When you start link building for a website, it is because you need influence and respect. This sounds a bit out there but it is exactly what I’m saying.

So let’s clear out what a link really is. A link is an HTML tag that is a hypertext that refers to another website. All links for the exact same protocol, So the ones that you see on Facebook linking to other people’s sites are the same ones that you see on any other website, all links are the same type of element, although they can do different things through scripting languages this is not even really links anymore but more so buttons handle Javascript which aren’t actual links.

Why does Link Building Matter, specifically?

Search engines such as Google Yahoo and Bing will count the number of links that are linking to your site, as well as the “power” of them, to determine how authority your site is within the whole internet and your niche. Now there are other factors as well, especially nowadays social media is huge and that is also an extension of external links as every social media post you make should link back to your website.

The power of link building

But, I digress. Links are extremely important and as I said the power of a link is more important inarguably then the amount of them. Having 1 million backlinks is great, but if they are all from random websites that all that were registered in the past year, or all from the same domain, well, search engines can figure that out. They are aware of the strength of every site on the Internet and where it fits in on a spider-like node system. The closer you are to the center in the system, the more respect you have.

The nuances of the power of link building

If you have 1 million Bad links nowhere near the center of the internet (the center being the #1 site on the net, which is Google) and you could never get to the center because you don’t have any links getting you near the center, hypothetically. Now conversely, if you had a backlink on something like Wikipedia.org on their homepage, or Google.com or homepage or any extremely busy website, you would basically fly up rankings. Why is this? Think about it. Google homepage has no links on it right now but it is the most visited page and linked to on the Internet. So if you became the sole link on the most visited page on the Internet, by the search engine algorithms Power, respect whatever you would like to call the algorithm but if you are the only link on the most powerful website in the world than you are now the second most powerful essentially or approximate.

Now you might be asking what exactly goes in the strength of these links? The answer is of course a myriad of things but it’s not impossible to track. Let’s start with what we were talking about earlier, domain authority. Google has the highest domain authority that’s because people have linked to them the most on the Internet. It’s a pretty simple concept, the more unique powerful links you have, the more that the search engines will see you as powerful. This of course works in ratios. Hence me saying that 1 million powerful links are not worth very much because they are not “sponsored” by anything powerful so therefore they’re not sponsoring you with anything powerful besides just a plus one, but that’s a very small plus one

Versus the example of being the only link on Google’s front page, how many links there are on the net that link to Google? Certainly, billions so you would get billions of “points of respect” just by being that one single link.

Relevancy in link building’s importance

Links also, work with relevancy very well. When building links you want to be building them organically, there is a thin line between building links as spam and building links organically to grow your network, this is where a bit of stigma comes into the world of links. As long as you know you were honest in building your links and following the user agreement of the website, as well as adding to the conversation and or being productive or constructive, and example would be helping someone out on message board with their homework and leaving a link to your website in the post. This is an organic backlink. These are the type of backlinks that you want to have linked to your webpage.

You can go online and buy 1 million spam backlinks for just a couple dollars. But the price speaks for itself in that case. Not only is this not effective but it is bad for you. Google can tell when you are trying to game the system. So if you have a very large amount of backlinks for no reason overnight, they can tell. And they can even take you out of the search engine because of it.

Organic links are important

So, you want to be using quality links when building the back and portfolio of your website. This means that it is great to use all social media profiles, and link to your main site in them. Then every time you’re active on these social networks it is important to leave a backlink back to your site. Because your activity links to your profile which links to your site. This is only one facet of one building though. You should always be diversifying your profile, whether it’s through video links, press releases. Etc, variety is always key in links.