The Importance of External Links and How to Build Them

What is an External Link?

An external link is a link on a website that points at an external domain. An example of this would be if your website was offering content on a certain subject and you included a link to another website that could offer additional information. You may also be aware of something called an internal link. The difference between an external link and an internal link is that an external link points to another domain or website, while an internal link points to another page within your own website. It has been proven for sometime now that external links pass a lot more “link juice” or ranking power than internal links.

Why Are External Links Important?

A lot of search engine optimization experts are in agreement that external links are the most important source of ranking power. The number of high quality external links you have pointing to your website have a major impact on where your website ranks on search engines. In fact a search engine ranking factor survey has shown that getting external links is the single most important objective for attaining high rankings. This is because major search engines like Google consider external links as third-party votes that your website contains quality content. For sometime now there has been a direct correlation between the number of high quality external links a website has pointing to it, and where it ranks on search engines.

Not All External Links Are Created Equal

While obtaining external links pointing to your site is important quantity does not outweigh quality. Having a whole bunch of satellite sites, or sites with no visitors or authority pointing external links to your site won’t have much, if any positive effect on your website’s search engine rankings. To receive a positive outcome from external links on your website’s search engine rankings you need to focus on attaining high quality links.

Let’s go over what makes an external link a high quality link as per moz.com:

• The trustworthiness of the linking domain
• The popularity of the linking page
• The relevancy of the content between the source page and the target page
• The anchor text used in the link
• The number of links to the same page on the source page
• The number of root domains that link to the target page
• The amount of variations that are used as anchor text to links to the target page
• The ownership relationship between the source and target domains

There is a big difference in receiving a link from an unpopular local business listing directory and the New York Times. The more authoritative or popular the website you are receiving the external link from the larger the impact it will have on your SEO.

How to Build External Links

Create Great Content

The most natural way to ensure that your website is a place worth linking to is to create great content that users want to read. If you are providing useful, well-written content that people like then they will link to it. This is definitely the simplest method and the method that you are in the most control of when trying to build external links to your website.

Reach Out

Another great way to build external link is to reach out to other websites. An effective way to start is by reaching out to organizations that you already have a relationship with. If you have events or organizations you sponsor ask them for a link to your website, it also doesn’t hurt to offer them a link to their website in return.

Another effective method of building links through outreach is reaching out to authoritative websites that have similar content to yours. Try to find websites with users that could benefit from the content your website provides. For example if you create content for recipes using peanut butter, reaching out to peanut butter manufacturers would be a great way to build external links.

Guest Blogging

You may have seen guest blogs when visiting your favourite website. This is when a content creator from a certain organization or website will create original content for another website’s blog. Whenever someone creates a guest blog they will include a link back to their website where users can find similar content. Get in contact with people who run websites with similar content to yours and ask if you can create a guest blog for them.

Konstruct Interactive Can Help

If you are having trouble building external links to your website then the SEO experts at Konstruct can help your business. We have experienced SEO professionals that have built successful link building campaigns for a variety of clients. We have the experience and know-how to figure out which link build strategies will be effective for your business. For more information on our link building services, or if you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact us.