The Current Rules of Link Building Explained

Link building is an art as much as it is a science. For some practitioners of search engine optimization (SEO), it’s a highly technical thing whereas as other people play it by ear and make it up as they go along. With either approach, it’s a good idea to follow some basic standards to avoid problems and become more successful. 

Here are some of the modern rules of link building. 

Quality Over Quantity

Inbound links are partially valued based on their Domain Authority and Page Authority (Moz.com metrics) which indicate the authoritativeness of the site and page that’s linking in. Their scores run on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100 with 0 being the lowest. 

For most sites, they can hit a Domain Authority (DA) of 20 within around a year and move slowly up to the 30s a couple of years later. Only the strongest companies ever have websites with a DA of 70, 80 or 90, etc. They’re almost God-like figures in the link building world. 

Once you understand these metrics, obtaining a link from a website with a DA 30 is infinitely more valuable than a link from a DA 5 site. That’s because it’s a logarithmic scale, which in layperson’s terms means that a 30 is not 6 times better than 5 – it’s an order of magnitude which is more powerful. Therefore, getting one DA 30 link is far more useful to a website than six DA 5 links. 

Relevance Over Irrelevance

The next important modern SEO principal to understand is that links from relevant pages matter more. That is to say, if you have a page about pipelines and you obtain a link from another site also about pipelines, the link is highly relevant. While a link from an oil energy site is still relevant because it’s within the energy industry (not about a pipeline distributing oil or natural gas), it’s not as good. 

Compare this to a stronger site from a Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) standpoint but in a non-relevant niche or industry, and the lines become blurry. For instance, a link from GE isn’t going to make much sense and so doesn’t do a great deal for the site even though it’s stronger. As a rule, aim for relevant links first, higher DA and PA second. 

Moderation in All Things

Thinking about the text within the link pointing to the site (anchor text), the old rules showed that you could include the targeted search term frequently and rank highly for it. Since then, Google has gotten smarter and considers this spammy keyword stuffing. 

The new rule on anchor texts is based on low single digit usage as a percentage of the word count. However, you also should consider how many times an exact match keyword is used too. 

There is some belief that using the top 10 ranking sites as a yard stick, checking their anchor text percentages using a tool like AHRefs.com and matching the average anchor text percentage for the main search term is fine. Other SEO practitioners believe that going with a fixed low single-digit percentage is a safer approach. Either approach looks fairly safe at the present time. 

Aping How a Site Usually Looks

Looking natural is key to not getting a Google warning for unnatural link practices. This is why the advice to mirror what other sites in the niche are currently doing is fairly good advice to follow.

You also want to ape how websites usually receive links. Only a certain percentage of them are ‘dofollow’ and others are ‘nofollow.’ Some links come from anchor text, others from images and other linking methods.

There’s also a split between inbound links pointing at the root domain and others pointing to inner pages. When building links to specific posts, the problem is that the root domain receives no link love which looks unnatural. Go for a blended mix. 

Emphasize Branded Links

Just like with any major brand, the brand name is important to rank for. Therefore, it’s important to have links mentioning and targeting the brand. It looks more natural and helps to diversify stronger, targeted links with other ones. 

Other diversifying links that look good in the backlink profile include naked URLs and other alternatives e.g. the website name, www.mywebsite.com, https://www.mywebsite.com, etc. Various permutations look sensible while also helping to rank the site for its name and URL.

While SEO is forever changing, what’s most important is to have a natural backlink profile that doesn’t raise concerns. Quality backlinks built over time are far more useful than 1,000 backlinks built in automated fashion over a weekend. What’s left is to wait for your ranking to change in Google.