What is link building?

What exactly does a backlink do?

A backlink is a hyperlink on website A that points to website B. When Google's crawler comes across that link, it counts as a "vote" for website B. Not every vote carries the same weight: a link from a well-known news site counts for more than a link from a blog that just launched.

This concept is known as PageRank: Google's method for determining a page's authority based on the number and quality of incoming links. More quality backlinks means more trust, and more trust results in higher positions in the search results.

When is a backlink valuable?

There are four criteria for judging the quality of a backlink.

Domain Rating (DR)

The overall authority of the linking domain, measured on a scale from 0 to 100. The higher the DR, the more valuable the link usually is for your own authority.

Relevance

Is the linking site actually about your industry or niche? A link from a relevant site counts for more than a link from a random domain.

Organic traffic

Does the linking site get visitors from Google itself? Domains with their own organic traffic are a stronger indicator of authority than dormant sites.

Anchor text

The clickable text of the link. Ideally a relevant search term or brand name. A varied and natural anchor text profile is a sign of organic link growth.

Types of link building

There are several ways to earn quality backlinks. Here are the most common methods.

• Guest blogging: writing an article for another site and including a link to your website in it.
• Outreach link building: approaching editors and website owners with a partnership proposal or placement request.
• Digital PR: publishing newsworthy content that naturally attracts links from news and industry sites.
• Broken link building: finding broken links on other sites and replacing them with a relevant piece of your content.

How Hendriks Digital approaches this

I work exclusively with manual, white-hat link building. No PBNs, no bulk packages, no automated tools. Using a database of 100,000+ classified sites, I hand-pick the most suitable placement opportunities for your niche.

Every domain is checked for DR, organic traffic, topical relevance and the quality of its existing backlink profile. Only sites that pass every filter are used for clients.

Read more about outsourcing link building.