Link building basics

Do Cheaters Ever Prosper with Google? Link Building Basics.

Link building basics Amplifying content is the fourth installment of the Moz method and when it comes to link building basics, cheaters never prosper. Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own, but you can’t trick Google into ranking your page higher if you don’t play by the rules. The first step in becoming successful with amplifying content and link building is understanding the basics, so here are the definitions you need to know.

External Links 

These are thesame thing as backlinks or inbound links. External links serve as “endorsements” to your site because they appear when other sites link to your content. If someone writes a blog post about the best camping gear to invest in and links to one of your product pages, this would be an external link. The more external links your site accumulates, the better your credibility will be in the marketplace. However, links included in a digital ad or in a native article, do not count.

Domain Authority

 The search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank. Domain authority is calculated by evaluating the quality and quantity of external links to your site. Scored on a scale of 1 to 100. By having high domain authority, other sites are more likely to backlink to your content or trust your credibility.

Page Authority

A ranking score developed by Moz that will predict how well a specific page on your site will rank. This score is calculated by evaluating the quality and quantity of both external and internal links to your page. This metric is a great for internal measurement and is also scored on a scale of 1 to 100.

Anchor Text 

The words used in a URL, for example, the  full or naked URL for warby parker is www.warbyparker.com. The anchor text would just be warbyparker.

Followed Links 

Links – for example in an newspaper or magazine article – are followed link. These links are crawled and indexed by the search engine and pass link equity to the destination page. Followed links serve as an endorsement of the linked page and look like this on the backend. http://www.sweeneypr.com/>Link Text

No Follow Links

Anytime advertising is involved, Google asks that the link is listed as a no follow. Links are crawled and indexed by the search engine and do not pass link equity to the destination page. No follow links do not endorse linked page and look like on the backend, http://www.sweeneypr.com/”rel+”nofollow”>Link Text. No follow links are not necessarily bad because they are still driving traffic to your site. However, they do not contribute to domain authority.

By understanding the basics, you can take your content to the next level. Domain and page authority, along with link building, have a direct association with the probability that your content will rank high. And by understanding links and URL features, you can utilize SEO best practices to amplify your content. Lastly, instead of looking for tricks you can play on Google, invest your time in aligning your SEO processes. Your pages need to be optimized for target keywords and mapped pages on your site, but also in your internal links, anchor text and content.

Did you miss a blog from our Moz SEO boot camp? Here’s everything you need to catch up:

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