Exclusively reputable sites receive a high “Google” rating.  Reputation is confirmed by quoting, which is a process when your site is being quoted by other resources and post links for your company. For beginners, obtaining external links can be difficult and confusing. Let’s understand off-page optimization together.

Лінкбілдінг - побудова SEO посилань на сайт

When choosing a linkbuilding strategy, someone prefers quality content, link search, PBN, or email newsletters. There is no right answer in the SEO sphere – planning and implanting of each project is strictly individual. We have experience and several easy tips for beginners. By following these tips, you can start building external links to your website right away.

Basics for linkbuilding

Let’s start with the linkbuilding base. Building back links is the organization process of adding new links from external web platforms to your site. This process aims to increase the authority of your landing pages for Google’s algorithms. Top rankings in search engine results bring search traffic, i.e. more website visitors.

The site has to have the right link profile – a complex of all external links and anchors (clickable text where the link on the site is hidden). You need to work on the linking profile, to constantly check and improve it.

In general, there are two steps in getting links in a legal way:

  1. To create value that you want to spread through the links.
  2. To show it to people who own websites and administrate them.

Backlinks are one of the most important factors in Google ranking along with the completeness of the content, thematic authority, usability, speed of page loading and optimization for the mobile format, etc.

You will need links to solve two issues:

  • To help search robots realize the value of your site;
  • higher search positions are better viewed by Internet users and generate more traffic (and the number of visitors is also taken into account by search engines).

Creating the biggest quantity of backlinks among competitors doesn’t mean becoming the leader of site rating. Firstly, different links have different weight, and secondly, the position in the search results is determined by a complex set of variables that depend on a particular search query.

Створення зовнішніх посилань на сайт

Let’s discuss the tactics for getting links on the site. There are 4 ways:

  • manual work;
  • getting organic links with the valuable content;
  • asking from the owners of web platforms;
  • buying on agreement basics.

Profiles in social media, listings in online catalogs, commentaries, and publications on forums and platforms are all forms of manual submits. This is the easiest creation of links that your competitors probably do. However, there is a benefit for your cause:

  • by registering in well-known directories and local listings, you will inform potential customers about your business;
  • social networking builds a loyal audience around your business and constantly reminds you of your presence online and offline;
  • intelligent commenting on a blog article on a similar topic will make your brand stand out among the interested target audience, but the links posted there may not count as a citation – the search engine does not give them much weight.

If people share the links with your material without additional motivation, it means your texts, pictures, and videos are fantastic. The features of the quality content: uniqueness, usefulness for the target audience, actuality, intelligence, expert opinion, originality, and experimenting with the formats.

Try to make sure that as many people as possible find out about your page. Some of them will click through to read it, and a certain percentage of readers will share the information through the link. Facebook Ads, email, and social networks are good for promoting content, but you should keep a balance and not be intrusive.

It’s better to focus on new subscribers. If you want people to talk about, you should impress, give value, and fill with emotions. 

People enjoy such formats as infographics, research of data, survey, maps, interviews, and expert opinions. 

This approach is based on mutual benefit. You need to offer the owner or administrator of the website the reason why there is an advantage to give a link for you. You may appeal to such interests:

  • guest blog;
  • links exchange;
  • you give an expert opinion;
  • if your image was used, ask to put in credits;
  • you offer a better resource them the one they have already;
  • you mention their work in your material;
  • give positive feedback;
  • help to fix the unworkable link on their site;
  • if you found mentioning of your brand, ask to make it clickable.

To increase your chances for an agreement with the webmasters, you can offer them additional bonuses in the shape of exchange, payment, free access to product\services, and ads from you. However, note that Google negatively views such motivations. You need to find the balance and join the classical outreach with two-sided benefits.

Buying links has certain risks. SEO beginners can purchase poor-quality links and call the sanctions of the search engines on themselves. We can give only one recommendation – trust experienced masters of linkbuilding, who had many projects and who made the right conclusions in the process of site promotion.

Safe placement is based on 3 principles:

  • relevant resources;
  • metrics check;
  • careful manual work;
  • experience.
Buy the link for the site

There is some research on building a website’s ranking through backlinks: after removing the latter, the high ranking remains unchanged. It means that Google continues to index the pages and is transferring the part of link weight even after their removal. It’s a great sign for people who work in the area of linkbuilding because it means you can care a lot less about the renewal of the lost.

At the same time, if you lost a link from “popular” web resources that led users to you, try to return it. Also, fix the 404 pages with not working backlinks (use specialized services, for example, Ahrefs Broken Link Checker.

Якісні посилання для SEO

Google holds in secret rating algorithms so the quality of each link is really under scrutiny. SEO practitioners consider that the backlinks are evaluated under the following criteria:

  • authority;
  • relevance;
  • anchor text;
  • placement;
  • where they lead;
  • follow or nofollow attribute.

Authority

The authority of landing pages and a website is based on Google’s PageRank algorithm, which recognizes a page with more backlinks as better. A link from an old site, from a page that has been cited a lot for a long time brings the most value.

You can also bet on relatively new pages to place a link. But only on those that will attract backlinks in the long run.

The authority of a website is reflected in the DR metric – domain ranking. This metric gives us an understanding of how much the profile is saturated with backlinks. We recommend investing efforts and budget in obtaining links from reputable sites, and at the same time, do not neglect the opportunity to attract sites with low DR if it is quick and easy.

DR is an indirect metric in the popular backlink analysis service Ahrefs. The metric is not 100% reliable and can be artificially increased by webmasters.

Relevance

Search engine considers that the topic of donor site and acceptor must be matching. Or the page theme at least has to be connected to the link. Because the person is looking for information and wants to receive it according to the relevance of the query.

So, be selective- do not use each and every chance to create the link. Think whether it will be of benefit to the user.

Anchor text 

That fragment of the text which you need to click on to go to another page is called the anchor text. The anchor usually describes where or why you need to visit another page. Google uses the anchor texts to improve the search quality and give ratings to the site. It’s a great temptation to control each link that leads to your site. 

Be careful with that: search engines will put sanctions for interference in the process of rating. Do not overdo optimization at this stage. 

The placement

There are 3 rules based on logic and statistics:

  • content, sidebar, and footer are the three blocks of a web page where you can leave a link; place the link in the content and you will get more attention and clicks;
  • a link in the first half of the text has a better chance of being seen;
  • do not insert many links in one text, as this will increase the competition between them for clicks and reduce the authority transferred to the pages.

Where they lead 

Backlinks can lead to the main page of your site or other link assets, or to a concrete landing page that you promote through Google. Search system rightfully considers that people prefer useful information to selling one. Try to lead your traffic to link assets (noncommercial, interesting, and useful pages) after using the inner link to lead the user where you need him. For example, lead them to your blog so that from your article, the user was led to the main page. But do not forget that links for the main page are unavoidable.

Dofollow or nofollow attribute

Each link has an attribute written in the HTML code, which is used by the search engine to decide whether to include the citation in the ranking or not. This approach has been in place since 2019:

  • In the case of a nofollow attribute, the “vote” is not counted or its significance is reduced;
  • dofollow – the link is counted by the algorithm. By default, links are dofollowed unless otherwise specified;
  • rel=”UGC” – denotes user-generated content, for example, comments on forums and blogs;
  • rel=”sponsored” – denotes advertising integrations.

Dofollow is an absolute priority in link building on the Internet, but nofollow links from highly authoritative pages are also important now.

Read more on Google’s blog here.

Стратегії лінкбілдінгу

There are 4 reliable approaches to building links: guest blog, content promotion, link assets, and following the competitor links. Let’s look at them in detail.

Guest blog 

The paradox of publishing is that high-quality “promoted” blogs can handle good content on their own and rarely need third-party materials. And you need them, not third-rate sites with no traffic. How to get on their blog?

  1. Demonstrate expertise and copywriting skills.
  2. Go through the process of publishing from lesser-known blogs to niche leaders.

In special services, you can filter the ranking of websites by DR or traffic and offer content to “simpler” blogs first, gradually moving to the leaders.

  1. To stand out among all the “guests” who offer articles to your blog, analyze the content of your blog and find “gaps” – topics that bring a lot of traffic to your competitors but are missed here.
  2. Another option is to analyze the articles in the vine, identify ineffective ones, and offer to rewrite an old article to make it more valuable and relevant.

Висновок: не пропонуйте просто цікавий контент. Дайте вигоду.

Content promotion

For your materials to be distributed online, you need to show them to the general public. Use communities and advertising, and conduct outreach.

  1. Communities. Like-minded people communicate in large groups on social media. Look for them, join discussions, build a reputation, and promote only the best materials. Also, try to create your own community of interested people who will be waiting and happy to receive information from you. A private Facebook group, Twitter subscription, or email newsletter are all things you can offer your audience. However, keep in mind that building a quality community takes a lot of time and effort.
  2. Advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and Google will bring you quality visitors. Negotiate advertising integration with popular websites where “your” people visit. It’s hard to predict exactly how many links advertising will bring. But you can experiment with the budget and draw your own conclusions. Invest in content marketing only if you are confident in the quality of the materials.
  3. Information work. Promote your materials properly – immediately write to site owners about the benefits that your article will provide and the uniqueness you offer. Site owners really appreciate the author’s research, infographics, and guides.

Link assets are pages created specifically to attract links from other sites in your niche. This approach increases search traffic from one page of the site to another, increases referral traffic from a third-party site to you, raises popularity, and builds brand loyalty.

Check your competitors to see which pages they have the most links to. Use these topics and types of content for your project. These can be online calculators, gifs, research, surveys, guides, terms, ratings, etc. Analyze and use the knowledge gained to create your own resource with links.

Here are the triggers that can work and make users share content:

  • solving a specific problem
  • unique research data
  • confirmation of an opinion with evidence;
  • simply relevant material with interesting facts.

Google has already pointed out the rating leaders, so you must follow the tactics of your competitors and try to overcome them. Search on keywords  the number of backlinks that the best sites received based on the opinion of the search engine. Next, look for the entrance on the pages which lead to your competitor. Try to win your place in the reviews and in expert articles. Have an agreement with the top platforms. 

Automate link building. You can get help from:

  • services of backlink research;
  • instruments for content research;
  • web services for link search;
  • email programs.

Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic, and Moz  are the most famous analytical services that provide information about links. It’s enough to enter the URL in the special form to get the report about it with the number of links to it. This data can be filtered and developed into the original promotion strategy.

Instruments for content research

Follow the content types that generate many links. Also, look for the chances to be added to common publications. You can use the functionality of Ahrefs or Buzzsumo.

Content Explorer or Link Prospector will help to collect the Google-search results on keywords . Pages that fit the topic can be filtered by quality and can be defined for whom to send the query for the placement. We recommend additionally turning on web-monitoring instruments and looking through the new pages with backlinks of competitors and mentions of your keywords, for example, Whitespark, Brend24, and Mention.

Email programs

Pay attention to great opportunities provided by Hunter, Buzzstream, Neverbounce, Mailshake, Clearout, or Pitchbox. They can manage backlinking companies, track them, create templates for outreach, and send requests.

What conclusions you can make 

Planning promotion processes and link building itself is time-consuming and requires professional skills and knowledge. If you are starting to understand this topic on your own, experiment, create good content, and consult with our experts to get the result as soon as possible.

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