What is a Backlink?
For those of you wondering “what the heck is a backlink?” let’s start there…..a backlink is a link that one website gets from another website.
Why are Backlinks Important?
And why are backlinks important? Besides the obvious, driving brand awareness and referral traffic, backlinks can greatly benefit your SEO performance.
At Rooted Rock Marketing, we like to use popularity in High School as an analogy for backlink building. Say you are trying to befriend the coolest kid in school. Your best bet is to link yourself with many other people which will help show your popularity and credibility. Backlinks can be thought of as the same. Generally, the more backlinks a page or site has, the more trustworthy it’s perceived to be. Especially if those backlinks come from authoritative, relevant, and credible sources. Plus, backlinks help Google discover (and index) your content because website crawlers use links to find new pages on the web.
However, not all backlinks are created equal for SEO purposes. For example, Google may ignore backlinks that appear in low-quality, unestablished, or spammy websites, simply because it doesn’t trust them enough to influence its results.
What is a "nofollow" Backlink?
To take backlinks one step further, SEOs and webmasters have the ability to tag backlinks within their website code to help Google gain more information. For example, some backlinks may get tagged as “nofollow.” This directive tells Google to not let their crawler use the link to discover the next website. In the past days of SEO, these backlinks gave no value at all. Now, a healthy mix is important. While we generally don’t strive to achieve a large number of nofollow backlinks, we also do not shy away from links that are highly valuable or relevant. Rather than focusing on followed vs. nofollowed links, you should, more importantly, avoid building backlinks that violate Google’s link spam policies. And, in the worst cases, they can lead to a Google penalty (or manual action) that may severely harm your SEO efforts.
Bad backlink practices include:
Exchanging money, goods, or services for links
Link exchanges (i.e., “link to me and I’ll link to you”)
Using automated programs that create links to your site
Forcing keywords (queries you want to rank for) into anchor text (clickable link text) in a spammy way
The most valuable backlinks in SEO:
Followed links
Are naturally placed within relevant content
Point to high-quality, functional pages
Come from established, relevant, and reputable websites including your online competitors and associated local businesses
Use relevant and natural anchor text
Generally, the more high-quality backlinks you can build, the better. Try to pursue backlinks on different websites, with different target pages, and different anchor texts. Otherwise, your backlink profile (the collection of backlinks pointing to your domain) could appear spammy and unnatural. Consistency over time is key–building too many backlinks in a short period of time is a red flag for Google.
How to Get Backlinks to Your Site
There are many ways to generate high-quality backlinks to your site. Let's review some of the most effective strategies:
Content is Still Essential
One of the best ways to earn SEO backlinks is to create quality content people naturally want to link to. This content can be informational, thought-provoking, funny, etc. As long as people want to link to it. To create great content, though, you need to make sure it’s optimized for search engines. Most people looking for references and resources start with a simple Google search. So, appearing at the top of the search results will only improve your chances of getting backlinks on websites. Use HARO to Respond to Journalists’ Requests
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is another great—and mutually beneficial—way to start link building. HARO, now hosted on Connectively, is a platform that allows you to respond to a network of journalists' and content creators’ requests. By providing journalists with the exact content they are seeking, they will be likely to use it in their content distribution.
Write Press Releases
Press releases present newsworthy information for journalists’ use and encourage them to write their own version of the story.
Recover Broken Backlinks
Broken link building is the process of finding broken backlinks to competitors’ sites (links that point to non-existent pages) and convincing the publisher to fix them by linking to your site instead. A bit sneaky, but can be effective! Don’t forget to monitor your broken links for necessary updates as well.
Check Out Your Competitors' Backlink Profiles
Your competitor’s backlink profiles may provide inspiration for other kinds of backlinks you haven’t yet earned.
Though sites may accrue backlinks naturally, it takes effort to build and maintain SEO-impacting backlinks. If you are looking for help, don’t fall for digital marketing agencies that sell backlink building as a one-hit-wonder. At Rooted Rock Marketing, we offer a variety of backlink management options and subscribe to proprietary tools that allow us to analyze your–and your competitor’s–backlinks and. From simple monitoring as a part of a holistic SEO strategy to customized backlink-specific campaigns, we’re here to help. Contact us for more information.