Link building is crucial to any successful digital marketing strategy but is also one of the most challenging. From reaching out to website owners and bloggers to creating content and keeping up to date with best practices, there are countless moving parts to keep track of.

While most business owners understand the importance of link building, it's no wonder many struggle to develop effective campaigns—this is precisely why link building agencies like Linkbuilder.io exist!

In this blog, we'll explore why getting links is so difficult and the various challenges business owners and marketers face when trying to kick-start their campaigns.

What is link building?

Link building involves acquiring backlinks from other reputable websites to your own. It is a fundamental component of an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

However, it's not just about getting as many backlinks as possible. Instead, you need to build links from authoritative and relevant websites to reap SEO benefits from your strategy.

This involves identifying and reaching out to websites and bloggers in your industry, creating high-quality content that naturally earns backlinks, and continuously monitoring and optimizing your link profile.

Why is link building so hard?

Although link building is essential to search engine optimization (SEO), it can be one of the most challenging aspects to master.

It requires a combination of technical expertise, creativity, and perseverance—and in many cases, it will require efforts from a specialist team of individuals rather than just one person.

While link building can significantly impact your website's visibility, authority, and ranking in search engines, it requires significant effort. Here are eleven reasons why it's so complicated:

2) It uses valuable time and resources

If you don't have a dedicated link building specialist, this responsibility will likely fall to one of your team members.

In addition to the significant time investment manual outreach requires, some other aspects of your link building efforts also need time and resources.

3) It costs money, no matter how you do it

While buying links used to be considered a black hat SEO technique, today, website owners understand the value of links and will very often charge you for them.

If you want to save costs on your link building efforts, you might consider doing it yourself or delegating it to your team—but this costs money too.

Building links may distract you from your core focus if you're a business owner or marketing professional. As they say, time is money, so spending valuable time building links may negatively impact other business areas.

If you have an internal marketing team or work with freelancers, a portion of your creative team's time will be used to create content. Whether they're making a blog post, infographic, video, or another content type, it requires a significant resource investment to research, design, and optimize content.

If you outsource your efforts to a specialist agency like Linkbuilder.io, you can free up your time and internal resources. While this comes with a cost, the resources previously spent on building links can be used for other marketing initiatives.

4) You'll need to build and maintain relationships

Building relationships isn't just a vital tactic—it can make or break your campaign.

Forming relationships with other website owners and bloggers allows you to create a network of authoritative sources that can help promote your content, build your brand, and improve your search engine rankings. But sending out generic emails won't get you far.

Building a network of relationships requires consistent effort. To be effective, you must be authentic, write persuasively, conduct follow-ups, and manage multiple relationships simultaneously.

5) You need to get comfortable with rejection

Because acquiring links is so competitive, websites and bloggers may be inundated with daily outreach emails. This can make it difficult for you to stand out from the crowd.

In addition, the prevalence of spam emails and link schemes can make website owners wary of outreach requests from unknown sources. Unfortunately, in some cases, your emails may go unopened, unread, or even end up in the spam folder.

When you receive a response from a website owner, it won’t always be positive. They may not like your idea, may not currently be offering links, or may already have a relationship with one of your competitors. There are countless reasons why your efforts might be rejected, but success requires resilience.

7) Finding high-quality, relevant websites is hard work

Say, for example, you run a small family-owned business that formulates environmentally friendly cleaning supplies.

You may think it's a good idea to look up a search term like “How to be more eco-friendly” and then reach out to the websites on the first search engine results page.

It’s important to remember that websites you come across may not be as relevant as you initially thought. For example, the search term “How to be more eco-friendly” may lead you to an electronic car or solar power website—neither of which is relevant to your audience.

Finding high-quality, relevant websites can be a challenging process. You may need to delve into page ten of the search results, conduct further keyword research, or look for smaller bloggers or more niche websites.

8) You can't guarantee your strategy will be effective

While building links can significantly improve your search engine rankings and drive targeted traffic to your web page, it's impossible to guarantee the effectiveness of your link building strategy.

This is because search engine algorithms are constantly being updated, competition is intense, and link quality can vary even if links come from seemingly authoritative websites.

In addition, countless external factors are beyond your control, such as shifts in consumer behavior, industry trends, or new competitors taking over the market.

While you can't guarantee that your link building strategy will be effective, the best way to overcome uncertainty is by remaining updated with trends, changes, and updates in the SEO industry—but that all takes time, resources, and expert knowledge to do effectively and consistently.

9) Black hat techniques have given the industry a bad reputation

Although it's an essential part of an SEO strategy, black hat techniques have given link building a poor reputation. But firstly, what exactly are black hat techniques?

They are unethical and spammy practices that attempt to manipulate search engines by violating their guidelines. These techniques lead to poor user experiences and undermine the credibility of search engines.

10) You need to adapt to Google updates constantly

Google's search algorithms are constantly changing, and updates can have a significant impact on your link building efforts.

For example, the 2012 Google Penguin update targeted websites that were using spammy practices, such as buying links or using link farms. Websites that were caught using these practices were penalized, and their rankings dropped dramatically.

To remain ahead of the effects of algorithm updates, you need to tailor your link building strategies to ensure they align with best practices.

Adapting to algorithm updates means having a deep understanding of the industry, your audience, and emerging trends—which can be tricky if you're wearing multiple hats and don't have the capacity to keep up with ever-changing platform updates.

11) Not all links are created equal

Having a diverse range of links is crucial because it shows search engines that your website is credible. But on the other hand, having too many low-quality links can cause your website to be penalized.

When it comes to link building, finding the perfect balance between the quality and quantity of backlinks can be tricky. Acquiring links from low-quality websites is often easier than getting them from high-quality ones, but quality trumps quantity!

Acquiring links should be done on a sliding scale. If, for example, you are targeting websites with low relevance, then they should have high domain authority to make up for it. If you are targeting highly relevant websites, then they can have lower domain authority.

It's important to note that getting links from websites with low domain authority won't necessarily harm your website—but they may have less of a positive impact on your search engine results.

Knowing which websites are relevant, which have low domain authority but are not harmful, and which ones to steer clear of can become time-consuming and resource-intensive.