You’re here because you need links. You’ve likely heard that links (or backlinks) are what helps your website to rank higher in Google. And you need to learn how to build them. Well… we (Ahrefs) have been building tools for professional link builders for 10+ years now. So it would be fair to say that we know a thing or two about link building. In this guide, we have collected our best bits of knowledge and tried to explain all the intricacies of link building in simple terms so that you could easily put our advice to action. But before we dive in, here are just a few quick teasers insights to get things going: If you have a brand-new website, it’s best to kick things off by building a few dozen foundational links.
People link to pages that are interesting and useful
I obviously oversimplified things quite a bit. Ranking #1 in Google is a lot more nuanced than just getting more links, because links aren’t the only ranking signal that Google uses. But it’s a very strong signal nevertheless, and it has a very direct influence on your rankings. So what is link building, and how do you do it? Link building is the process of getting other websites to top industry data link to pages on your website. Its purpose is to boost the “authority” of your pages in the eyes of Google so that these pages rank higher and bring more search traffic. Let’s get a bit deeper into that.
Adding links
This is when you go to a website that doesn’t belong to you and manually place your link there. The most common tactics that fit into this category are: Social profiles creation. Business directory Mailing Lead submissions. Review site listings. Posting to forums, communities, and Q&A sites. Building links via those tactics is very easy to do. And for that exact reason, such links tend to have little to no value in the eyes of Google. Other than that, these kinds of links barely give you any competitive edge. If you can go to a website and manually place your link there, so can your competitors. And yet, this group of link building tactics should not be ignored completely. In fact, some professional link builders prefer to start with these kinds of links when they’re working with a brand-new website.