– What exactly is your backlink profile, and why is it much needed for SEO?
You will find in this article the significance of creating a solid profile that navigates you through the maze of backlinks with confidence. Sip your cup of coffee, and keep scrolling to learn how to build a powerful backlink profile for an effective SEO.
Every piece of web content is compiled to feature any service that’s provided, the company, or the brand at the top of search engine rankings.
Making their site to the top of search engine results pages has become the pinnacle for digital marketers who are employing SEO strategies.
The major reason for this is that the first five organic results on the first page of search results account for nearly 70% of clicks. That’s incredibly massive!
As links persist to remain a powerful ranking signal for search, SEO, link building, and creating a stronger link profile are mandatory these days.
Search engines are completely dependent on links. And, it is based on the links the search engines filter, pick, and present the relevant pages on search results.
Now, what would you suggest to be the best way to position your site on top of SE rankings? Strong backlinks.
On the other hand, building a solid backlink profile may sound to be a complex task. Yes, 41% of SE0 experts believe so, but fear no more!
You are stuck here for good. You are to get a clear idea of the most needed unique link-building strategies that can propel your backlink profile and skyrocket your search rankings. But before that, let’s define link building.
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of acquiring a hyperlink from an external website that links to your website.
Link building is the central figure when it comes to the world of SEO.
It increases organic traffic, improves search engine rankings, and implants trust, especially in competitive niches.
For quick understanding, think of another website or a business directing their users back to you as a source for quality information.
Along with other fatty SEO strategies such as on-page SEO, outstanding content, etc. link-building tactics can be remarkably effective at upgrading your business.
Why is Link Building Important?
We can infer the strong correlation between ranking and backlinks from considerable data-backed examinations.
Backlinks being one of the factors to rank on Google is crucial for SEO success!
Furthermore, backlinks continue to be a solid ranking factor since the 1990s.
Even, Larry Page, one of Google’s founders developed PageRank. Google used it to estimate the quality of a page based on the number of backlinks.
Since then, this metric is utilized as a large part of the overall ranking system engaged in Google’s algorithm to this date.
This is exactly how Google can display much more beneficial search results than other competitors such as Bing, Yahoo, Go-Daddy, etc.
With that note, I can comprehend the terms backlinks and referring domains may seem super confusing- I’ll explain.
A referring domain is usually defined as a unique domain with at least one link to your site.
According to Ahrefs, the number of referring domains to a page contributes to the highest correlating factor!
The number of unique referring domains is a significant metric as it’s common for a domain to link to the same website more than once.
Image, if search engines were to be strictly programmed to estimate the page quality with just the number of backlinks, sites with a thousand links from only one referring domain would monopolize the web.
As per the case study from Backlinko, the direct correlation between rankings and the number of referring domains is inevitable.
Link-building strategies are essential to build organic traffic and convert leads into qualified clients.
This graph perfectly depicts that the more websites that refer back to you signals the search engines algorithm to see that your site is a source of trustworthy and incalculable information.
Here’s why building a strong backlink profile matters for effective SEO,
Enhanced Search Engine Rankings: Backlinks are considered to be significant factors for search engines like Google to evaluate the credibility and relevance of a site.
That’s the reason websites with a strong backlink profile never miss to rank higher in SERP results, this in turn increases your site visibility and drives more organic traffic.
Improved Website Authority: When any reputable sites link to your content, search engines will receive a signal that your site is a reliable source. This way backlinks become your website’s vote of confidence.
Thus the act of building your website’s authority within your niche, and implanting trust among your clients becomes a task made easy for you.
A rise in Referral Traffic: Backlinks generate much referral traffic apart from propelling your site’s visibility in search engines.
So, when clients click on relevant backlinks, they get directed to your site. This flow smoothly and effectively increases your site’s followers and drive more targeted clients.
Gaining Competitive Advantage: Gain strong dominance over your competitors with a strong backlink profile.
Achieve this successfully by collecting high-quality backlinks. By doing so you shall outrank them in search results, draw the attention of more site visitors, and own an authoritative voice to strongly establish your brand in your niche.
Indexing and Crawling: Backlinks take up a major role when it comes to search engine crawling and indexing.
Search engine bots shall discover and try to index your content when other sites link to your site. Thus, ensuring all your pages appear in search results.
Therefore to establish a strong backlink profile effective for SEO, you need to concentrate on providing high-quality, and relevant backlinks.
Identify your target audience by engaging in comprehensive research, which also paves the way to analyze your competitors’ strategies.
With a well-planned strategy monitor your backlinks periodically, and overcome common pitfalls without any hassle.
What are the Attributes of Backlinks?
As you know, backlinks can be segregated as do follow and nofollow.
It blindly seems to mean as,
do-follow links pass all the ranking juice, and no-follow links are overlooked by search engines.
This is not precisely how it works.
Google takes “nofollow” and other link attributes as “hints”.
Furthermore, it has been substantiated that even specific trusted nofollow links will pass the ranking juice as well.
Wikipedia is an excellent example to explain this case. Though Wikipedia links are always nofollow they are still known to be promising for SERP.
Moreover, a healthy and strong backlink profile must contain the right balance of both dofollow and nofollow links. That is preferably around 70% of dofollow and 30% of nofollow links.
If all of the backlinks in your profile are dofollow, it would for sure look bizarre to the search engine.
Whereas, if all of your backlinks are nofollow, your profile would be deemed as improbable to give you a considerable boost in rankings.
Apart from this, there are two more link attributes that Google has brought up just lately.
They are “ugc” and “sponsored” and these two are nothing but “hints” and variations of nofollow links.
“ugc” denotes user-generated content, and several blogs will still add their attribute to any links included by users in their comments.
This way of inclusion shall not necessarily subvert the link completely, yet if your link profile contains all of those links, then it is a warning sign to search engines.
Search engines would assume that you may have gotten involved in link farming.
This can be ruled out by keeping those links to a healthy minimum digit.
However, blog commenting has never been an ideal strategy to build backlinks. Forum link building does a much better job, and bear in mind that very few forums include the “ugc” tag to their links.
And then we have the “sponsored” links. These links indicate the specific link comes from if it is from an affiliate or commercial source.
Meanwhile, these links can’t be exceptionally valuable for climbing higher up the SERPs. These are often included by a few websites in any of the affiliate links.
There could be no wrong with that. While building a strong backlink profile remember these attributes as they can be of great help.
How to Build a Strong Link Profile?
There are an array of link-building tactics to choose from when you start to work with links, but all of them can be squeezed under three umbrellas:
- Create a Perfect Linkable Content
The right way to naturally gain links is to create content people would always prefer to link to. This consists of:
Niche-oriented research
Valuable-content
Statistics
Local guides
You can also follow the skyscraper technique of identifying the top-level content ranking for a keyword, and then develop your version and slowly improvise on it.
With a more comprehensive guide, you can reach out to the websites linking to the real content and suggest updating their link with your piece of content.
- Convert mentions into links.
There’s an easy way to achieve this, make use of the top-notch social media listening software or set up a Google alert (it’s free) to scrutinize the web for mentions of your brand name or members of your business.
In case a website mentions you and fails to include a link, that’s your backlink target.
Reach out to them and thank them for the coverage. Then ask them about linking to your site for their users to know more.
- Guest blog for relevant sites.
Your business would have a lot to offer to clients globally and even an innovative perspective to share the knowledge amassed on specific issues affecting your clients in that particular niche.
You may have got a list of the best tricks and tips that could be of great use to your clients.
Hunt for relevant publications within your niche and carry out immersive research on which blogs and articles your clients are after. Then reach out with your pitch.
By doing so you will end up partnering with any renowned digital marketing agencies. Such reputed agencies or service providers can genuinely leverage your link-building efforts.
- Get Linked with Your Community.
Among all practices securing backlinks through your tribe and websites you’re already connected to is an easy and advisable move.
You can carry on with case studies from your satisfied clients and other pieces of content from partners or influencers you know and work with.
Sometimes clients or your partners may then share such articles or your case studies on their blogs too.
To make this process even more effective you can partner with reputed service providers or other collaborators, who are ready to share links. Grow and let grow mutually.
In the case of being a local business never ignore the act of gathering local links as well. The first and foremost step for local businesses is to complete your Google Business Profile. This move will help you get local citations from other directories, sites and any local listings.
- Mindfully Optimize anchor text.
Finally, try not to get too tempted with producing more guest posts and link those posts to your most trusted keywords.
Unfortunately, tactics like this would look very ugly in the eyes of Google. Instead, try to link your site within your articles using a keyword without being a lot more repetitive.
Most of the strategies and criteria we outlined above are trusted pieces of suggestions from the experience of digital marketers.
Now Over to You
At last, analyzing your link profile is the only way to learn how your link building is performing. And, this is the first step that leads you to find a way to build a strong backlink profile for effective SEO.
In brief, building a strong link profile will let you stay stocked up with a balance of nofollow links, dofollow links, and good backlinks from high-authority sites within your niche.
It’s much needed to establish connections by actively reaching out to relevant sites and influencers and asking them to link back to your site.
Calculatively building strong relationships within your niche will significantly contribute to a strong backlink profile.
Additionally, making the best guest blogging without overusing the opportunity allows you to showcase the skill you’ve mastered and link back to your website.
Remember to avoid paid links and links from low-authority sites at the same time disavow the bad links
These tips and techniques are ineffective if they lack a good anchor text and if they aren’t placed within the right context and ensure that your profile continues to stay strong, reputable and effective for Search engine optimization.