What is Link Building?

Link Building is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique wherein websites solicit backlinks from quality websites, especially websites on similar topics, to increase their authority score. Link building helps a website become more prominent in the web sphere. Incoming links from other sites act as votes of confidence towards the sites content/services, improving their ranking in search results. Getting a mention with a link from trusted and established websites is a sure shot way of increasing visitors to site and building brand awareness. 

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How does Link Building affect SEO?

While search engine algorithms are oft evolving and changing the factors behind website rankings, quality backlinks remain a reliable way of ranking higher in search results. Backlinks are given heavy weightage by Googles algorithm as well as other search engines and effect the order of appearance of a website in Search Engine Result Pages(SERP). Sites with an extensive network of relevant backlinks get a better ranking than those with similar content but fewer backlinks. Google has time and again stressed on the importance of avoiding Blackhat techniques to game its algorithm. Haphazard backlinks from sites that have no relation to the topic of your site, links from spam pages, buying links in bulk on sites irrelevant to your subject, and all such practices will backfire and might earn a demotion in search results, and in some cases result in an outright ban. Links going out of your site might also be disconsidered as authority links. Buying and selling links is highly discouraged for this reason. Organic link building is encouraged, and rewarding in the long term as its a more sustainable way of maintaining high ranking search results. Two websites with similar content and services might be ranked differently based on the incoming links to their sites. Different ways of building up backlinks with Whitehat SEO techniques are:

1. Content creation and promotion: Using Social Media to build a user base and engaging with them regularly is a great way of building brand recognition and getting organic backlinks in their mentions.
2. Reviews, Promotions, and Contests.
3. Engaging with peers on forums, blogs, vlogs, links from friends and partners sites. 

Link juice varies with the brand recognition and popularity of a site. A backlink from Vogue will help a fashion blog much more than a backlink from another fashion blog in the same league. The more authoritative, established, and popular a site, the more weightage its link carries.