Backlink Bonanza: Strategies to Skyrocket Your SEO Rankings

Guest post Don’t know what to do on a winter day in Adelaide? Want to get more traffic to your website or just simply want to know a tiny bit more about backlinks (who doesn’t like a bit of nerdy reading).   If you are reading this article, you probably are a bit familiar with the concept of backlinks, but just to be clear, let’s take a step back and cover the basics. Backlinks, at its core, is your website getting a vote from another website. The vote in this context is the link. It’s like saying “hey this website is trustworthy, and I recommend it”. Ideally you want votes from websites where there is a logical connection to your business. So for a copywriting business the most obvious recommendation would be getting backlinks from other copywriters. But if we zoom out a little there are more opportunities – startup founders, small business owners, freelancers and marketing managers are just a few. Building backlinks is a long-term strategy but when done ethically and with no “quick wins” methods, it is one of the best ways to boost your SEO rankings and give your business more leads and more revenue.   The goal of this article is not to go into details about the technical aspects and all metrics but instead giving you a more general overview how to approach building backlinks. Don’t think about links This is a link building article about backlinks. So the title may seem a bit strange but bear with me. Let’s say you are a Solar Installation company working in Adelaide and you want more business. Your primary instinct would probably not be “I need to hurry and build some backlinks”. No, you would probably have a few meetings (hopefully not too many of the boring ones) and define your ideal clients: what sort of clients do you want more of? What sort of clients do you want fewer of? The same goes for geographical areas. Are there any suburbs that are more interesting for your business? Maybe you see that the jobs you do in North Adelaide are bigger and more profitable than the ones you do in Marion. That is all very important and solid information that will help you when you are implementing a link building strategy.   Getting the foundations right You can have the best and most relevant links in the world, but if you don’t have your on-page factors in place, they will do very little for your business. It’s all about getting the foundations right! So after you have done the first step it’s time checking how your own website is doing. These are some of the things you want to make sure are in place: What is working for your competitors? Whether we are talking about link building, SEO in general or some other business related topic – you should always assess the market and do some market research. So choose three competitors that offer the same products or services as you do and then analyse their backlink profile. The goal is not to steal their backlinks. Instead, we want to look for patterns. What kind of links are they building? What anchor text are they using? What prospecting angles can you discover?  This is valuable information that you want to take notes on. Find people you like, not websites with names Human aspect first! To get valuable links you have to be able to actually make someone else understand that you not only looked at their website but show them in what way their audience would benefit from the type of link you are trying to pitch. So before you start emailing someone you need to determine what group (or ideally sub-group) you want to target and really define in what way they make sense to your business (if they don’t make sense to you, they will not make sense to search engines). Then it’s about finding these real human beings – and there are many ways of going about doing this. One suggestion is that you identify what specific keywords companies in that group or sub-group would rank for and add search operators such as +inurl: blog or “how to”, or “tips”. You can also go for an already pre-made list by typing your chosen subgroup and “100 best XXXX” XXXX being your subgroup. BOOM! 100 prospects right there. It’s all about being creative and thinking outside that very scary narrow box, because if you write target keyword + “write for us” (if you’re going for guest posts), chances are that thousands of link builders are before you in line and you will most likely have to pay your way forward. Email them and show who you are (quite literally) When you finally start doing outreach, make sure you email a real human being – not any info@addresses. You should have a clear plan of what kind of link you are going for, who you are targeting (and why) and what’s in it for the person receiving the email – and their audience.   Let’s say you are going for a guest post, you want to make sure you do some research beforehand and check out what other blog posts the website (ideally the person you are emailing) have published before. Was there something in particular that you actually liked (not fake flattery). I recommend using a proper outreach tool like Buzzstream but if you are a small business owner you can do it via your normal email, as long as you don’t mass-email thousands of people. Show the person in the first email some suggestions on topics and why these topics would be relevant and helpful for their readers. Be personable, be prepared to negotiate and always think about the human aspect first.   In this article I have discussed important steps to get more traffic and more leads from your website. The right types of backlinks are relevant to you and your

Backlinks: the Avocado to Your SEO

What are backlinks? Backlinks, also known as inbound links or incoming links, are links from external websites that point to a specific page on your website. They are an important factor in search engine optimisation (SEO) because they signal to search engines that your website is reputable and valuable. It lets readers know that your site is one to read and provides a certain level of confidence.  When other websites link to your website, it can increase your search engine ranking and drive more traffic. And it helps boost your domain authority. Which, you know I bang on about. There are many ways to get backlinks, such as by creating high-quality content that other websites want to link to (probably the best way if you ask me), participating in online communities and forums related to your industry, and reaching out to other websites to ask for a link. How important are backlinks for SEO? Backlinks are hugely important. Link I’ve suggested in the title, backlinks are basically to SEO what the avocado is to any meal. Some SEO specialists even purport it to be one of the top factors. In fact, Google purports it to be one of its top three ranking factors! When other websites link to your website, it can increase your search engine ranking and drive more traffic to your site. However, it’s important to remember that the quality of the backlinks you have is more important than the quantity. Having a large number of low-quality backlinks can actually harm your search engine ranking. It’s also important to note that backlinks are just one factor among many that search engines consider when ranking websites. Other factors include the quality and relevance of your website’s content, the structure and organisation of your website, and the user experience provided by your website. To improve your search engine ranking, it’s important to focus on building a robust and diverse backlink profile by acquiring high-quality backlinks from a variety of reputable websites. And these websites need to have a higher domain authority than your website. Of course, the higher, the better.  What is a high-quality backlink? A high-quality backlink is a link from an external website to your website that is considered valuable by search engines. These types of backlinks are important for search engine optimisation (SEO) because they signal to search engines that your website is one that needs to be read and will be credible. You know, one that follows the EEAT formula.  There are several factors that contribute to the quality of a backlink: It’s important to focus on building a strong, diverse backlink profile by acquiring these linkbacks from a variety of reputable websites. This can help improve your search engine ranking and drive more traffic to your site. What domain authority should you place a backlink on? Domain authority (DA) is a metric that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. It is based on a number of factors, including the number and quality of backlinks pointing to a website, the age of the domain, the overall quality of the website’s content, and the website’s user experience. You really need to be linking back from a website that is pretty high because websites with a high DA are more likely to rank well on search engines, and a backlink from a high-DA website can help improve the search engine ranking of the linked website. However, it’s important to remember that the quality of the backlink is more important than the domain authority of the linking website. A high-quality backlink from a website with a low domain authority can still be valuable, while a low-quality backlink from a website with a high domain authority can be harmful. It’s also worth noting that domain authority is just one factor that search engines consider when ranking websites. Other factors, such as the quality and relevance of a website’s content, the structure and organisation of the website, and the user experience provided by the website, are also important. Tips for link building: Now, there’s no point putting the horse before the cart. Don’t leap into your backlinking project before you have written exceptional content. That means your main web pages need to be optimised and well-written, and you should have a handful of excellent cornerstone content blog posts.  But if you have that in place, here are my recommendations for starting to acquire backlinks that will take your SEO strategy to the next level.  Semrush recommends creating juicy assets that sites will naturally want to link to and share with their audiences. Such as: And, ‘companies who engage in blogging receive 97% more backlinks to their site,’ states HubSpot. So you must blog! How can you approach site owners for backlinks? Here are a few key steps you can follow to approach site owners effectively (without offending or blacklisting yourself): Needless to say, it’s important to be respectful and professional in your outreach and to focus on building mutually beneficial relationships rather than just acquiring links.