When talking about digital marketing, especially if you are looking to improve your SEO in Thailand, there is one term you will hear very often: Link Building.
To explain it as simply as possible, link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to your website. These links are called “Backlinks.” These links play a massive role in improving your SEO, building your brand’s credibility, and driving visitors from other sites directly to yours.
However, when link building is mentioned, many business owners wonder: Where do I get these links? If I just launched my website, where do I even begin?
Let’s walk through the basics together—what link building is, why it matters for SEO, and actionable ways you can start doing it today.
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of actively creating or earning links from other websites that point to your own website.
Imagine it this way: Website A writes an article about SEO. In that article, they suggest that if readers want to learn more about Keyword Research, they should check out the information on Website B, and they include a link to Website B.
For Website B, that link they just received from Website A is a “Backlink.”
Therefore, link building doesn’t just mean randomly dropping your website links all over the internet. It means creating a strategic process that gives other websites a genuine, valuable reason to mention and link back to your business.
What is a Backlink?
These two terms are often used together, which can cause confusion.
- Link Building is the method or process of acquiring links.
- Backlink is the actual link itself that another website points toward your site.
For example, if you write a great article called “SEO for Beginners,” and another digital marketing website references your article and links back to it, that link is a backlink. The effort you put into making that link happen is part of link building.
Why is Link Building Important for SEO?
Google and other search engines don’t just look at the keywords on your webpage to decide if you should rank high in the search results. They use a combination of many signals. Links from other websites act as one of the strongest signals Google uses to evaluate how relevant and trustworthy your webpage is.
Here are the main benefits of link building:
1. Builds Website Credibility
Think of a backlink as a “vote of confidence.” If a well-known, trustworthy website or media outlet mentions your business and links to your site for more info, people are more likely to trust you. In the world of search engines, they use this same logic. Links help search engines understand the relationship and importance of your web pages.
While backlinks don’t guarantee a top spot instantly, earning high-quality, relevant links is a crucial foundation for a strong SEO strategy.
2. Helps Search Engines Discover Your Pages
Links act as bridges that help search engines travel from one webpage to another. If you have a brand-new website or just published a new page, getting a link from a relevant source is the fastest way to help search engines discover and index that URL.
3. Generates Referral Traffic
This is a massive benefit that many marketers overlook. Suppose a prominent business blog in Thailand writes about your services and includes a link for readers to learn more. Even if that link doesn’t instantly boost your Google ranking, real people are clicking it and visiting your site. This type of high-quality visitor is called “Referral Traffic.”
6 Link Building Techniques: How to Get Started
1. Create Link-Worthy Content
The most fundamental method always comes back to your content. If you have interesting data, original research, a unique case study, or insights that are hard to find elsewhere, people will naturally want to reference it. When someone else writes about your topic, they have a solid reason to link back to your valuable information.
2. Digital PR and Public Relations
Another great method is sharing your brand’s story or data through relevant media outlets and websites. For example, if your company releases new research, launches a unique product, shares interesting industry insights, or has an expert who can give an interview on a specific topic. If the story is valuable, the media will cover it, giving you a high-quality backlink.
3. Guest Posting
Guest posting means writing an article specifically to be published on someone else’s website, usually with a link pointing back to yours. This is a very effective strategy, but the key is to choose websites that are actually relevant to your industry and maintain high quality.
4. Create Resources for Other Websites to Use
If you have useful information, turn it into a resource that others can utilize. This could be a Template, a Checklist, Industry Statistics, Research, or a specialized How-To Guide. The golden rule here is that the resource must be genuinely helpful, not just a thin piece of content made purely to beg for links.
5. Get Links from Partners or Relevant Websites
Most businesses already have partners, suppliers, associations, or organizations they work with. These existing relationships are natural opportunities for link building. You can do this by creating a joint case study, announcing a partnership, or simply being listed on their “Our Partners” page.
6. Turn Brand Mentions into Links
Sometimes, other websites are already talking about your brand or products, but they forgot to include a link to your site. In this case, you can simply reach out to the website owner and politely ask them to turn that mention into a link. This is highly effective because the website already likes you enough to talk about you, making the link addition very natural.
What Types of Link Building Should You Avoid?
This is incredibly important for beginners. Doing link building does not mean trying to get as many links as humanly possible, no matter the cost.
Google has strict guidelines against creating links solely to manipulate search rankings. Unnatural or “spammy” links carry a high risk of getting your website penalized, which is far worse than having no links at all.
Things you must avoid:
- Buying large quantities of backlinks without caring about their quality.
- Getting links from completely unrelated, random websites.
- Spamming your links in blog comments or web forums.
- Using the exact same “Anchor Text” (the clickable words of a link) over and over again.
- Creating a fake network of websites just to link to each other (Link Farms).
- Using automated software to generate backlinks.
Remember this rule: Do not just look at the quantity of backlinks. Having 100 links from low-quality, spammy sources is absolutely worse than having just 10 links from highly relevant, trustworthy websites.
How to Measure Link Building Success
Because the number of links isn’t the most important thing, how do we measure success? The ultimate goal of SEO is to help your website grow and generate real business results.
Here are the metrics you should look at together:
- Referring Domains: The total number of unique websites linking to you.
- Organic Traffic: The number of visitors coming from search engines.
- Keyword Ranking: How high your relevant keywords are ranking on Google.
- Referral Traffic: The actual people clicking on your backlinks and visiting your site.
- Leads: The number of potential customers contacting you.
- Conversions: The ultimate actions you want users to take (buying a product, signing up, etc.).
Conclusion: What is Link Building and How to Start?
To summarize, link building is the process of earning links from other websites back to yours. It is a core pillar of SEO in Thailand and globally, helping your site get discovered, building immense credibility, and driving valuable referral traffic.
The heart of this strategy is not about hoarding the highest number of links. What matters most is where the link comes from, if it is relevant to your business, its quality, and how naturally it was placed.
If you are just starting out, I highly recommend focusing purely on your content first. Creating content backed by real experience, research, and genuine value gives others a reason to link to you. Once your content is solid, you can expand into Digital PR, Guest Posting, Partner Collaborations, and claiming unlinked brand mentions.
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Originally in Thai. Translated to English with the help of Gemini.
