What Is Link Building for SEO & How to Get Quality Backlinks?

I am sure you have found out that link building is a known practice in SEO. You must have also learnt about its benefits and now want to get started with it. 

So that’s exactly what I am going to discuss today. Starting from the very basics of it, eventually discussing the intricate details. 

So let’s build SEO backlinks for your website. 

What is link building? 

Refer to the image you see above, in crux, that is link building. In detail, link building is the activity of getting links from different website pages, to your pages. 

Every page, you get a link from, is in a way endorsing your page in front of Google. 

Why? 

Because you need to please Google and its PageRank algorithm. This algorithm decides which pages are going to rank in the search results based on multiple factors, one of which is link building. 

“One of several factors that we use to help determine this is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content. This has often proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted. Aggregated feedback from our Search quality evaluation process is used to further refine how our systems discern the quality of information.”

 - Google

Clearly, link building is a value adding activity to help you rank your content and website pages. 

Types of SEO link building 

There are two types of link building in SEO: 

• Internal link building - When you give a link to your own website pages. 
• External link building - When you get a link for your website from a different website’s page. 

Both are important at their individual positions, but today we are going to discuss external link building. Its benefits, best practices, and how to implement it. 

Link building importance for SEO 

SEO backlinks that you receive from external websites are extremely crucial because Google gives a huge importance to them. 

These links can earn you validation from Google and with that comes many other SEO benefits which can make or break your business. Those benefits are as follows:

• Higher authority - your website’s authority aka reputation improves in the eyes of Google. 
• Better rankings - with improved authority, your page rankings improve as well because Google trusts you more.  
• More traffic - better rankings are followed by increased traffic. Increase in traffic volume on your transactional pages can result in an increased number of leads too. 
• Increased chances to rank in AI overviews - AI overviews are the new addition to Google’s search result page and they pick information from trustable sites aka sites with good authority. 

Kind of link building practices in the market

One thing about SEO and the link building market is that it might seem saturated from the surface but the reality is quite the opposite. 

The market is saturated with people selling you cheap link building schemes and packages. But there are very few service providers who will offer you quality link building that adds value. 

We are going to discuss both the practices, and also what kind of backlinks to buy, and whatnot. 

Black hat link building - Not recommended

Black hat link building refers to the practice, where link building in SEO is done through unethical practices. 

It has ‘black’ in its name because it can quite literally get your website blacklisted by Google as per their link spam policies. 

Here are a few black hat link building activities that I (as an SEO professional working in the industry for 5 years) do not recommend. 

If you are being sold any of the following website link building methods, then you need to stop indulging with them before Google penalizes your website. 

Links from PBNs 

PBNs are public blog network sites which are created to get backlinks to one main business or capital generating website. 

This is done by buying multiple domains and hosting them on different platforms and servers. It is done to make it seem like these websites are not interrelated. 

PBNs are often misleading, and are considered a fraudulent practice in the backlink building industry. Here are a few factors to spot a PBN and avoid backlink building from them: 

• They often have high DR, but 0 traffic. 
• They are running multiple ads on their content which are completely irrelevant. 
• They seem like business websites but have no real businesses. 
• Their blogs or content are of poor quality filled with links. 
• The links in the content are forced and have incorrect anchor texts. 

Here is an example of one such PBN. 👇

Unnatural links 

Unnatural link building is when you build out of context links with an irrelevant anchor text for the link. For example, if you have a time tracking app, then building a link to an e-commerce website selling clothes will be unnatural. 

Here is an example of what an unnatural link looks like. 

Link schemes 

Link schemes refers to a spam attempt of manipulating Google to make your page rank better in SERPs. 

This scheme goes against everything that Google approves of and thus must be avoided. Few of the link schemes involve the following activities: 

• Paying directly to the websites for link building. 
• Automated link placements through bots. 
• Forced link placements in comments under content of other websites. 
• Leaving links obsessively in comments on social media sites. 
• Adding links excessively in headers and footers. 

Bulk link selling 

If someone is offering you link building for SEO in 100 Dollars, then run! And run even faster if they are offering to build hundreds and thousands of links in that amount. 

Quality link building is a tough task, and a lot goes in the background. It is a huge process starting from outreach to finally getting a link live. Due to this, it is a premium SEO service. 

So anyone offering to build links at such low prices will not just defraud you but also get your business banned by Google. 

White hat link building - Recommended

White hat link building is the practice of building backlinks ethically keeping Google’s guidelines in mind. 

The results you get from white hat link building are long term and they will definitely not get your site banned. 

Here is how to build links for SEO that add value to your business. 

Links from high authority website 

Do link building from websites which have both high authority and traffic. The higher the authority of the backlinking website, the more authority will be passed onto your website. 

One such website is Zapier. 

Link building from such websites won’t be easy as they do not indulge in black hat practices. But you can make it happen with the best link building practices or by opting for the best link building services in the market. 

These service providers have multiple contacts and they build only organic links for your website, while you pay them for their services. 

Links placed higher up in the content 

Even if your link is editorially placed, you do not want it to be placed in the conclusion of the content. 

Why? Because as per a Google patent, the likelihood of how much authority is passed to the website, might depend upon how many times a link has been clicked by the user. 

And how many users do you think will go till the conclusion and then also click on your link? 

Very few! You do not want that, thus, try to get your link placed higher up in the content. 

Links with accurate anchor texts 

Anchor texts are the texts you add your links to for instance in the following image - “content writing tools” is the anchor text. 

As per Google’s best practices for link building, it emphasizes on the precision and descriptiveness of the anchor text. 

It also asks you to refrain from adding links to generic texts like ‘read more’, ‘click here’, etc, as you can checkout here 👇

So during quality link building, make it a point to have anchor text which are: 

• meaningful 
• precise
• in sync with the link you added 
• relevant to the content around
• and must make sense if read individually 

Here is an example of good anchor text from ZeroAdo’s blog on SaaS marketing metrics. 

Links placed on relevant website 

Good quality link building happens from websites which are in your niche, and related to it. Always prioritize getting a quality link from a website in your industry. 

For instance, if you have an e-commerce website for home decor, then getting a link from an interior design service would be relevant. 

While, a link from one of the SaaS companies would be out of context and also irrelevant. 

Links from quality website 

Quality of the websites is one of the most important factors to consider for link building in SEO. 

No matter how high the DR of a website is, always vet the website’s quality before link building from them. 

The characteristic of a quality websites are the following: 

• It has high authority. 
• Along with authority, it has good traffic too. 
• It is a business website that sells a product or service. 
• It has dedicated resources like blogs and e-books. 
• There is a valid contact and about us page. 
• There are no extra ads running for any other businesses. 
• It is a niche website, with topical authority on the topic of their business. 
• Even if it is a media website, then as well, the above checks must be taken care of. 

ClickUp is an example of a good quality website. 

Links placed contextually 

Along with the anchor text and link placement, another thing of importance in SEO backlink building is the context of the content in which you are placing the link. 

Your link will be value adding only if it has been placed in the right context. A quality link fits within the content like a piece of the puzzle. 

It should not feel out of place and it should be contextually or editorially added to the content. 

For instance, checkout the following link. 

Do follow link 

You want all your backlinks to be ‘do follow’. A do follow backlink means that the source giving you link, trusts your website. 

There is no dedicated attribute for do follow. You just need to ensure that a ‘no follow’ attribute is not there for your backlink. 

Common techniques for SEO link building

There are multiple ways to do link building, there are several techniques in the market as listed below. 

Ask for links

You can ask for links for your website in the form of A-B-C exchange or you can email the editors to add your links at the relevant places. 

Add links 

Adding links is when you go to a website, and add links there manually yourself. You can do so on directories and social media platforms. 

Earn links 

Earn links by creating top quality SEO content that not only ranks but also gets you free links built to it. 

Buy links 

Another way of building backlinks is through buying them. You can buy links from several websites ethically by getting a sponsored attribute added to those links in the backend. 

Tried and tested tips for website link building 

Link building requires effort and a lot of patience, it doesn't happen in a day since there are too many parties involved and there are a lot of steps involved as well. 

So to build quality links, you need tried and tested tips for yourself. Some of which I have listed below. 

Email outreach

In email outreach you reach out to the editor or writer of a website to ask them if they are interested in link exchange. Here is how the process goes: 

• Find the websites you ended links from. 
• Find out the managing person - the editor, or the writer. 
• Reach out to them through email offering link exchange if they are interested. 
• Follow up on them, in case there is no response. 
• Negotiate for the links you need for your website. 
• Finalize a deal and get links for your website. 

Here is an example of email outreach from Unrola team members for reference. 

Leverage your competitor’s link profile 

If you are unaware where to do link building from then your competitors can act as your link guides. 

There are several SaaS tools out there that can help you find out all the links of your competitors. Here is how you can use your competitor’s links to do link building for your website. 

• Find out all their links with tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. 
• Filter to get the list of their best links. 
• Approach the websites and editors of those best links to get a link for yourself as well. 
• Use the email outreach approach of rit, and get backlinks of the same quality as your competitors. 

Keep updating your lost and broken links and steal your competitor’s lost links

Broken and lost are the ones that point towards a dead or non-existent page or due to some reason the link is not accessible. 

These links need to be updated as soon as possible to not lose a credible link of yours. So do so, you can conduct regular audits and retrieve any lost or broken links. 

Not just yours but also conduct an audit of your competitors’ links on a regular basis. During that, if you come across any lost links then you can utilize the opportunity to replace it with your links. 

Here is how you can do link building by stealing your competitor’s links: 

• Find out their lost links. 
• Reach out to the source of those lost links. 
• Ask the editors to replace your competitor's link with an equally relevant link from your website. 

This way you will build one extra link for yourself and also remove one link from your competitor’s profile. 

Guest posts 

Guest posts are the articles and blog pieces that you write for a website as guest author in return of a backlink from them. 

Guest posts are a great solution to building links in bulk for multiple websites as you can get as many as 10 links from one guest post. 

Here is an example of a guest post from ZeroAdo’s Crew. 👇

Through the above guest post we could get 3 links for one of our client MyOperator and one of them was even placed within the introduction. 

Become a source for media websites 

A link from Forbes for your business will add huge value to your link building profile. However, getting links from media sites like Forbes and New York Times is not easy but it is not impossible either. 

You can get backlinks from these media sites by offering to be a trusted source for them. For instance, if you are an expert on sales, and you also have a business around it - then you can offer your statement to add more credibility to their article. 

In return you can get a link for your business as seen below, where Angel Gregorio got her business link by contributing to Forbes’ article. 

Join link-building communities 

There are several link building communities on platforms like LinkedIn and slack. You can join them to collaborate with people in these communities. 

The benefit of such communities is that everyone is proactive here and if you build good relationships, then you can accelerate your link building process as well. 

Create linkable assets 

Linkable assets are those assets which can be leveraged by others as well in their work or business processes. For instance, blog calendars and to-do notes lists are some of the linkable assets. 

Such assets have high chances of being referred within content pieces of another and thus, end up earning you quality backlinks. 

At ZeroAdo as well we have such assets, for example our SEO blog template. You can refer to it or use it for writing your blogs too. 

Find unlinked business mentions 

There is a possibility that someday someone mentioned your business in their content. But while referring to it they did not give a link to your website. 

You can find these unlinked mentions and ask them to link to your website. 

The easiest way to find these mentions are through search operators. 

Search operators are symbols and commands to the search engine that can filter your search results. 

Here is how you can find your unlinked brand mentions. 

“Business name/any relevant term to your business”

Spread your knowledge around 

This is one of the creative ways of building links. Instead of going the traditional route of asking for links or doing link exchange you can earn a link by spreading knowledge around. 

What I mean by that is to contribute to articles as subject matter experts and earn your business a solid link through that. 

Here is an example of the same from our (ZeroAdo’s) Founder and CEO, Vishnu Goyal. He left a tip for budding businesses and that way we were able to share our expertise and also get a link in return. 

Link building for business building 

With the changing dynamics of SEO and the arrival of AI, one thing has become clear that is - link building is more important than ever today. It is not me who is saying this, but multiple guidelines from Google have indicated the same. 

Quality backlinks help you build authority. Higher authority helps in ranking your website higher as well, which is exactly what we want. 

But, it is also evident that building links for SEO is not going to be an easy task either. But fret not! ZeroAdo got you covered.

We can out link building on autopilot mode for your business that too at a smart pricing. Contact us today to build quality links for your website.