You've created content
that people are searching for, that answers their questions, and that search
engines can understand, but those qualities alone don't mean it'll rank. To
outrank the rest of the sites with those qualities, you have to establish authority.
That can be accomplished by earning links from authoritative website
Google has confirmed that
links and quality content (which we covered back in Chapter 4)
are two of the three most important ranking factors for SEO. Trustworthy sites
tend to link to other trustworthy sites, and spammy sites tend to link to other
spammy sites.
But what is a link, exactly? How do you go about earning
them from other websites? Let's start with the basics.
