Have you ever been curious why your competitors’ content is outranking yours, even though it is much lower quality? While quality is a huge factor in Google’s Algorithm, it is possible that there are many more authoritative sites linking to your competitors’ content than yours.
When it comes to backlinks, quality trumps quantity; but volume, link velocity and leveraging the proper types of links is important.
What are Backlinks?
Backlinks are basically votes and endorsements from other websites. They are those links you find on websites that lead you to supporting content (Think Wikipedia links that link to other relevant entries).
Backlinks are important when trying to promote your content because they act as votes of confidence from other industry leaders. They are also beneficial in getting your article noticed and indexed in Google SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages).
Where do I get Backlinks?
There are different strategies you can apply when acquiring backlinks. Ideally, Google tells you that you magically just earn them over time; which you can, but let’s be honest. The majority of links you will acquire are either built manually or through outreach campaigns. Writing to publishers and letting them know that you have a great piece of content or a guest post that they can insert may work in your favor, but please know that this takes a lot of time and effort to build these relationships.
It’s “frowned upon” in Google’s eyes but many backlinks are also purchased. Most of them can be very cheap ($5-20/ea) but many can be much more expensive ($500+), it all depends on the website’s traffic, quality, domain authority and reputation.
Have you ever noticed a bunch of “Guru’s” with “Featured in Forbes” clips on their website. The idea is to show trust and build credibility, but more often than not, they wrote a 300 word post and a check for $800 to get a link on a Forbes website.
What is a Backlink Profile?
When trying to decide which backlinks you need, you should begin with a competitor analysis to look for patterns and what’s already working. Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush officer Backlink Gap Analysis tools to assist in compiling lists.
Ideally you want the appropriate mixture of guest posts, do-follow, web 2.0s, niche edits, images, etc. as your top ranking competitors. This is also heavily tied into industry and niche.
We will create a Backlink 101 guide in the future, this post is more about the common types of backlinks to help you get familiar with them. We’ll cover the types in the next section.
Common Types of Backlinks
- Web 2.0 Links – Web 2.0 links are easy to build and have a lot of value when it comes to more advanced strategies like Parasite SEO. These are blog websites that allow you to create microsites and link back to your “money page”. The most common examples are the free page builders like Wix, Weebly, Medium, WordPress(.com), Tumblr, Blogger, etc.
The most important consideration here is to minimize the use of duplicate content and to not send too many links back to your main property. That will get you flagged and a manual penalty with Google Search Console.
- Private Blog Networks (PBN) – Private Blog Networks are a blackhat way of collecting links but they still can serve a solid purpose. These are typically what offshore SEO firms that flood your inbox use. This is what $299/mo SEO is. Basically you have a network of low quality sites with minimal traffic that all link out to each other creating a false sense of an “authoritative web”.
Pointing these to your Web 2’s can be a good strategy if you know what you’re doing but you should avoid pointing these at your main website. Many times when you pay monthly for these, your traffic can spike but it is not always quality visits. Additionally, if you stop payment, your links will be removed and your traffic will drastically drop.
- Niche Edits – Niche edits or curated links are generally your safest and best bet. These are links that point back to you from already established articles and websites. You see these often when browsing the web when you hover over some “anchor text” and see it link to a relevant article on a different domain.
These types of backlinks are powerful because the articles are already indexed by Google and have their own backlink profiles pointing at them. Building these can be challenging but once you’re able to establish a rhythm and relationship with publishers, they are a very valuable asset.
- Forum Links – Forum links can be valuable and drive traffic but you should exercise caution when investing time to build them. Many forums and blogs provide no value being that they only give “no-follow” backlinks. This means that you won’t receive any of the authority coming from that web page or URL.
However, if you can find a good list of industry relevant blogs to publish comments and contributions to then it may be worth your time. If people recognize your consistency it may just turn into an extra traffic source for you.
- Social Shares – I wouldn’t consider links from social media pages or posts to be backlinks, but they do get crawled and some actually end up getting indexed so there is some tangible value in there.
Social shares give social signals and can be a great way to get a little bit of traffic pointed at your website or blog, especially if it’s part of a large community or audience that’s interested in the topic.
- Citations – Citations aren’t exactly backlinks, however they share some similarities. Essentially a citation is a mention of your business in a directory. It includes your name, address, phone number and website (NAP). They can be either “do-follow” or “no-follow” and are a core component of getting your local business in the Google Maps 3-Pack. When the directories are crawled it signals to Google that you are in fact a legitimate business.
This is not an all inclusive guide but it should give you some insight into types of backlinks, how they work and their purpose. It’s important to note that there are various other types (i.e. Reddit links, Quora links, GSA, etc.) but those should only be used in much more complicated SEO strategies.
Content and Backlinks are your primary weapons in Off-page SEO. Publishing impactful articles and getting authoritative sites to link to your post is a valuable asset in digital marketing and helps build your website’s authority. Happy linking.
