Guide to BackLinks Introduction

For SEO marketers, link building is essential to building traffic and ranking well in searches. Great link building demands well-developed skills across the board: content creation, marketing, programming, sales, and psychology are all part of the process. Links aren’t the whole SEO story, but they touch on many key factors that influence SEO, like popularity, authority, spamminess, and trustworthiness.

In other words, because user experience and quality, not quantity, are now at the heart of great SEO, links, and link building are still critical. This means that growing your site’s link profile is one of your most important tasks if you want to build traffic and gain traction from the search engines.

This is my introduction to link building, where I describe how to do that.

Signals that search engines use to assign value to links

Naturally, although only Google knows exactly how their algorithms work, the experts who work in this area every day have a very good sense of how the search engines assign value.

Global or macro popularity

Links from more popular sites are more valuable. A link from the New York Times almost always has more value than one from a local blogger. This means that you’ll need to partner with other sites to build authoritative links to build authority with search engines.

Local or niche popularity

Local or niche popularity means that a link from a site that is focused in on your area is more valuable than a site that is more general. For example, occasionally a local blogger’s site might be better than the New York Times—if that local blogger is the head of National Association of Salmon Jerky Manufacturers and you are in the salmon jerky business. The key question here is not always how many visitors will see the link, but how many of the visitors are likely to find the link very useful.

Link quality

If you had a question about the universe expanding that you really needed answered, whose answer would you value more: the one you got from 100 random people or the one you got from Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, and Peter Higgs? If you chose the three famous physicists, you’re thinking like Google thinks. (No surprise there—Google tries to think like people think.)

Search engines count every link but they don’t weight them equally. Links from more authoritative sites receive more weight. Sometimes local links that seem more relevant also get more weight.

TrustRank

TrustRank is related to link quality; it is the way search engines work to weed spam out of search results. If your site has many links from high-trust domains, it will get a boost in trust. Government websites, universities, non-profit organizations are the most frequently seen high-trust sites.

Link neighborhood

Another related area here is the link neighborhood you’re living in. If you do link back to a spammy site, Google will notice; you’re likely to be seen as part of that new “there goes the neighborhood” trend because spammy links frequently go both ways. To avoid this problem be very choosy when you link with sites.

Link number

Yes, numbers still matter—but not like they used to. Many links from the same site are not as valuable as single links from many different sites, especially high-trust sites. Don’t go for sheer numbers without quality. Instead, boost your numbers by earning more links that are valuable.

Anchor text

The actual words used within a link—the anchor text—are the strongest signals read by search engines. The engines see anchor text as descriptive text. For example, if ten pages link back to my Influencer Marketing Guide using those words, those links are signaling to search engines that I and my site hold expert knowledge on that topic.

Anchor Text Helps Google Determine Your Authority on A Given Keyword

The more different sites that recognize me as such, the more likely the search engines will rank me that way. Naturally, you can’t always control the anchor text on other sites, so when you do get a chance to influence anchor text to your site, do it.

Freshness

Freshness matters to search engines because as sites slip and become less popular they earn fewer links. Therefore, the search engines look at fewer links over time and links that aren’t as fresh as a sign that a site isn’t as popular or relevant as it used to be.

Social sharing

First of all, remember that a share on social media is not the same as a link. Links are still more valuable and have more staying power. That said, search engines do notice socially shared links and factor social signals into their algorithms. Exactly how much is anyone’s guess, but it’s safe to say that social shares, especially from prominent users, are of some value.

The basics of link building

There are three basic link building techniques you can employ as part of your strategy. Each link building campaign is unique, so choose the right methods for your site and business.

Organic links

Natural links are the most valuable type. These are the links that other pages and sites create because they want to link to your business, your products, or your content. Building these kinds of links means creating great content and then spreading the word; after that, the links just come.

Organic backlinks flow naturally within the text.

Outreach links

Outreach links include those that the SEO creates by paying for listings, submitting sites to directories, or reaching out to bloggers for links. Some outreach can be very fruitful. If you can target your efforts to the right sites you’ll have better success, and perhaps get some mutually beneficial relationships in motion. For example, if you can build relationships with high profile bloggers or other businesses you may be able to help each other.

Self-created, non-editorial links

These are the least valuable type of link; they come from linking in comments, user profiles, forums, or guest books. Search engines are catching on to aggressive uses of these kinds of links, so don’t try peppering various sites with links in comments. On the other hand, if you genuinely add value in forums by providing real advice, for example, and find natural ways to link to useful references, do it. Just remember to be careful with this kind of link building.

Which of these techniques should you use? Ask yourself which will give you the most bang for your buck, but always remember that you will do better if you stick to more natural patterns and avoid even the appearance of manipulating results.

Planning your link building campaign

Just like anything else related to your SEO or marketing activities, it is a mistake to do anything without planning and making it part of your larger strategy. This means when you set out on a link building campaign you’ll need to set some goals so you can measure your progress. This isn’t easy to do since there’s no black and white way to be 100% sure of your progress, but there are some good metrics to use:

Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority (DA) is a score on a 100 point scale from Moz that takes whatever search query you want to use and measures how likely your domain is to rank for it. The Moz tool calculates DA by combining all of the Moz metrics for links together to come up with a sort of composite score.

If you choose this metric, make sure your query makes sense for your site; be specific. It’s going to be nearly impossible to get a high DA for “boats,” but you might have a shot at “Tallahassee outboard motorboats,” and if you sell outboard motorboats in Tallahassee, that’s a win.

Relevant search term rank

Similarly, work to earn links from pages that rank for your relevant search terms. Obviously, everyone wants their page to rank well for their keywords and phrases, especially those in the headline and title tag. One way to boost this rank is to earn links with pages who are already succeeding with the same terms.

Competitor backlinks

To get useful intelligence about how your successful competitors are achieving their rank, reverse engineer their strategies by exploring their backlinks. The easiest way to do this is with a tool like Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs. You can then see the domains that are working for them and target them in your campaign.

MozRank

Your MozRank (mR) is all about popularity, and high mR is correlated with better search engine rank. It is determined by how many links are coming to your page, and where they are from. Links from important pages increase popularity faster, so you might find yourself with a high mR if you have a few links from major sites or lots of links from somewhat less popular sites.

Referral traffic

Links that people actually use are more valuable, so high amounts of click-through traffic send a positive signal to search engines. You can estimate this metric using Google Analytics to see page views or numbers of visits. You can also use GA to watch your Referral Paths to get more detailed insights into where your traffic comes from.

Referral Traffic Can Show You How Effective Your Backlinks Are

Assessing your campaign

After your campaign has been in place for awhile, use any or all of these metrics to see how you’re doing. Also watch the more general signs such as your rankings, traffic rates, referral link traffic, and how often search engines are crawling your site. If those numbers are moving for you, your links are working. If they’re not, you may need to adjust your link building strategy.

Link building strategies

Which link building strategies make sense for you and your business really depend on what kind of site you’ve got. Manual link building strategies, including outreach requests and exchanges tend to work best for smaller sites. Larger sites need solutions that can be implemented on their own scale. If you’re just not sure about what might work, don’t forget to research; sometimes seeing what works for others who are in similar positions really helps.

Here are a few strategies that you can try:

Blogging

Blog regularly, and make sure what you post is entertaining and valuable. Even Google agrees: you should be blogging. Blogging is one of the best ways to create fresh content consistently as part of the online dialogue in your industry or niche. You earn trust, authority, and respect from others in your area when you create useful blogs and you gain natural links.

Create great content

Everyone loves to share something they think is hilarious, touching, or useful. Create content that is one of those things and you inspire natural linking and viral sharing. For search engines “authority” doesn’t just mean having the most knowledge about a topic; it can also mean having the most funny or otherwise shareable stuff that people want to link to over and over again. If you can create this kind of content, do it.

Engage with customers

It’s not just great for your business, it’s important for your link building. When you have loyal customers or partners, don’t miss that opportunity. Give them graphic badges to link back to your site.

Generate news and innovate

The media will always report the news, and that’s a tried and true way to earn a link. Craft compelling press releases when you have new products and use that same strategy for contests and giveaways. Don’t neglect bloggers, either; sometimes you’ll get better coverage from less traditional media outlets. And remember, the more innovative you are, the more newsworthy information you’ll generate.

Introduction to Link Building For SEO – Chapter 1