Link Building Guide (Backlinks)

What is a high-quality link?

1. The linking site is trustworthy. The linking website should be considered trustworthy in the eyes of search engines. A trustworthy site can be defined as one that appears at the top of search results in its own field. The trustworthiness of websites can also be evaluated using PA and DA metrics.
2. The link is popular. Other websites also link to the same resource.
3. The link comes from a source that deals with the same topics as your website. The link should preferably come from a site that writes about the same subject as your own website. For example, a restaurant would benefit from getting links from sites that feature restaurant reviews.
4. The link is in text form. The highest quality link is always a normal text link and not, for example, an image.
5. The anchor text contains the desired keyword. The link’s anchor text includes the word you want to rank for in search results. Here is an example for the anchor text ”plumbing tampere” <a href=”www.putkipate.fi/putkityot-tampere”>Plumbing Tampere</a>
6. The link is in the content of the article or page. The quality of the link is affected when it is placed within the page content and not, for example, in the header or footer.
7. The linking website does not have thousands of other links. The impact of link lists on search engine visibility is almost non-existent.
8. (The link generates visitors. Many claim that visitors must come through the link

Rel=nofollow

The site administrator can, if desired, add a rel=nofollow code snippet to the link for search engines to read. The code asks the search engine not to follow (i.e. not to index) this link. These links are unlikely to affect your site’s search engine visibility.

Rel=nofollow is often used on sites where users can generate content themselves. The code is often used to prevent link spamming. Below is a list of links that use the rel=nofollow tag on all of their links.

1. Paid advertisements. Google, Facebook and other paid ads.
2. Popular discussion forums. The majority of discussion forums use rel=nofollow code, but not nearly all of them.
3. Commenting. It would be great to get links by commenting on Helsingin Sanomat or Iltasanomat articles, but unfortunately these links are also worthless. However, there is a handful of Finnish news sites that do not use rel=nofollow code in their comment sections.
4. Social media. Almost all social media links contain the rel=nofollow code. However, don’t stop using social media! Social media visibility still affects your search engine visibility.

You can test whether a site’s links contain the rel=nofollow tag, for example, with the MozBar extension (green = does not contain, red = contains).

A simple link building strategy

1. Create high-quality content and make your pages easy to share. The easiest links in the world are those that appear naturally. Create content that others will share for you on the internet.
2. Ask your partners to link to your site. One of the easiest ways to get quality links is to ask for them from familiar parties.
3. Do you own several websites yourself? Link them to each other. However, make sure that the sites cover the same topic area.
4. Give a customer reference. You have surely ordered a service at some point? Give this company a customer reference and ask them to link to your site. It is a Win-Win situation.
5. Write guest posts for blogs and websites. Ask for permission to write a guest post or quote for a blog related to your field. Or your own external blog, for example on the puheenvuoro.uusisuomi.fi site
6. Participate in discussions. In the previous (rel=nofollow) point, I explained how some discussion forums and comment sections contain code that prevents the link from working. However, not all sites have this code set. See the list below.
7. Research what links your competitors have and whether you could get these links yourself? There are many tools for this, but one of the easiest is perhaps Moz’s Open Site Explorer