Links are vital to increasing traffic online. A website without backlinks will have difficulty in getting high traffic — from searches or other websites. You need to start learning about linking in SEO.

You will learn:

• Why you need backlinks for your sites.
• Do’s and dont’s when do linking in SEO
• What to do before you start your link-building strategies.

Today, it’s harder than ever to create and execute a successful backlink-building strategy. In fact, 65% of marketers say that link building is the most challenging SEO task. You must know that you can’t just build a website and then sit back, wait for new customers to come knocking on your virtual door.

You need to do your linking in SEO tactics proactively.

Why do you need linking in SEO?

Do you know that the #1 result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2 to #10? Ranking on the first page of any Google search now requires a web page to be truly valuable

Basically, search engines use links to crawl the web. They will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website and crawl the links between entire websites.

During that process, search engines recognize that the backlink has value and reward the target URL, interpreting the link as fully intentional; they assume there’s been some level of editorial assessment of the target webpage. The more links you have from relevant and authoritative websites, the better your website will perform in search for relevant queries.

In addition, having great backlinks also gets you:

• Referral Traffic: By mentioning your link/website as a source of information, people will click on the link and visit your site in order to find out more.
• Higher Authority: If you look in the dictionary, you’ll see that a person who has authority is “a person with extensive or specialized knowledge about a subject: an expert.” The more good quality websites linking to you means that you are an authority on the subject, the more trustworthy you will become in your field.

Naturally, the more authoritative the site you’re getting backlinks from, the more authority they can transfer on to you. This is why targeting great quality sites for outreach is so important.

As a result, when you get high traffic, enhance your authority, your ranking will also increase.

What is a good backlink in SEO? 

Firstly, a good backlink needs to be relevant.

Relevance refers to the context of the page or website that is linking back to you. Relevance is extremely important for your backlink quality because it sends a signal to the algorithm that the backlink makes sense, adds value to the page, and that because it’s relevant to your business, you are qualified to discuss whatever the subject of the page or website may be about. 

In short, most of your link-building efforts should focus on relevant opportunities. 

But, the problem is there are fewer link-building opportunities that are 100% relevant to your website. Don’t worry, just pay attention to the first idea. 

Then, you need to get links to your site from websites that have organic traffic. In general, sites that are popular in organic search are valuable link-building opportunities.

If a website is getting organic traffic, it likely has authority. Backlink quality considerations around trustworthiness and authority are directly related to the website that is linking to your website. 

Essentially what we are looking at here is how trustworthy or authoritative does Google view the site that is providing a link back to your website. The stronger a website is, the harder it will be to get the link. That makes those links even more valuable, so it’s worth the effort.

Do’s and don’ts when linking in SEO.

Acquiring links that you didn’t ask for is the nirvana of SEO. It’s always something that you should be striving for and building towards over the long term. You do this by putting in the work to make your website link-worthy, whether that’s through a great product or aspect of your service, or via producing great content that is referenced by other websites. 

Here are things that you should avoid during the link-building process, as well as the recommended strategies that you should try out.

Don’ts

Buying Backlinks

Several sites and services help you buy text links on other sites that pass SEO credit. This is probably the most tempting bad link-building strategy. You will get to control what sites you are getting links from and you will also need to analyze these sites to ensure you’re not placing links in bad neighborhoods. If you don’t want to receive a red card from Google, don’t ever buy backlinks.

Not Creating Link-Worthy Content

The simple truth is that if there are no valuable blog posts or pieces of content on your website, it will be hard to get backlinks. This is often the case for websites that prioritize quantity over quality. You need to be a quality source, then more and more people will come to you.

Having Only One Link Building Strategy

Although you might be experiencing a bit of success with a particular method of link building, it’s never the best choice to put all your eggs in one basket. The online world changes every time, and a single link-building method can quickly become less effective.

Do’s

Alongside this long-term approach, you can also leverage a range of link-building techniques which allow you to build your authority and increase your chances of ranking well and getting traffic from organic search.

Build linkbait content

You may have a thousand SEO backlinks and a well-structured site, but they won’t make any sense without valuable content. And genuinely, having quality content makes it more likely for other sites to link. Especially, with quality content, many bloggers will willing to make reference to your site without your having to approach them first. Others in your industry will also be following other websites, such as yours, so to earn a backlink from them you need to make sure you’re worth linkbait content.

The fact that long-form content gets an average of 77.2% more links than short articles. One of the most attractive pieces of content is a complete guide, which is pretty straightforward. Your job is to create the best, most thorough, and most complete resource on a topic ever published.

On the other hand, visual content attracts more links than non-visual content, so you can make use of design images, infographics, and so on.

Broken links building

All you need to do is search great quality sites for broken links, which are used to point to other niche pages but no longer exist. You can point out the broken link in your email and offer a page with similar content on your site. Remember that your content also needs to be up to date and well written. It’s good to look for links that have been neglected by your competitors.

Instead of looking for links that are old or blank pages, you’re looking for links that give a 404 error. If you’ve spent any time on the internet at all, the chances are high that you’ve come across a 404 error a couple of times at least.

Once again, you’ll want to find resource pages for your industry and check them for broken links.

Testimonials

All companies, whether they are big or small, love showing off the testimonials they’ve received from their clients. 

In fact, you’ll notice that most business sites showcase a few select testimonials on their homepage, and a few have whole pages dedicated to customer reviews. And these testimonials always have a link on the homepage – an eye-catching place.

You need to write a short and to-the-point email to pitch your testimonial and how it can add value to the overall site (whom you tested out their product/services). Once you’ve received a green light to go ahead with a testimonial, you can start working on it. Don’t forget to insert your links or business name into the content logically.

Link Reclamation

Sometimes, your business or brand will get mentioned online without any link to your site. This step is usually due to human error, but the good news for you is that it can be a new source of backlinks.

Link reclamation is simple but very powerful. You find that someone has mentioned you on their blog because they like your products or services. They’ve brought your brand or business up as part of a larger narrative and not linking to you, just reach out to them. An email that simply asks them to link to your sites where they mentioned you is great to reclaim your backlinks.

What to do before starting your link-building tactics?

Know your backlink profile

First and foremost, you need to know where you are standing now. 

You can do it step-by-step on Google and collect each backlink manually. All you have to do is open up your search engine of choice. For example, let’s say you’re using Google. Now, in the search bar, you are going to want to write “link:”. After the semicolon, you would then write the name of your website. For example, “link:yoursite.com”. Once you’ve hit search, you will be able to see all of the backlinks that Google has on record. 

Otherwise, there is a more easy way for you: use a backlink checker tool like BacklinkGap. You will see the information on the tool below.

Competitor analysis

Don’t forget to compare yourself to your competitors and see how you stack up against them. The fundamentals of any good marketing strategy start with a competitive analysis, and that’s exactly where the start of your link-building campaign should take you.

To help you create good content that will earn your site backlinks, you want to spy on your competitors. It is very easy to understand because there are chances that they’ve got great content that is already ranking well and has generated a lot of backlinks.

So analyzing your competitor websites will also give you a link if you approach them correctly. You can set up some questions to investigate, like have they done anything that was particularly link-worthy? What sort of things are people linking to in these pages? This should start to give you some idea of what sort of niches are interested in what you do. 

This takes some reverse engineering and seeing how your competitor got the link in the first place. Did they write great content? Did they share an infographic? Then when you find out the answer, you can try to replicate this method for yourself.

Use a backlink checker tool – BacklinkGap

Many different tools can help you check whether your backlinks are trustworthy and bring your website value. BacklinkGap is one tool that stands out from the crowd and is definitely free for you to use.

Backlink checker:

• Identify all backlinks’ “friendliness” and authoritativeness.
• Strengthen your backlink profile by identifying new and lost opportunities, a number of backlinks, and referral domains.
• Uncover your nofollow, dofollow and broken links.
• Manage your disavowed or to-be-disavowed links.
• Uncover spammy domains pointing at you.

You can also share your report with BacklinkGap. You can share the pattern of your backlinks to any one with filtering the row and data to share. The backlink report can help you see your changing pattern.

If you wish to monitor your backlink profile daily, monthly and even yearly, BacklinkGap has its monitoring feature. It helps you identify the movement of all the backlinks pointing to you. The status of the backlink is also at the top of the dashboard.

Also, you can analyse your competitors’ backlink profiles just by entering their URL/domain. 

TL;DR

The art of getting more backlinks is a massive topic. You should always keep your eye on your backlink profiles when performing SEO tasks. Do not buy links, create useless content, or have only one link-building strategy to strengthen your profile. In contrast, if you want more backlinks, try to create more link bait content, fix broken links, try out testimonials and reclaim your unmentioned link.

After all, a backlink checker tool like BacklinkGap can help you on linking in SEO.