5 winning strategies to create more quality backlinks
Creating quality backlinks to your site or “link building” is an essential part of SEO to improve your site position on search engines like Google. The creation of links from external sites to yours is a task all in of itself in any good long-term SEO strategy. For Google, the links that point to your site are one of the main criteria it uses to estimate your site’s relevance to a query and the competition for that query.
To a certain extent, if your website has many links pointing to it from a quality group of diverse sites across the web, this can signal that your site has a “good reputation,” that your site is trustworthy.
This reputation is commonly referred to as authority. The authority of a website is influenced by one factor: the makeup of external links that point to the website. The more Google has confidence in your backlinks profile and its content, the more likely it will be highlighting it in its search results by giving it a favourable position.
Backlinks and actively building links are therefore a fundamental element of SEO. Specifically, this is the part of SEO that has led to the off-page SEO industry. The better backlinks you have, the higher the chances your site will be well-positioned in Google results.
Logically, it stands to reason that at one point one has to ask:
Does your website have a good reputation with Google? Is the backlink profile pointing to your site such that Google sees your site as an authoritative source of information?
Whatever the answer, the goal of this article is to help understand how to go about getting your site quality backlinks? What are the best practices and mistakes to avoid making the most out of the time you spend on this SEO opportunity?
In this article, we will answer the following questions:
- What is a backlink that is of good quality?
- Which backlinking strategies work best?
What is a quality backlink?
First off, we’ve built a glossary of web marketing terms if you need further understanding of what a backlink or any other related term is. To estimate the popularity and notoriety of a site, Google analyzes the number and the quality of the links which point to a site. The quality of the inbound links depends on several criteria, including but not limited to:
- The relevancy of the links: a link from one domain and/or URL that logically makes sense to be linked to your site constitutes relevancy of a link.
- Good domain authority: links from sites labeled with a high domain authority or DA (a term popularized by Moz) are links that can be said to be of high authoritativeness and so desirable to add to a website’s backlink profile.
- Diversified link profile: this describes having links from a multitude of websites from across the Internet, for example, coming from different sources such as blogs, directories, press releases, and the like.
- Link uses a good semantic anchor: the text used in the link that points to your site is varied between brand-related terms, specific subject-related terms, and general or not specified terms.
The makeup of a good backlink profile following the above criteria seems then to be a rather simple equation:
Backlink = relevance + domain authority + diversified links
However, it turns out that building a backlink profile or even a link is more complicated than first meets the eye.
With that being said, let’s move on to discuss what we think are some of the five (5) most effective strategies for link building. Make note, there are many more strategies possible, but we have limited ourselves to 5 backlink strategies that we at our agency particularly like.
Here are 5 good practices that can be implemented easily and that will with time bring your websites visibility much better results in the search engine ranking pages:
Why does Google consider infographics to be quality links? The infographics are currently one of the most effective ways to encourage sharing on the Internet due to their structured nature and so have naturally higher chances of being shared. Infographics make for great natural backlinks. They have become extremely popular with a large audience on the web.
They offer a visual diagram that combines colours, tables, graphics, and icons more often readable than a long explanatory paragraph. Infographics change complex data into a visual representation that is pleasant and attractive to read.
That said, before you publish your infographic, it is important that you spend some time researching the content strategy behind your infographic. A poorly made infographic generates little traffic and certainly few to no shares.
To help you get an important backlink for your website, don’t underestimate the copy or text. It should include one or more words you want to target. This will help make your infographic a great source for people to want to link to. Doing all of this will increase the chances of using an infographic to help influence and ultimately better rank your site with Google.
Have you noticed that some articles have additional resources, recommended in the text, or in a “Learn more” section?
These links embedded in the text of an article are called contextual links. Search engines often perceive contextual links in close relation to the content and especially with the dominant keywords of the page.
Internal contextual links use one-page text links to target pages on the same site that provide additional information on the keyword or key phrase named in the contextual link. Ultimately, being featured in the “Learn More” section is extremely valuable to your SEO performance.
Many SEO specialists use contextual links to increase PageRank (PR) and the positioning of their site in search engines. You can find contextual links by looking for articles that are related to the content you are promoting and that already have a “Learn More” section.
As long as a contextual link serves only to promote a site, even paid, contextual link may generate some positive SEO. The webmaster that places contextual links must, however, take care that the links do not target sites on the blacklist of engines or that it does not join a system of link farms.
Our next backlink strategy…
Brian Dean of Backlinko is cited as inventing the skyscraper method stating:
What you do with the Skyscraper method is to find the highest “skyscraper” in your space … and climb 20 stories to the top.
Writing Skyscraper content is therefore built around a few key criteria, namely
- Content that is longer, more researched, better understood by the author, more detailed, and more relevant vis-à-vis a phrase, keyword, or idea.
- Create outbound links of high quality to a good number of authority sites.
- Measure the ratio of the number of visits to the article compared to the number of impressions. In other words, the click-through rate on your SEO content.
Now let’s see the three separate steps that make a perfect on-page Skyscraper page.
First, perform web searches based on the keyword that you want to optimize for.
When looking at the results for your industry that appear on the first page, you should dig into and analyze the backlinks of your competitors. If you want to maximize your time, it is recommended to use SEO tools that bring together the research work into one hub.
Although tools facilitate the task, the judgment of an SEO expert will be required to sift through the discovered links found by the tool. However, we can conclude that the content of the first three results on the first page is often well structured on the technical side of SEO and we can draw inspiration from it.
This is the first step.
Then, keep in mind Brian Dean’s quote above the content produced must be greater than the power 10 of what already exists on the canvas. He recommends improving these four aspects:
- Length: If an article contains 25 tips, make one with 30 tips;
- Up to date: Check if the article you are viewing does not contain outdated information. Otherwise, do your research to find recent content. Update your page with images, screenshots, information, etc., that is all recent;
- Visual: An article is not just words, add images, screenshots an infographic and take care of the aesthetics of the presentation;
- Thoroughness: Add relevant details to your text that can be used by the reader instead of making an enumerative article.
Finally, contact authority sites by e-mail to promote your “Skyscraper” content. It is at this stage that you must demonstrate the seriousness of your approach while demonstrating the quality of your work. It is not a question of “spamming” their site (one already exists quite like it on the web), but strongly promoting the importance of a well-written and researched piece of information others can use to add value to their own.
What are the best SEO methods in 2020?
Two major trends have emerged in the SEO industry as elements to be considered in SEO’s toolbox in 2020. Those being voice search and promotional video.
Voice Search
Why not adapt your content by tailoring it to voice search to increase the opportunity of your content being found? Voice search is increasingly considered in SEO best practices to be an element that done right will help a site rank at the top of Google results. The popular SEO tools SEMrush now shows this in these revealing statistics. 70% of the answers obtained by voice search occupy a SERP functionality, and 60% of them return a Featured Snippet.
Video Search
The second point is to focus on is the concept of “best content.” Brian Dean discusses it in his process of creating backlinks. Video represents an excellent opportunity for backlinks. Just think of recycling the content of your most popular blog post to make it a YouTube video link in interactive form.
These two points demonstrate that the integration of the video like voice search is now the main staple to consider in current SEO practice in 2020.
The strategy of broken links is a tactic that consists of finding broken links, that is to say, dead links, on the web. It can be frustrating for Internet users to find a “Page not found” or a 404 error. The goal here is to help them, thus helping yourself.
Not only can the webmaster or site owner lose credibility, valued traffic, or business, but it can also affect the SEO health of a website. In addition to providing him with some help by notifying him/her of the broken link, this action can also be a good opportunity to propose an exchange with them linking to your site.
For example, you can find external links are blog posts from a known site that you like. If you find a broken link to another blog post, you can write to the webmaster. Suggest that he replace the dead link with one of your relevant articles related to the subject.
So, if he accepts, you will have won a new backlink. It is a good opportunity technique both in terms of making it easier for site owners and reducing bad user experiences. Consider including the broken link strategy when it comes time to make your off-page optimization (SEO) strategy.
As you can see, there are several strategies for creating links online.
Many people still, however, underestimate the power of working towards increasing their visibility on search engine results page (SERP). Worse, they don’t clearly see the value of their company’s bottom line.
Knowing well in advance exactly what keyword you are trying to rank for can help you uncover a treasure trove of information. Once you know what you want to rank for, a search on Google can reveal the wealth of content-related and surrounding your query. With the results from the SERP, you can manipulate the results with some help from browser extensions to highlight metrics, you want to analyze.
Take for example the industry sector of tourism and adventure travel.
Many people are unaware of different Boolean operators they could use for their query:
inurl: submission-guidelines + adventure trips,
inurl: write for us + the preparation steps
preparation + guest post + travel
choose + backpack
SEO’s today have to consider strategic planning to ensure they increase the number of links based on industry. Several tools or extensions can be added to your browser to sort the results of your findings in SERP. Mastery of these tools can help one spot opportunities specific to your industry to, for example, write a blog for a site that accepts external collaborators.
This is not easy, but the more your state of mind is oriented towards the relevance of links instead of abundance, the more your SEO effort will be recognized by Google.
Bonus Tip! Never forget to geotag your content based on where you offer your products or services.
As we have just seen, strategies to create quality backlinks take time and energy. By properly using tools available coupled with good judgment, you will be able to offer your potential readers quality content that will be more likely something they’d link to. About us: WebCie is a Montreal-based digital marketing agencythat loves working with local businesses to help them in their SEO and backlinks creation endeavours.
