The Anatomy of Link Building for SEO
Link building is a large part of a search engine optimisation strategy. SEO incorporates so many aspects but if you don’t get your website out there and linked to, your domain authority will stay low and you won’t have the best chance at ranking higher within the search engine.
You don’t want to just link to any website, you need to research and target the high authority ones. We will explain the anatomy of link building, what a link is and how it works to affect SEO.
What are backlinks and internal links?
Backlinks are links that are on one website, directing individuals over to another. Digital marketers know more than anyone else that backlinks are an indicator of a website’s reputation and influence their ranking quite a lot. Of course, backlinks aren’t the only factor in ranking technical SEO and quality of content are some others.
Internal links are HTML links that lead you from one area of your website to another, so you are still on the same website just in a different area. These are great for SEO and promoting other related pages on your website to direct traffic. The more internal links to a specific page, the more it is seen as a key page on your website. Too many internal links can be bad and seen as spam by the search engine crawlers, so it is good to try to keep a balance. Internal links should have descriptive anchor text that includes keywords, so crawlers know exactly what the link is about.
What makes a good backlink?
In a nutshell, a good backlink is from a site with good, natural SEO. This includes low technical issues on that site, a high domain authority with good quality content on the site. These sites will be using white hat SEO techniques and avoiding black hat ones.
If you haven’t got a clue what we are talking about here, look at our blog post where we explain and compare white and black hat SEO.
Another aspect of a good backlink is making sure it is a do-follow link as opposed to a no-follow. A follow link allows the search engine to follow the link, meaning this passes the positive effects of the current website to the linking one that has gained the backlink. No-follow isn’t as good as this as it tells the search engine not to follow the link and consequently doesn’t pass the positive effects onto the website.
When gathering backlinks, you need to ensure you monitor them to ensure they don’t turn toxic. Toxic backlinks can harm your website’s SEO and reduce traffic.
Why should you build a backlinking strategy and where should you look?
If you want to rank higher within search engines and increase visibility as well as domain authority, then it is worth adding a backlinking strategy into your overall marketing plan.
When looking where to find backlinks, it may be useful to begin by looking into free business directories or ad posting sites. These are a good way to add company information and be placed in the right category for visibility. After this, it is always good to narrow down to search for related websites that are in your industry. Some websites tend to charge so there may be a cost or others require a mutual backlink.
Top Link Building Tools
Finding the best websites to gain backlinks from is hard. Luckily, there are tools available that find these for you, saving you the hassle of reviewing every website standing with search engines. Below, we will list some of the best digital marketing tools for link building that are available. Some require a subscription, some offer free trials.
1. Moz
Moz allows you to use their link explorer tool for free. All you have to do is enter the URL of the website or page you want to link data for, create an account and you can get an analysis of the URL. It could be worth looking at the links a competitor has acquired using this tool to then look if you are able to gain backlinks from similar sites.

2. Ahrefs
This tool is similar to Moz however it will not show you all of the backlinks a site has unless you are subscribed or take a free trial.

3. SEMRush
As with the others, you can analyse the backlinks of a link and get backlink suggestions. Some will be relevant but others less so.

Digital marketing tools aren’t always the easiest, especially for a beginner, to work around. A professional SEO agency will always know how to get the most out of these tools.
Summary
Good link building takes time, it can be difficult and take time to get some links whereas others may be easier. We always recommend progressively building links and reviewing backlinks as well as internal links to check they aren’t any that have broken.
Stuck on where to start with link building? Get in contact with our digital marketing agency today to discuss how we can create a linking strategy for you.