Link Building Strategies in 2023 and Beyond

Link building remains a foundational principle of SEO in 2023. However, Google has made numerous changes to its algorithm in the last two years or so that should make you rethink how you build links. These days, it is not enough to get as many backlinks as possible, as search engines now place a greater emphasis on other factors. Here’s what you need to know to ensure your link building strategies work from 2023 onwards.

Create High-quality Content and The Visitors and Links Will Come

Google has implemented changes that it says are meant to help users find relevant, accurate, and helpful information and websites that align with their search intent. This statement indicates that Google takes content quality very seriously when ranking websites.

If your website is not ranking highly and has very few visitors, other website owners will not see it as authoritative enough to want to link to it. All this means you have to create high-quality content that users will love and rank highly before sourcing for backlinks.

Quality Over Quantity

Quality and relevance of backlinks have become more important than the number of backlinks according to recent updates. But what does Google see as a high-quality backlink? The answer has to do with contextual relevance.

Contextual relevance means there must be a thematic similarity between your website and the linking website. For example, a link from a tech website to one in the pet niche would be a low-quality backlink.

The next important concept is “link neighbourhoods”. Here, all the sites linked to yours, those in your neighbourhood, will affect your credibility and authority.

Hiring the right SEO agency to provide link building services UK will ensure contextual relevance and that your link neighbourhood only contains high-quality, credible, and high-authority websites that will help instead of hurt your SEO and ranking.

E-E-A-T Will Be Crucial

EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is not a ranking factor, but Google is using it to check the quality of its algorithm updates. It states that:

• Content must demonstrate an author’s experience
• Authors must demonstrate topical expertise
• The creator must be an authority in their industry
• The website, content, and author must be trustworthy

Google takes all of these together to know if a website and its content are worthy of being shown to its search engine users. Sites with a high EEAT rank highly, so they should be the ones you try to get links from.

However, your website must also have a high EEAT for them to want to link to you due to the concept of link neighbourhoods.

Your Social Influence Will Determine Ranking

With EEAT in place, Google wants strong social and online influence before determining whether you are an authority. If you are, backlinks associated with you from diverse sources like guest blogs, directories, and other online sources will hold more weight.

Link building is changing as Google makes regular updates to its algorithms. Website owners, marketers, and SEOs will have to closely follow these changes and new guidelines to ensure they build strong backlinks that are beneficial and not harmful.