What is a Backlink Profile?
Before learning how to get backlinks, it's crucial to grasp the concept of a backlink profile. A backlink profile collects all inbound links pointing to a particular website.
This profile serves as a significant indicator of a site's credibility and relevance in the eyes of search engines like Google. A diverse and authoritative backlink profile can significantly bolster a website's organic search ranking and online visibility.
Read: The Ultimate Guide To Strong Backlink Profile
Here's How Low Quality Backlinks Impact Your SEO
While we learn how to get backlinks, we must also examine how bad backlinks can significantly impact your SEO. Here's how these inferior links can impact your SEO, underscoring the critical importance of prioritizing high-quality backlinks:
Search engine penalties
Search engines like Google are vigilant in identifying and penalizing websites with manipulative or spammy link-building tactics. Backlinks from low-quality sources, such as link farms, irrelevant directories, or spammy websites, can trigger algorithmic penalties or manual actions, resulting in significant drops in search engine rankings or even deindexing from search results.
Negative impact on rankings
Low-quality backlinks can drag down your website's search engine rankings. Search algorithms are designed to prioritize websites with authoritative and relevant backlinks while penalizing those with a high volume of low-quality links. As a result, acquiring bad links can diminish your website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Loss of credibility and trust
While learning how to get backlinks, you need to understand that backlinks from dubious or untrustworthy sources can erode the credibility and trustworthiness of your website in the eyes of both search engines and users. Visitors may perceive your site as untrustworthy or spammy if it is associated with low-quality backlinks.
Risk of manual actions
Google's webspam team may manually review your site and take corrective actions, such as issuing warnings, imposing penalties, or removing your website from search results altogether. Learning how to get backlinks and recovering from such penalties can be time-consuming and challenging, requiring extensive efforts to disavow or remove toxic backlinks.
Wasted resources and opportunity costs
Investing time and resources in acquiring low-quality backlinks yields little to no return on investment. Instead of building a strong and sustainable backlink profile, chasing bad links can divert resources away from more productive SEO activities. By prioritizing high-quality backlinks, you can allocate your resources effectively and maximize the impact of your link-building efforts.
Read: Why Backlink Quality Matters To Your SEO?
What Makes a Quality Backlink?
Now, as we learn how to get backlinks let's explore the key factors that contribute to the strength of a backlink:
Relevance
The link should come from a website relevant to your industry, niche, or content. Relevant backlinks are more valuable because they are more likely to be clicked on by interested users and are considered more trustworthy by search engines.
Authority
Links from authoritative and reputable websites carry more weight. Authority can be measured by various SEO tools, often looking at a site's age, popularity, and backlink profile. High-authority domains are typically well-regarded by search engines and users alike.
While learning how to get backlinks, you need to know the clickable text part of a hyperlink (anchor text) should be relevant to the linked page's content. Descriptive and keyword-rich anchor text can help improve a site's SEO performance, though it's important to avoid over-optimization, which can be penalized.
Follow vs. NoFollow
A "follow" link is one that search engines can follow to discover your content, passing on link equity (or "link juice"). In contrast, while a "noFollow" link can bring traffic, it does not pass on link equity. For SEO purposes, "follow" links are generally more valuable.
Placement on the page
Links placed in the main body content of a page are generally more valuable than those in the footer, sidebar, or navigation menus. This is because main content links are more likely to be related to the content and useful to readers.
Uniqueness
An important note while you learn how to get backlinks is that search engines value a diverse backlink profile. A backlink from a site that has not linked to you before is typically more valuable than an additional link from a site that already links to you.
Traffic
Links from high-traffic websites can be more valuable for the potential SEO boost and the direct traffic they can bring to your site. A high-traffic site linking to yours indicates that your site might interest a larger audience.
Trustworthiness
While exploring how to get backlinks, understand that websites considered trustworthy and secure (for instance, those with HTTPS) are more likely to pass on more substantial link equity. Trustworthiness can be influenced by the site's content quality, user engagement, and absence of harmful practices.
Strategies for Building Quality Backlinks
Learning how to get backlinks is a cornerstone of any effective SEO strategy, as these links signal to search engines that other websites consider your content valuable and trustworthy. Here are several strategies to help you build a strong backlink profile:
The foundation of exploring how to backlinks is to have content worth linking to. This can include informative blog posts, research studies, infographics, or any resource that provides significant value to your audience.
Writing articles for other websites in your industry can be a great way to earn backlinks. It positions you as an authority and allows you to reach a wider audience and direct them back to your site through the link in your author bio or content.
Read: Guest Post Link Building: What You Need To Know
Broken link building
This involves finding broken links on other websites that are relevant to your content and suggesting your content as a replacement. It's a win-win: you help the website owner fix a broken link and get a backlink in return.
Read: Comprehensive Guide To Broken Link Building
This method can come in handy while learning how to get backlinks. This involves finding content in your niche that has already earned a significant number of backlinks, creating even better content, and then reaching out to those who linked to the original content to suggest they link to your superior version.
Use of infographics
People love sharing infographics because they offer much information in an easily digestible format. Create compelling infographics about your niche and promote them to other websites or social media to gain backlinks.
Leverage social media
While links from social media sites are typically no-follow, social media can significantly amplify the reach of your content, increasing the chances of it being seen and linked to by content creators, bloggers, and website owners.
While exploring how to get backlinks, sign up for HARO or similar services where journalists and bloggers look for expert quotes. You can get a mention and a backlink from reputable news sites and blogs by providing valuable insights.
Directories and resource lists
Submit your website to directories and resource lists relevant to your industry. Ensure these directories are not spammy and well-regarded to avoid potential penalties from search engines.
Testimonials and reviews
Writing testimonials for products or services you've used can also earn you a backlink. Businesses often showcase customer testimonials on their site and are usually happy to include a link to your website.
Local partnerships and community engagement
If you're a local business, partnering with other local businesses for events or promotions can lead to backlinks from their websites. When getting high-quality backlinks, try to engage in community events and charities; it can earn coverage and backlinks from local news outlets.
Read: 13 Awesome Backlink Ideas to Solve Your Ranking in the Search Engines
Link building Toolkit
Several tools can assist in exploring how to get backlinks for your website. Here are some valuable tools:
seobase offers a Backlink Checker tool that provides insights into your website's backlink profile, including metrics such as domain authority, anchor text distribution, and referring domains. Learning how to get backlinks allows you to monitor your backlink growth, identify new opportunities, and analyze competitor backlink profiles.
This tool provides valuable data on your website's backlink profile, including the number of backlinks, referring domains, and top linking sites. It also alerts you to any manual actions or issues with your backlinks.
A feature within Google Search Console that allows you to request Google to ignore specific backlinks pointing to your site. It helps remove toxic or spammy links that may harm your SEO efforts.
While exploring how to get backlinks, this tool can help identify influential content in your industry, leading to potential link-building opportunities. It provides insights into content performance, social media shares, and backlinks.
Facilitates outreach and relationship-building with influencers and website owners for link-building purposes. It streamlines the outreach process, tracks email communications, and monitors campaign performance.
While exploring how to get backlinks, this tool can help find email addresses associated with specific domains, useful for outreach campaigns to acquire backlinks. It simplifies the process of finding and verifying contact information.
Read: Best SEO Tools Every Marketer Should Use
Conclusion
Learning how to get backlinks is a nuanced and ongoing process that requires patience, dedication, and strategic foresight. Website owners can cultivate a robust backlink profile that enhances their online visibility, authority, and organic search rankings by prioritizing relevance, quality, and relationship-building.
Incorporate these strategies and best practices into your digital marketing arsenal to unlock the full potential of backlink acquisition and propel your website to new heights of success.
Learn all about SEO best tactics and strategies with seobase!