Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to a target (a client’s website, or your own website). A link back to your website is called a backlink.
Since Google’s earliest ranking system was heavily weighted to favor websites that had lots of links pointing to them, link building has traditionally been a very effective way to get your site to rank quickly. It’s still effective today.
Now, strictly speaking, Google doesn’t want you to “build” links — they want them to happen naturally.
But how do links happen naturally? That’s a great question.
Theoretically, links happen because you’ve posted great content, someone found your website, and thought you had written such a great article that they just had to reference it in their article or post.
But how does someone find your website if Google won’t rank it, because your website doesn’t have links pointing to it??
As you can see, this is something of a chicken-and-egg game.
The task of “link building” is so game-able, that Google now includes hundreds of other factors in ranking your website so as not to over-emphasize the number of links pointing to your website.
Having said all that, what if you really, really want some links pointing to your website so that you can at least signal to Google that you’re important and relevant?
You have to build the links by creating decent-to-great content, then asking other webmasters to link to your website. You know, because of your great content and all.
Here’s the rub: no one is super-motivated, much less required, to link to your website. It’s a pretty thankless task for the other webmaster, who creates a link for no compensation. You’ve just wasted her time, and she has nothing to show for it.
So you think “Hey, why don’t I just pay this webmaster for a link?“
Well, Google has you covered there too: they don’t want you to pay for a link because it’s considered “unnatural”.
Well, sure.
Paying for links is considered spammy and is certainly an unreliable “authority signal” as far as Google is concerned.
Okay, so I can’t pay for a link, no one will see my website without links, so what do I do?