Gaining trust and credibility
One of the most effective ways to achieve this outcome is to acquire backlinks. This is when a website not of your own links back to your website. They have directly referenced a particular page on your website. They are essentially giving it a ‘Thumbs Up’ and linking their readers to the source.
For example, let’s say you run a business selling sports equipment. Now, let’s say a popular website, one that covers the sporting industry, mentions one of your products in an article. Chances are, they will include a direct link to the product on your website.
This is a win-win situation. The website owner that linked back to you benefits from making a solid recommendation that their readers can take advantage of. Meanwhile, your business will receive a ton of organic traffic from a brand-new audience. It’s an exciting moment. And it’s one you can benefit from on a regular basis; that is, if you know how to execute a proper backlink strategy.
Are backlinks important for SEO?
Backlinks were one of the first ranking factors to be put in Google’s algorithms. This should give you a clear indication as to how important they are. Even in the early days of search engines, being linked to by trustworthy, reputable, and credible websites has been vital to search visibility.
This makes sense. Search engines like Google have earned a reputation for linking to only trustworthy, reputable, and credible websites. If they were to recommend spammy, low-quality, and untrustworthy websites, people would stop using them. Therefore, it is in the best interests of Google, and other search engines, to recommend only the best websites.
And this is where backlinks come in. If Google can see that other websites are recommending yours, this is a strong sign your website is trustworthy. As a result, the more reputable websites that link back to your own, the easier it is for Google and other search engines to recommend you.
Understanding the different types of backlinks
There are a few ways that a website can link back to yours. The approach they take will influence how effective the backlink is. In fact, being associated with a poor, low-quality, and non-reputable website can quickly tank your search rankings, costing you valuable traffic and leads.
Ideally, you want to acquire backlinks from multiple trustworthy websites. This is better than receiving multiple backlinks from just one website.
Why? Because search engines look more favourably among websites that have multiple recommendations from different sources, as opposed to just one.
It also helps rule out the possibility that you simply paid out a single website owner to promote your own website. Google refers to this as ‘Link Schemes.’ And yes, they will punish you for it.
Here are the different types of backlinks you may encounter:
Natural backlinks
This occurs when a website owner links back to your own, without any effort on your part. They just happened to come across your website, found the info – or the product or service on offer – valuable, and decided to recommend it to their readers. You did not ask them to do this. It just happened, naturally.
Acquiring manual backlinks requires a bit more effort than writing great content and hoping someone finds it. It involves reaching out to websites that are of a similar niche, industry, and field to you, and offering something in return for them to backlink to your own website.
Guest blogging is an effective way to achieve this. You can reach out to a suitable website, offer to write an engaging, informative, and well-researched article on a specific topic, and then – in exchange for your work – have the article feature a backlink to your website. This benefits both parties, as the receiving website gets to promote a great article on their platform, and you generate traffic from a brand-new audience.
There are a few other ways to acquire manual backlinks. You could reach out to a website, one that has an existing article with a relevant broken link, then offer to replace the broken link with your own. Of course, your replacement link must match the original intention of the first link.
Lastly, there may be instances where other websites are mentioning your brand but haven’t put in hyperlinks yet. You can use a tool like BuzzSumo or Mention to find any websites that are doing this. Once you’ve found a few, reach out to them, and ask if they can include a hyperlink to the page of your choice. Most website owners will happily oblige, as it helps build the credibility and authority of their own website.
How does backlinking influence your Domain Authority (DA)?
If you’ve been reading up on SEO for a while, you may have seen the term ‘Domain Authority’ (DA).
What does it mean? In essence, your Domain Authority is a numerical figure between 0 and 100, which determines how rank-worthy your website is. It tells you how likely your website is to rank compared to similar websites.
The metric was first developed by Moz and continues to be used by companies around the world to calculate their search visibility.
Search engines like Google don’t use your DA as a ranking factor. But the metrics that determine your DA are relevant to your search visibility. So, they do sort of work together, even if not directly.
There are many metrics that determine your DA. This includes the number of inbound and outbound links, quality of backlinks, ranking keywords, and more. Your score may even fluctuate based on what a competitor does. For example, if a competitor were to buy thousands of new links, everyone else’s DA would drop relative to the competitor.
There is no one ‘good’ DA score. It depends on the nature of your website, your target audience, your competitors, and more. However, a DA of 50 or higher is generally considered good, while anything higher than 60 is excellent.
Keep in mind, your DA is not the same as Page Authority. DA refers to the authority of your entire website. Page Authority relates to just a single page on your website.
How to remove low-quality backlinks
Sometimes your website may be linked to by another website that you do not wish to associate with.
These websites may have low-quality or false info, be spammy, contain viruses, or just not be relevant to your website. When this happens, you can disassociate yourself from them, so that they do not affect your search visibility.
To disassociate yourself from a toxic website, use a Backlink Audit tool to review your backlinks and identify any bad or toxic links. Some good examples include SEMrush and the Google Search Console.
Once you have a list, create a Disavow List and submit it to the Google Disavow Tool. You will then be notified shortly after that your website is no longer linked to them.
How to make your backlinks more natural
There is a correct and incorrect way to include backlinks in your body text. Google and other search engine providers are very good at detecting deliberate attempts to ‘trick’ the algorithm into listing a website.
One way that the search engines do this is to review the anchor text used to link to another website. This is the text, usually highlighted, that when you click on it, takes you to the linked website.
If the text reads or feels out of place compared to the rest of the content, Google may penalise the backlink instead of rewarding it. For example, if you have a page targeting the keyword ‘best running shoes’ and another website links back to your own using the exact same phrase, then Google will pick up on this and potentially penalise it.
However, if the anchor text was to be more ‘natural,’ by including the phrase ‘these running shoes from X Brand are great for track & field events,’ then Google will be more likely to perceive it as a natural recommendation and reward the backlink.
Striking the right balance between meeting SEO guidelines and readability can be tricky. And it can feel like a ‘grey’ area at times. But when done correctly, it can help produce excellent results for your website.
Nicole Fitzpatrick
CEO & Author
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In summary
Backlinks are an integral part of any successful SEO campaign. But just like any other digital marketing strategy, pulling it off requires a decent amount of time, effort, and energy on your part. It’s worth it, of course, but doing so can be detrimental to the growth and productivity of your business if doing it all yourself.
This is where enlisting the help of a digital marketing agency can help. At Apple Advertising, we help businesses – big and small, of all types – expand their online presence by executing a carefully thought-out backlink and SEO strategy.
We take the time to audit the status of your website (or build you a new one from scratch), see how well it is performing on search engines, and recommend a fixed-price solution that fits your needs.
Our services include keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink implementation, website optimisation, and heaps more. With these combined services, we strive to help your website be easier to find out search engines, be more appealing to your target audience, and be more likely to generate more traffic, clicks, leads, and sales.
Best of all? You don’t have to lift a finger. We take care of it all, so you can focus on running your business.
