Why is Link Building Still Relevant in 2024?

In the modern age, business owners are building their websites to function as their digital storefronts. Customers and clients visit these websites to inquire, engage, and buy products and services. However, for website owners to earn viable leads, they must have the best practices to drive organic traffic to their websites.  Many website owners find it challenging to drive organic traffic to their websites. However, there are many ways to boost organic traffic, and link-building is one of the most strategic methods.  Once you understand the basics of link building and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, you will be on your way to earning that higher rank on search engines. If you’re wondering if link building still matters in 2024, you will ultimately find the answer here.

A Closer Look at Link Building

In simplest terms, link building is the strategy that involves obtaining links from other sites to your website. This can be done by creating valuable content, among other ways. This strategy aims to earn the support of external websites so you can tell search engines that you are producing great content that deserves referencing. Through link building, you can improve your rankings in search results. More than this, you can earn recognition, trustworthiness, and heavy organic traffic. That’s because as you gain high-quality backlinks, you can also boost your domain authority and eventually improve your ranking. 

What Does Google Say About Link Building?

For the past decade, Google has been saying that to rank, you should build links and write quality content. But if we take a quick look at search engine results pages (SERPs), we will realize that links are the most crucial ranking factor for websites. Well, content quality is essential. However, even an average article can outrank its well-written competing articles, if it has lots of links.  This is why there are many parasite websites in SERPs that are using their high domain authority to outrank everyone. You can see these websites only secure high-quality backlinks referencing their pages. Yet, they are still winning even without original and unique content written by experts, no topical authority, and don’t employ best SEO practices. Meanwhile, Google has been serious about detecting and penalizing websites participating in such shady link schemes. But the truth about link-building campaigns remains. They are crucial endeavors that modern website owners must focus on. 

Link-Building Strategies That Still Work in 2024

If you are looking for best practices in link building, here are some techniques that are relevant today.

1. Guest Blogging

Many would agree that guest blogging is one of the most natural ways to earn valuable backlinks and build relationships with other websites. As a guest blogging guru, you must continuously look for reputable websites and blogs that accept guest contributions within your niche.  With this technique, you will have to pitch your guest post ideas. To ace this step, you must focus on topics you are an expert in. More than that, select topics that align with your target blog’s audiences’ interests. Create high-value and high-quality articles that their audience would love to read. Build a routine around this, and you will secure backlinks to your own site and earn exposure to new audiences. 

2. Write Content That Resonates with Your Audience

Content is king. It is the core of your link-building strategy. When you write your articles, make sure your content commands attention. Don’t just settle with surface-level knowledge. Try to include valuable insights, relevant and relatable experiences, and other forms of content that connect to readers on a deeper level.  In addition, you should keep your audience hooked with your content. Use a style that keeps the reader’s attention until the end of your writing. You must be an adept storyteller with an excellent command of language.  These days, many users are more interested in conversational content, which comes across as more believable to readers. Most importantly, your content should be shareable. Besides using vivid language and thought-provoking questions, make sure your content is something your readers would love to discuss within their networks. This means you must also try to put together engaging visuals, striking statistics, and emotionally appealing ways of telling stories.

3. Identify and Reclaim Broken Links

Before becoming 404 error pages, they were once broken links. As a website owner, you should know that these broken links can be quickly addressed by simply removing or updating them. However, for those seeking backlinks, these can be opportunities to offer your content to website owners and finally earn a valuable backlink while helping fellow website owners fix their broken links.  You can easily find tools that detect broken links on websites relevant to your industry. However, the most challenging part is when you start reaching out to the owners of the pages with broken links. Before dropping them a message, make sure not to sound overly aggressive about earning your backlink. Make it a point that you are offering a suitable and valuable replacement for their broken link. 

4. Monitor Unlinked Mentions

As a website owner, it’s important that you remain active in monitoring unlinked mentions of your products, services, and brand. Yes, they can talk about you on their pages but still miss linking back to your site. Nonetheless, these unlinked mentions allow you to reach out to them. When reaching out, be polite and express your gratitude for the mention. These are non-negotiables. With these crucial primary steps, you will not sound so aggressive. After that, you can humbly ask them to link to your site. This is less challenging since the authors or website owners you are contacting already know your business. 

5. Produce Data-Driven Content

The web is so vast that it’s no longer difficult to find published surveys, research, and case studies. These references are valuable and reliable assets for link building. Through this data, you can provide insights that make you sound like an authority in your niche, making other websites want to link back to yours.  Besides just data, make sure to reference reputable professionals like journalists, scientists, and academicians who can substantiate and validate the content you’re trying to produce. 

6. Foster Organic Relationships

Keep in mind that link-building isn’t a one-way relationship. Make an effort to establish genuine connections with fellow website owners, influencers, and businesses within your niche. Reciprocate their efforts in communicating with you. Make time to converse with them, engage with their content, and even offer support by sharing their work on social media. 

Manual Link Building vs. Paid Links in 2024

If you are a new website wanting to be discovered, your effort should be focused on manual and natural link building. With manual link building, website owners should engage in outreach efforts to acquire links. Besides outreach efforts, this type of link-building can be done through relationship-building and strategic content creation. Compared to cheap paid links, manual link building centers on getting relevant and quality links from reliable and authoritative sources. These sources are audience-oriented when it comes to the content they share. They prioritize the interests of their target audience, so they consistently produce and publish valuable content.  Within SEO practices, cheap and paid links are flagged for violating Google’s guidelines due to their spammy nature. Some might think this “bad practice” is better than going through those long, tiring outreach efforts and strategic content creation, but the benefits of buying links are short-lived, and the consequences can be serious.  Keep in mind that if Google detects such link patterns, your website will be penalized, and your ranking will eventually drop as a consequence. Besides these, you might encounter more troublesome issues like Google ignoring your links, decreased credibility and reputation, difficulty recovering, and wasted money.  Those cheap links can also guide users to low-quality and irrelevant content. As a result, your website may suffer from poor user experience (UX). Bottom line here is that Google prioritizes websites that aim to provide relevant, helpful, and valuable content to users. If visitors are no longer clicking on your site because of poor UX, Google will likely remove your website from SERPs, as they are a sign that your content isn’t addressing the needs of your audience.

The Core of Manual Link Building

If you’re planning your strategy for manual link building, one of your primary goals should be producing helpful, original content. Continuously writing original content can set your site apart from your competitors.  Moreover, if you provide valuable information in your content, you can demonstrate expertise and authoritativeness, making you more visible in search. When you offer unique insights in your content, websites are likely to link to you, allowing you to earn relevant backlinks.  With the emergence of automated content tools and a growing number of AI writers, it’s really hard to maintain the originality of your content. These AI tools produce content that is often shallow and common. That’s why, as a website owner, do your best to create content that showcases topical understanding. This way, you can position yourself as an expert in your niche.  

Wrapping Up

If you’ve been building links for quite some time, you can relate how much effort it requires to earn valuable links. The process is backbreaking, which could be why many website owners resort to bad link-building practices just to scale quickly. But keep in mind that building quality links the natural way is the best strategy. This is still the ideal path toward securing a quality backlink profile in 2024.