What are backlinks?
A backlink is a vote for content quality. When another website links to your content, it’s like they’re voting for it and saying, “Hey, this is worth reading!” In the early days of the internet, backlinks were everything, and they were how you ranked in Google search results.
But over time, Google has gotten smarter and started giving more weight to other factors, such as user experience.
That doesn’t mean backlinks are irrelevant today, and they still play a role in ranking–just not as much as they used to. And there are other benefits to getting good backlinks: they can help you build trust with your audience and show that you’re an authority in your field.
So how do you get backlinks? No one answer fits all websites; however, we’ll provide valuable tips on that later in this article.
What are quality backlinks?
Indexing
Indexation is the most crucial factor for SEO. Googlebot must be able to crawl your website and index its pages for them to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). You can check whether or not a page has been indexed by using the “site:www.yoursite.com” operator in Google search.
Avoid websites that don’t have quality, relevant backlinks on them – they likely won’t rank high in SERPs anyway.
Authority
Links from high-quality websites are harder to get, but they’re worth more. These links indicate that a website is an authority in its field.
You can use several tools to measure a website’s authority, such as Ahrefs. It allows you to see the quality of a website’s backlinks and prioritize your link-building prospects accordingly.
Relevancy
When it comes to creating quality backlinks, relevancy is vital. To increase the likelihood of having quality backlinks, focus on opportunities with 100% relevance. Once you’ve tapped out the highest level of relevancy, move down to prospects with less relevance.
However, when working in local SERPs for geo-targeted opportunities, the Relevancy Pyramid changes. Focusing on topically relevant prospects on the national level is recommended for creating a natural link profile that’s not too spammy or irrelevant.
A good backlink should have relevant, contextual information. To be credible and helpful to users, a good backlink must include the domain and URL of the article it is linking to. This helps users verify its authenticity and makes them more likely to follow the link. Quality backlinks help establish credibility on a website and are essential for boosting search engine rankings.
Traffic
You need to obtain links to your webpage from relevant, high-traffic websites.
Consider the following – what does it mean when Google sends organic search traffic to a website?
This indicates that the website is most likely trustworthy. By and large, sites that rank highly in organic search provide excellent opportunities for link building.
You can use SEMRush to determine whether a website receives organic search traffic (as well as the “value” of that traffic).
Quality of links
There are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to link quality. You want links from sites that are authoritative and relevant to your industry, and you also want links that aren’t spammy or artificial.
One way to determine whether or not a site is spammy is by analyzing its backlink profile. Backlinks profiles can be manipulated, so it’s best to analyze the links manually. However, some tools can help you do this automatically.
Ahrefs allows you to sort their backlinks by “DoFollow.” This will show you which of your backlinks are providing the most value in terms of link juice.
A good number of quality backlinks for a website is about 3,000 – but this number will vary depending on your industry and niche.
Backlinks are characterized by their unique domain and the “inbound links” they provide to that domain. For a link to be valuable, it must have both these qualities.
There are seven different types of backlinks you can get. Still, it would be best to avoid some types to stay on track with your SEO goals: reciprocal links, article submissions, directory submissions, blog comments, forum posts, social bookmarking, and press releases.
Monitor Backlinks is a tool for keeping track of what backlinks your website is getting. It’s essential to keep track of your backlinks so that you can disavow any links that are hurting your SEO efforts.
Quality of outbound links
Links coming from other websites are valuable for any site looking to rank higher on search engine results pages. Not all links, however, are created equal. A quality link is one that matches the website’s guidelines and goes to a trusted resource. A natural link usually goes to a site with similar content, while paid links are likely not relevant or trustworthy resources.
High-quality backlinks have several characteristics: relevance, traffic, authority, link profile quality, editorial standards, and outbound link quality. To determine if a backlink is of high quality or not, web admins and SEOs must analyze all of these factors. If just one criterion is missing or low-quality, the entire backlink can be devalued.
Some examples of what would not qualify as high-quality backlinks include: websites that do not have traffic or relevant content; websites with no editorial guidelines; and websites with poor outbound links. The more noise on an outbound link (e.g., irrelevant anchor text), the less likely it is to be seen as quality by Google’s algorithm.
What is a reasonable amount of backlinks?
There is no definitive answer to this question because it varies from site to site. However, as a general rule, you want to have a good mix of high-quality backlinks and low-quality backlinks. Too many low-quality links can hurt your site’s ranking, while too few high-quality links may not be enough to improve your ranking.
An excellent way to find out whether you have too many or too few links is to use a tool like Majestic SEO or Ahrefs. These tools will show you the quality and quantity of your backlinks and how they are affecting your website’s ranking.
Tips on how to create backlinks to your website
Here is a list of top tips to create quality backlinks to your website and gain SEO traction.
Well written and produced content
Quality content is essential for building trust with your audience and improving your SEO ranking.
When content is well written and produced, it makes it a valuable resource for readers. It’s important to produce high-quality content because it helps to build trust with your audience. When visitors know that they can rely on your website for accurate information, they are more likely to return in the future.
High-quality content is also beneficial for SEO purposes. Search engines prefer websites that offer valuable information, and they rank them higher on their search results pages. If you publish great content, you’re more likely to attract new visitors from Google and other search engines.
Broken link building
The broken link-building method is a tactic that helps you to create one-way backlinks. Broken link building is all about finding informative web pages with external links to dead pages. To make this process easier, you need to find a website that has a similar piece of content. Once you’ve located the broken link, reach out to the webmaster and ask them to report it. Additionally, be sure to recommend other websites that could replace the link.
When reaching out, be friendly and introduce yourself with a genuine tone. Always provide the exact location of the broken links to be easily found/replaced.
Relevant content is extremely important
To create backlinks to your website, you need to produce relevant and supplementary content. The content must be related to the main article, and it needs to supplement the argument being made. If it doesn’t meet those requirements, you won’t get any links from the site.
They don’t have to be new or exclusive pieces, but they have to be relevant. Take the time to understand what your audience wants, and give it to them in spades. You’ll see more success when you do!
Supplier links
If you offer other companies ’ products, you may be missing out on a superb chance to build a large number of genuinely authoritative links to your website.
Numerous manufacturers and suppliers include a where to buy or stockists section on their website.
This is purely a manufacturing company directing users to the locations where their products can be purchased. Additionally, you should be listed if you are a reseller of the company’s products (and linked).
Create a list of all of your vendors and their web pages and navigate your way through them one by one, looking for a page listing their stockists.
Discovered a page, but you aren’t listed?
This is most likely not deliberate. Contact whoever your company’s contact is, share the page, and inquire about the process for getting your website listed and linked. Often, your connection can arrange for this on your behalf.
Are you unable to locate a page listing stockist? Ponder if you could collaborate in a slightly different manner.
Detailed and deep content
When creating content, it’s essential to be as thorough and detailed as possible. This is especially true for long-form content, which can be challenging for readers to digest and understand. However, it’s worth the extra effort because longer content has more depth.
The sweet spot for long-form content is around 3,000 words, and longer content gets more links and higher SERP ratings than shorter writing pieces. In addition, it’s statistically better for you in terms of traffic and leads.
Make sure not to skimp on the details! Go with whatever length and level of detail work best for you-the most important thing is that your readers walk away with a deep understanding of the topic at hand.
Link gap analysis
A link gap analysis aims to determine how many backlinks you need to rank higher than your competition. You must have access to accurate data about both yourself and your competitors’ websites to do this. The KD metric can help estimate the authority level of links you’ll need, which can be used in conjunction with the Backlink Gap Tool to get a more accurate number.
The first step of the process is finding your top competitors and their links. You can use a tool like the Backlink Gap Tool to make this process much easier. Once you have this information, you’ll see how many backlinks your competitors have and where they’re getting them from.
The second part of the link gap analysis is finding out how many backlinks you need for your target keyword and your competitor’s sites as a whole. This information will help give you an idea of what authority level of links you’ll need to rank for your target keyword-driven page.
The Skyscraper Technique
The Skyscraper Technique is a technique for building links by ranking content on search engines. The Skyscraper Technique is broadly related to web writing, intending to create top-quality content.
This technique helps a site rank on competitive terms through in-depth and visually appealing content. The advantages of the Skyscraper Technique are that it is easy to do, and there are no significant drawbacks.
This strategy has some drawbacks as sometimes the Skyscraper Technique can be expensive to run, and the technique is not as effective when fewer links are available to scoop up.
Doing Skyscraper can also be difficult if you do not have access to research tools provided by commercial companies like UberSkyscreper, which use Ubersuggest, a free keyword tool, and Postaga. This online tool finds contact information for websites from their backlinks.
301 redirect link building
Link building via 301 redirects is the process of identifying irrelevant 301 redirects and pitching an excellent alternative to everyone linking to them. It works in the same way that broken link building does; site owners do not want to direct their visitors to pages that are effectively dead.
Legitimate site
You do not need a custom design theme to appear legitimate, but you should ensure that the sites you are pitching are aware of your legitimacy.
Connecting to your social media profiles can help greatly with this.
If your web page is new, it will lack authority, and you’ll need to increase your persuasiveness. Put in the time and effort necessary to create high-quality content and a visual appealing layoung, and you may very well be compensated.
Relationship Accelerator Technique
The Relationship Accelerator Technique accomplishes two objectives:
- It can assist you in developing relationships with influential “linkerati” (people who are qualified and inclined to link to you).
- It can assist you in obtaining links with little effort.
There are a few different approaches to this. You can host roundups of expert advice, conduct interviews, or solicit professional participation in your content.
This technique is effective because there is an unmistakable exchange of value. The experts benefit from the exposure, and you benefit from the opportunity to develop a non-transactional connection with them. You’ll gain exposure as they’re inclined to share or link to the content.
Publishing a blog
Many people like this content and link-building strategy so much that it’s one of the few that the engineers at Google have personally recommended. Blogs are unique in their ability to consistently contribute new content, spark debates and discussions across the web, and earn listings and links from other blogs.
However, exercising caution here is advised — you should avoid low guest posting solely for link building. Google advises against this, and your time would be better spent elsewhere.
The Phantom technique
You may reach the desired backlink amount for a particular page at some point. However, what will you do if you’re still not ranking as high as possible?
This is where the Phantom Technique comes into play. You can boost your existing backlinks rather than increasing your tier one backlinks (links that directly point to your site).
This method is referred to as tier two link building. It’s extremely effective, and your competitors are unlikely to notice you’re doing it.
Sell your value
It sounds pretty straightforward. Nonetheless, this step is frequently overlooked. Your link request must sell your post or page as an incredible resource, and you must be explicit about the benefits.
How can you effectively communicate the benefits of your product in your pitch? You must have tangible benefits to offer.
The primary advantage is relevant content, and you must possess something that adds extra value to the resource you are inquiring about. The most important thing you can do is provide a relevant article, but that’s even better if you can go further.
Specifically, if you can promote to an established audience, that’s gold. That’s the dream of every website owner.
Business Association Links
Are you a part of any professional organizations? Perhaps your Chamber of Commerce or a trade association? If this is the case, you may have some simple ways to build links to your website.
This one is nearly identical to supplier links in many ways but does not require you to stock a company’s products or for the manufacturer to have a page on their website.
You can make a list of all the associations you belong to, along with their websites. Then, on their website, look for a member’s page or a similar page. If you are a supporter but do not see your name on the list, contact your contact and inquire about how to be added.
However, you can take this strategy a step further and actively seek out organizations in your neighborhood or industry that include a link to their members as part of their membership. If you are not a member and believe you could benefit from their offerings, join now and follow that link!
Roundup posts
Roundup posts can be an excellent way to increase the number of links to content that you create as part of a broader content marketing strategy. Consider this as link building that will assist in bringing attention to the content you are producing.
Conduct a Google search for “keyword” + “roundup.” You’ll see a list of articles published in roundup format. Typically, it is simply a collection of curated posts about a particular subject, and almost every industry has at least one.
The majority of individuals who submit roundup posts do so regularly, which means they are constantly on the lookout for quality content to include. Therefore, why not send an email to the authors of the roundup posts you discover, informing them of your latest piece of content?
Testimonials
You’re probably used to soliciting testimonials from your clients, but have you considered that they can also be an excellent source of link building?
While this tactic may not scale, it can help you broaden your link profile by extolling the virtues of another’s tool, product, or service. They will often link back to your website with a testimonial or case study if you write one.
Often, it’s a process of knowing who you are (your suppliers) and deciding on whose offering you like. From there, compose an excellent testimonial and send it to them, along with authorization to post it on their website.
Final thoughts
The majority of these strategies are neither novel nor thrilling, but they get the job done, which matters. Simply avoid attempting to use them all at the same. Begin with one, gain insight, refine your approach, and expand from there.
The art of increasing backlinks is a vast subject, but I hope this provided you with the necessary framework. If you found this article beneficial, please share it. Or, even better, include a link to it!
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