The benefits of link building have been clear across the SEO community for a long time now – Having high-quality links means better rankings and more traffic. Therefore, link building is an essential part of any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

It is the process of proactively finding ways to increase the number of backlinks to your website from third parties.

Links help search engines discover new web pages and determine which ones should rank higher in SERPs. The more you have, the higher you rank.

But the benefits of link building don’t just end there. They also help improve your website and your broader business and brand.

Let us learn the benefits of link building in more detail.

1. Better Rankings

Search engines consider the number of links your site has when ranking it on SERPs.

This is the main benefit most website owners have in mind when they start a link-building campaign. Having more links can help you rank for more competitive terms.

Expert research backs this up:

• Backlinko found that the number one pages in Google’s results have nearly four times more backlinks than those in positions two to ten.
• Ahrefs says that backlinks are “arguably the most important ranking factor”. Its study of more than a billion web pages found a clear correlation between the number of backlinks a page has and the amount of organic traffic it receives.
• Authority Hacker says backlinks are “the most strongly correlated factor for SEO success”.

2. More Traffic

Appearing at the top of the SERPs will increase your website’s traffic.

According to research from FirstPage, the average number one spot on Google gets 39.6% of clicks. That’s more than double second place, which gets 18.4%. Position ten gets just 2.1%.

Research from Ahrefs shows a strong correlation between the number of links that a website has and its traffic. It also found that just over 90% of all web pages get zero traffic from Google. Most of these zero-traffic pages had fewer than four backlinks each.

The impact of backlinks on traffic can be seen in our work with SnackNation. We’ve built over 400 amazing links for them. Within two years, the company’s monthly traffic grew from over 700,00 visitors per month, with a whopping traffic value (monthly) of over $1,000,000.

3. Improve Domain Authority

Backlinks act as third-party indicators of your domain’s credibility. Domain authority is the term used to describe that credibility.

It considers the number of links your site gets and the level of domain authority those referring sites have.

Your domain authority score will usually be higher with just one backlink from a high authority site than it would be with lots of links from low authority sites.

The level of credibility a domain has is given different names by different SEO tools:

• Domain Rating (DR) on Ahrefs
• Authority Score on SEM Rush
• Domain Authority (DA) on Moz

These tools assess the quality of a domain’s backlinks and give it a score out of 100.

4. Build Relationships in your Niche

Good link-building campaigns involve reaching out to experts or other creators of quality content in your niche. This is more of a by-product of link building than a benefit, but it’s still worth a mention.

This helps you grow your network of contacts. It also helps to raise the profile of your website amongst others in your niche and makes it more likely that they will reach out to you too.

Expert roundups and guest posts are a great way to increase your exposure and authority. Here’s one we recently created where we asked link-building experts to share their best strategies.

5. Boosts Sales and Revenue

The more links you have, the more traffic your website gets. And the more traffic your website gets, the more people will see your products and services.

This means you will make more sales and more sales mean greater revenue.

Links from publications and reviewers are especially useful here. That’s because they will:

• Be highly relevant to your niche
• Attract people looking to buy your products

Start Link Building to Rank Higher in Search Engines

Google’s primary purpose is to help searchers find the best information to answer their queries.

That’s why simply buying links or using black hat techniques won’t work well—they usually don’t have the user in mind.

Instead, you should focus on producing quality content and reaching out to other experts in your niche to ensure that you enjoy all the benefits of link-building we’ve covered.