In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), link building describes actions aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage with the goal of increasing the search engine rankings of that page or website.
Link building is also a proven marketing tactic for increasing brand awareness.
Basically, they are hyperlinks to a website or a specific web page containing content believed to be beneficial, useful and relevant to visitors of the site establishing the link.
search engines have deployed technology designed to "red flag" and potentially penalize sites employing such practices.
Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines.
Reciprocal linking between websites is no longer an important part of the search engine optimization process.
[10] However, these links almost always contain the Nofollow or the newer ugc attribute which signal that Google shouldn't take these into its ranking considerations.
However, the conflicts of being devalued by major search engines while building links could be caused by web owners using other black hat strategies.
Since then, Google's web spam team has attempted to prevent the manipulation of their search results through link building.
Major brands including J.C. Penney, BMW, Forbes, Overstock.com, and many others have received severe penalties to their search rankings for employing spammy and non-user friendly link building tactics.
Although more difficult to acquire, white hat link building tactics are widely implemented by website owners because such kind of strategies are not only beneficial to their websites' long-term developments but also good to the overall online environment.