15 Doubts About Link Building You Should Clarify

Link building, when done correctly, is one of the best ways to improve your search ranking. The process can be complex and daunting – but don’t let it scare you! You just need to learn more about link building and all its aspects in order for it to make sense. Bigcommerce seo tips are here to clear up 15 questions and misconceptions about link building you should clarify. 

15 Doubts About Link Building You Should Clarify :

1. “Can I Do It Right?”

Link building is one of the toughest things to accomplish in today’s search engine environment, but it can be done successfully if implemented properly. Before getting into the actual mechanics of link building, you should know what your end-goal is. You should have a clear picture of how exactly you wish to get the most out of your link building campaign. Link building has been around since 1995. 

2. “What Is Link Quality?”

Link quality is a term that refers to the value of the links that are pointing to your website. In short, link quality is a measure of trustworthiness and relevance – which gives you an idea as to how relevant your topic is, and how trustworthy you are as an authority. There are four aspects of link quality: Trustworthiness, Trust Gap, Spam Factors, and Relevancy. While you can get links with a high PageRank (PR) – it’s the trustworthiness between the two domains that will count most in Google’s eyes. 

3. “What Makes A Site Relevant?”

There are a number of aspects to take into consideration when looking at the relevance of a site you want to link to you – including PageRank and Domain Authority (DA). You may have heard these terms floating around – but what do they actually mean? PR refers to an algorithmic system used by Google – whereas DA is actually a third-party metric that has been highly correlated with search rankings.

4. “How Do I Know What My PR Is?”

Google has tested a number of different algorithms to determine rankings. It has also changed these algorithms, making it a challenge to make sense of the PR system. You don’t have to worry about this too much, though – there are tools that make it easy for you to see the PR of your site (and those you wish to link from). All you need to do is enter your URL into one of these tools and get an instant read-out on how relevant your site is in terms of how Google sees it.

5. “What’s The Best PR Tool?”

There are a number of tools for checking PR – but the two that can be your best bet are: Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer. We thoroughly recommend these two tools for checking rankings – and most importantly, understanding what is the best from the individual you link to. Majestic SEO is particularly excellent if you want to know more about a particular page of your website. 

6. “What Does Link Rater Tell Me?”

Link Rater is a tool that has been around since 2009, and as of writing, has over 4 million links checked from over 30 million unique URLs. From this data, it provides you with a wealth of information about the nature of your link profile (including the PR and DA) based on the quality of these links. It works like Majestic and OSE, in that you have to enter the URL of your website or a competitor’s website for ranking.

7. “What’s PageRank Sculpting?”

PageRank sculpting is a machine-learning algorithm released by Google to help better optimize search rankings. This algorithm has been applied since March of 2013, and it has helped Google become more effective with its core search algorithm – and thus, better rank websites in the SERPs. This improvement in ranking has been called “Pigeon” – as it was initially rolled out on mobile devices as part of Google’s update called Pigeon (or Mobile Update).

8. “How Does PageRank Sculpting Affect Link Building?”

A common misconception about PageRank sculpting is that it reduces the importance of link building in general. While this is true to a certain extent – it doesn’t really mean the end of link building altogether. As with many changes that Google has made over time, they have done their best to make all their algorithms as transparent as possible (almost like self-moderating itself). 

9. “How Do I Use PageRank Sculpting?”

PageRank sculpting is an ongoing process, but it will help you get an idea of where Google is putting its SERPs in terms of importance. If you see that a few of your links are ranked top-notch but others aren’t, this isn’t because they are bad – it might just be that the former have a higher PageRank than the latter. In this case, you can take a few steps to help improve your page rank – which we also cover in “Link Acceleration Steps”.

10. “Is Link Rater Better Than PageRank Sculpting?”

PageRank sculpting gives you an idea of where Google is placing the SERPs in terms of ranking. This could be good news or bad news – depending on what your goals are, and how much you’re willing to spend. This helps you understand your own link profile better and see where you can improve – unless you want to go the expensive and even risky route of trademarking certain phrases – which we don’t recommend.

11. “How Do I Know If My Links Are Link Rater Quality?”

The simple answer is that it depends on how much you can afford to pay for it’s services. The more expensive it is, the better your results will be. The price you pay also depends on how many keywords they are able to crawl and analyze. These prices can vary depending on the number of words crawled or the number of queries they work with.

12. “What About SEMrush”?

SEMrush is a popular link investigatory tool that helps users take advantage of tools like Page Rank sculpting, as well as other marketing and sales tools. You can use it to check the strength of your backlinks, or it can also be used to check whether a competitor’s site is making use of link building tactics.

13. “How Do I Use SEMrush?”

SEMrush can be a good way to track your links and know what is the PR of a specific site (or pages) that you link to. It works in a similar way to Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer, as it helps you get an instant idea of how strong or weak your backlinks are. In order to use SEMrush, all you need to do is enter the URL of the competitor in question – and click on “Enter”.

14. “How Can SEMrush Help Me Get Better Links?”

SEMrush works in a similar way to other link checkers such as Majestic SEO and OSE – in that it can show you where links are coming from and how strong they are. This is helpful when you’re trying to understand how to get better links, as it allows you a glimpse into what your link profile might look like if you worked on improving it.

15. “What Does SEO Juice Do?”

SEO Juice is a tool that was made especially for SEOs and link builders. This means you can use it to check link and domain metrics, as well as their DA, PR, and other information. It works by pulling data from over 200 different sources on the web in order to provide you with the most up-to-date information possible. SEO Juice accomplishes this by utilizing a host of RSS feeds – making possible the use of advanced data analysis tools like Google Trends.