites.

And I say this from experience. Let’s take my site for example.

As you can see, there is a direct correlation between my referring domains (unique site links) and the increase in my organic keyword rankings.

Link building is absolutely critical to SEO. 

And of course, a boost in rankings also results in…

2. More Web Traffic

Once your site ranks higher on search engines, you get more organic and referral traffic. According to Ahrefs, a staggering 90.93% of websites don’t get any traffic from Google mainly because they have no backlinks. 

Besides, building links on relevant web pages means more clicks to your site. If the sites linking to yours are authoritative in their field, chances are that the users clicking are relevant as well. 

So, not only are you getting more traffic from search engines to your site, but also generating more quality leads and increasing your chances of closing a sale.

In this scenario, we can see that the value of building links isn’t only in generating referral traffic. Quality external links can get you more customers and clients. That’s the ultimate goal for any business.

Taking it back to my site as an example, you can see a correlation between links and organic traffic.

When combined with a well-thought-out content marketing strategy – this traffic has definitely resulted in many content and SEO leads, as well as affiliate commissions.  

And even if you don’t immediately get similar results, the important thing is that you have increased the reputation of your personal brand. Let’s take a look at what that can give you. 

3. Builds Brand Credibility

As a business owner, you want your brand to have a good reputation and be trusted by people and potential leads. Link building can help you become a thought leader in your niche.

Quality link-building strategies, such as using HARO or conducting guest post and blogger outreach, will have your site’s external links on many authority websites. This will make your target audience view your brand as a go-to site for whatever goods or services they’re looking for, or for relevant industry knowledge.

Guest post outreach is an effective strategy to increase your online reputation and authority. Think about it; if an authority website trusts you enough to provide content for their audience, then you probably have a big reputation. This can be a huge benefit for you in the future.

As an authority in your industry, you become the brand that is at the forefront of conversations. 

4. Minimize Bounce Rates

Bounce rate in the online world refers to single-page sessions. These are the number of users who visit one of your web pages from search engines and leave without looking at anything else on your site.

A link-building strategy doesn’t only involve inbound links from other websites. 42% of the world’s SEOs spend their time equally on both external and internal link building. 

Using internal links too will make your traffic become more organic since your visitors will also visit other web pages on your website.

In addition, internal links make it easier for your users to navigate your site. Easier navigation means they stay on your site for longer and minimize the bounce rate.

Launch Your Link-Building Strategy

One major mistake businesses make is not viewing link building with the seriousness it deserves. This SEO strategy has always been an essential aspect of SEO, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon.

While it might be tempting to get spammy and low-quality links to your site, keep in mind that Google prioritizes quality and relevance over everything else. There are many tools that can help you with building links – but there is no real shortcut to ranking.

And, of course, make sure that along with quality links, you are also producing quality content. Your site will thrive with both quality links and quality content (that isn’t AI-generated to manipulate search engine).

That’s the real key to a successful SEO strategy. And it’s not like this is a recent thing either – Google has always had 1 mission, and that is to provide users with the most helpful answer. If you can stay aligned with Google’s goal, you shouldn’t have too much of an issue.

Good luck!

Jessica