Difference Between Link Building and Backlinks

SEO. A small acronym with big meaning. When it comes to online marketing, especially for law firms, law firm SEO and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in general are some of the best ways to increase your website traffic and acquire organic leads.

But SEO requires many components, from on-page SEO to local optimization to link building. The last of these – link building – is one area that’s particularly mysterious, especially for business owners new to SEO.

What is link building? What’s a “backlink”? We’ll dive into the definitions here and provide tips on how to leverage each to benefit your SEO strategy.

What is Link Building?

Link building refers to the practice of acquiring links from other websites to your own. In SEO, this is an intentional activity with the goal of increasing the authority of and traffic to your website. Link building most often involves procuring links from relevant, high-authority websites.

Link building can involve reaching out to other website owners for link placements or guest posting opportunities, becoming a contributor to industry blogs and publications, creating quality content other sites are enticed to link to, and a range of other methods. These methods may be carried out by the website owner, a team member, or a partner SEO agency.

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks (or “hyperlinks”) refer to the actual links acquired between another website and your own. They are also often referred to as “inbound links” or “incoming” links.

In HTML, a hyperlink is created using the tag in a website’s code. For example, another website linking to your website might display the following in their source code:

<a href=”https://www.yourdomain.com”>Link Text</a>

Backlinks are an important aspect of SEO because they signal to search engines that other websites value your site’s content and expertise. This can positively influence your rankings, site authority, and traffic.

What’s the Difference Between Link Building and Backlinks?

The difference between link building and backlinks is that link building refers to the activity of acquiring links and backlinks to the actual hyperlinks acquired. The process of link building can result in more backlinks for your site.

Here are a few more ways in which link building and backlinks differ:

• Link building refers to the strategy used to acquire hyperlinks from other websites. It involves outreach, content creation, and relationship-building efforts.
• Backlinks are the result of link building—the actual hyperlinks that connect external websites to your pages.
• Link building emphasizes the methodology of identifying potential linking opportunities, creating outreach campaigns, and improving your site’s link-worthiness.
• Backlinks can be earned both passively (organically, through high-quality content) or actively (as a result of link-building efforts).
• Link building can involve other tactics like improving internal linking or fixing broken links.
• Backlinks are specific to external links pointing to your site; internal links do not count as backlinks.
• Link building is a continuous process, requiring consistent effort to maintain and grow your backlink profile.
• Backlinks can be gained or lost, and their value can change over time depending on the linking domain’s authority, traffic, and relevance.

How Link Building Benefits SEO

Link building is an important aspect of SEO because it allows website owners to influence their site’s authority, which in turn can positively impact the site’s traffic and organic ranking.

Link building helps you procure backlinks, which are essentially “votes of confidence” from other websites that your site is legitimate, trustworthy, and a source of quality information. Search engines value this, so they are more likely to surface your website in the search results.

In fact, there are several benefits to doing link building for SEO:

• Higher Rankings: Backlinks from reputable sites can help boost your page’s ranking in search engine results, making it easier for prospective customers to find you
• More site traffic: Other websites linking to your website can direct additional traffic, i.e. users who found their content interesting and now would like to check out your website
• Increase Domain Authority (DA): DA is a measure of your domain’s authority, as reported by SEO tools like Semrush. A high DA is suspected to influence your website’s ranking. Link building can help you acquire high-DA backlinks.

Read more: How to Do SEO Link Building for Law Firms

Audit Your Website’s Backlink Profile

How do you know if your website has any backlinks? And how do you know if you need to acquire more? These questions can be answered by conducting a backlink audit — an assessment of your website’s backlink profile and whether untapped backlinks exist.

Using SEO tools like Ahrefs, you can uncover how many backlinks your website has, the source and quality of those backlinks, what backlinks your competitors have, and whether there are additional sources from which you can potentially earn backlinks. You can also identify any spammy backlinks and then take action to remove (disavow) them.

How to Acquire More Backlinks for Your Website

There are many creative ways to acquire more backlinks for your website. For one, you can research relevant websites and blogs in your niche, and then reach out to request guest posting opportunities to include a link placement. Also, you can identify “unlinked mentions” found during your backlink audit and reach out to these sources to update the mentions to link to your website. And you can publish high-quality content other outlets might be interested in to attract links organically.

All of these tactics can be effective, but they take time. If your website’s authority and/or traffic or low, you might need a high volume of quality backlinks. Working with a trusted SEO agency can allow you to earn more links, in less time, from high-authority outlets.