Backlinks are the secret weapon in many businesses’ arsenals that keeps them ranked high on Google and the other leading search platforms. They have a great deal of influence once you have them, but getting them can be tricky.
Why They Matter
Before I get into the how, let’s talk about the why: Why do you need to invest a little time and effort (and possibly a scant few advertising dollars) in this? Does it matter that much?
Initially, backlinks won’t matter much. While your site is small and you are just starting to make your mark, you won’t see floods of traffic from backlinks immediately. What you will see is a gradual climb up the rankings, which has potential to expand your reach beyond anything you will ever get with paid advertising alone.
Building Momentum
It’s the aforementioned upward climb that matters here. Every new site starts with zero traffic – zero page views, zero bounces, zero minutes, and zero seconds spent on each page. Once your site is live, promoting it is up to you. If you just let it sit there, no one will ever find it without digging 30 pages deep into the search results looking for it. Until someone visits your site, you won’t even get that!
The bottom line here is that you have to promote your site somehow. You could hit all the forums and start conversations. You could do the same all over social media, sowing backlinks as you go, but that really is a bad idea for a number of reasons (which I will tackle a little later in this article). What you really need to do is invest a few dollars a day (and I mean that literally — $3-$5 a day) and start promoting your site or specific site content on social media.
Making this work requires the same things I’ve covered multiple times already: delivering top-quality content (particularly, your copy), delivering it regularly, and interacting with your audience constantly.
An engaged audience is one that will follow calls to action to share content, especially across platforms. If you are delivering great content, your page could get picked up by a major industry or blog site, or by any of the key influencers and thought leaders on social media. When that happens, you will have created a network of backlinks that will drive traffic to your site as long as you maintain your end with good content, good site design, and good site management.
How to Use Backlinks
There are a few dos and don’ts in the realm of backlinking. There are white-hat methods that can improve the effectiveness of backlinks and black-hat strategies that can ultimately do your site way more harm than good. I’m going to give you a few tips that will help you avoid pitfalls and see good results.
“Slow and Steady Wins the Race”
For starters, recognize that this is a process. Like any other SEO initiative, it takes time to establish your brand as one that leading sites will want to send backlinks. Even less-trafficked sites can provide you with valuable backlinks, so take note of where your traffic is originating.
Once you know that, reach out to the site owners and try to come up with a cooperative agreement to promote each other’s sites. It is a great way to build rapport and respect among your peers. If you already know they like your content, it should be easy to approach them.
Only one problem… you haven’t shared any content yet.
Develop Quality On-Site and Offsite Content
A very easy way to generate backlinks is via guest posts on industry blogs. Don’t target sites that are constantly advertising for writers and contributors. Submit content to reputable industry sites and those with an already big following and good reputation. Major blog sites, like Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, curate content from top-ranking sites all the time. What if they stumbled on some of yours…
The “quality” bit is one I want to touch on for a second. When attempting to build backlinks, it is essential that the content (particularly your copy) you distribute offsite complement and prepare readers for what they will find when they visit your site. Keep your brand message and imaging consistent in all of your web content writing, whether you are submitting a guest post or populating your own blog.
Quick tip: Link to your social media channels in the “Author Bio” section of your guest posts. It will help you grow your audience on social media, which will lead to an increase of shares of your best content.
Track Your Backlinks
There is a variety of SEO tools that will help you track where your backlinks are originating, which — as I mentioned — will help you make some new friends and develop a solid backlink network over time. Also, make sure that your hosting company doesn’t automatically convert do-follow links to no-follow links. You will find the latter useful under certain circumstances, but they will never help your page rankings.
Keep Everything Above-Board
Don’t go fishing for backlinks in forums or on social channels where your only aim is to pepper a bunch of pages with backlinks. Google and the others are all smart enough to recognize what you’re doing, and your site could get permanently blacklisted if your SEO methods are deemed unethical. Here is a great article I found that will provide you a lot more information on the “how” of backlinks. Note the source: It’s good advice.
The Last Word on Backlinks
Backlinks are an important part of your SEO strategy, but they are just one part. Be sure that you have all your SEO ducks in a row by providing the best possible user experience and the best possible content for people to find and, ultimately, promote for you.
So, to recap: Target reputable sites and don’t troll forums or social channels. Genuinely engaging on them is one thing; shamelessly plugging your site and annoying other members is an entirely other story, and Google, in particular, will not be amused. Above all, be patient. This is an ongoing process and one that takes time to build up to the desired level.