Link building is an ongoing SEO tactic that takes time and effort to deliver the desired results. You need to consistently work on enhancing your website’s link profile and conduct regular link audits to ensure you only have high-quality backlinks.
Given the time and effort it takes, it’s no wonder you’re pondering whether it’s worth the effort.
Well, the short answer is “Yes.”
Still, if you need more convincing, read this post to learn the various benefits of building backlinks for your website. But first, let’s understand what link building entails.
What is Link Building?
Link building is an SEO tactic that involves acquiring backlinks to your website from authoritative websites in your niche to boost your search rankings and authority.
You can do this by guest posting on other sites, reclaiming broken links, participating in expert roundups, and using other link building strategies.
When several authoritative websites link to yours, they give their vote of confidence in your website and content. This sends positive trust signals to Google and improves your chances of ranking high on Google SERPs.
But for this strategy to be effective, you must build high-quality, contextually relevant, dofollow links from authoritative websites.
Here’s an illustration showing the qualities of a good backlink:
Now that you have the basics clear, let’s discuss why backlinks are so beneficial for SEO.
What are the Top Advantages of Link Building?
Link building is one of the key off-page SEO strategies and for good reason—it works. Here’s an extensive list of benefits of link building, both the obvious ones and the lesser-known ones:
1. Enhances page and domain authority
Simply put, the more relevant dofollow links a page or website gets from relevant authoritative sources, the more credible it looks to search engines.
When a website with high domain authority links to your website using dofollow links, every link passes some link juice.
Think of it as a trusted person vouching for you and using their reputation to do so. They’re saying that you can be trusted and pass a part of their reputation to you. That’s exactly what link juice is.
The image below illustrates the concept of how dofollow links pass link juice or authority.
When you have a solid backlink profile with high-quality links from multiple referring domains, your website’s authority and trust get a boost. The pages that get the most high-quality backlinks get the maximum boost.
2. Drives referral traffic
The most direct benefit of link building is an increase in referral traffic. By earning backlinks from websites with a high volume of monthly traffic, you get access to their audience.
Even if a small portion of a website’s visitors click on a link and visit your website, your referral traffic increases. This is great for your website’s SEO performance and can lead to more conversions if you manage to nurture these potential leads and engage them further.
3. Improves SERP rankings
As explained earlier, backlinks from authoritative websites cast their vote of confidence in your favor and help boost your website’s authority.
Google uses this as one of its ranking factors. If you have contextually relevant backlinks from various websites in your niche, Google will trust your website more. This, in turn, helps improve your chances of ranking higher on Google SERPs.
A Backlinko study found a direct correlation between the number of backlinks and SERP rankings.
Source
The same study also shows that pages with more referring domains tend to rank higher on Google SERPs. This means that getting backlinks from multiple sources is better than getting multiple backlinks from the same source.
4. Establishes your expertise in the industry
When authoritative websites link to resources on your website on a specific topic, it helps build topical authority and establishes expertise.
Let’s say you are a digital marketer specializing in sales funnels. If enough authoritative websites link to your content on building or optimizing sales funnels, it establishes your authority on the topic.
The higher the domain authority of the referring domain, the greater the value it passes.
5. Leads to higher conversion rates
When people visit your website on a recommendation from a website they trust, they are more likely to engage with your content. They’re more likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
By strategically acquiring backlinks for your product or service pages, you can get more leads and sales conversions.
Check out this article recommending various accounting software solutions for businesses. It uses clear CTA buttons for each tool it recommends.
Anyone clicking on the big blue buttons expects to learn more about a tool and make a purchase.
6. Helps build industry relationships
Link building often requires reaching out to editors and publishers of other niche websites. It helps you build ongoing working relationships with people in your domain.
Mutually beneficial link building can be done in two ways—reciprocal or non-reciprocal.
For reciprocal link building, you develop a relationship with another website’s editor and give contextually relevant links to each other’s websites.
For an ABC link exchange, you work with a group of websites that link to each other in a relevant way, without direct reciprocity. In either case, you will end up forming industry connections and building a network that will be beneficial to you in the long run.
Even with other link building strategies like claiming unlinked mentions or publishing guest posts, you will need to communicate with other websites’ editors.
You get the gist, right? This is an inevitable, yet lesser-known advantage of link building that very few people capitalize on.
Link building can’t be done in silos and if you understand that and use the networking opportunity, you’ll have a distinct advantage over your competitors.
7. Reduces bounce rate
Directing readers of a website to related resources on yours using relevant anchor texts increases their chances of engaging with your content.
When someone intentionally clicks on a link to check out a piece of content, they are likely to read it through and stay on the page longer. If you use internal linking right, you can even compel them to engage with other relevant content pieces on your website.
Here’s an example of an article that links to an external resource using the anchor text, “marketing virtual assistant.” Anyone who clicks on that link expects to find more information on such assistants and maybe even desires to find one for their business.
With such contextually relevant backlinks to your content, you will likely be able to generate more engagement. And since people will stay on your website longer, your website’s performance metrics like dwell time will improve.
Ready to Realize the Benefits of Link Building in 2024?
There you have it—seven of the most important benefits of link building. Hopefully, you’re convinced of its value and ready to start building your website’s link profile.
Don’t have the in-house resources to dedicate to your link building efforts?
Don’t worry, we can help. Use our expert link building services to get high-quality backlinks with minimal effort. This is a cost-effective way to quickly boost your link profile while staying within your budget.
Start building backlinks to improve your search visibility, domain authority, and website rankings today. Good luck!
