The year 2021 promises to be a great year to build the website of your dreams and to get started making passive income on the Internet. If you already have a website, it is a great year to take action to grow your website and build your online business. Backlinks are a great way to tell Google that you have great content and that you are an authority in your field. This article addresses how to get backlinks and how to build an excellent backlink profile on your website.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are hyperlinks where other websites link to your page. Google assumes that if a page has a lot of other people linking to it then it must be high-quality. Building backlinks is a key strategy to get your blog noticed. Also, when people are on another page and follow the link to your page, it counts as traffic to your page, which is a great way to build your customer base.
Search optimization experts consider link building to be one of the most important SEO strategies, but it can also be one of the most difficult to do. Inbound blog backlinks are different from internal links. Internal links help the user navigate between pages on the website and find the information that they need. They are also important for Google ranking, but backlinks to your site from an outside source have more strength.
Why backlinks are important
Backlink building is an important part of building page rank, but it is only a small part of the overall search engine optimization strategy. It is only part of the overall ranking strategy, but it is an important ranking factor that carries a lot of weight. Google’s goal is to deliver the content that people want when they search. Their goal is to give them high-quality information from authoritative sites. Google considers both your outbound and inbound links in its search rank results as a measure of your website’s strength.
Using links to evaluate a page is a strategy that Google has employed since the 1990s, and it is still one that is a key part of their algorithm. It is an effective strategy because a link to your page is like a vote of confidence in the content, and that is exactly how Google uses it. It was not long before “link farms” began to crop up where you could submit your site to a web directory, sometimes for a fee, and get a link in return. Google caught onto these unscrupulous tactics and began to drop the rank of pages that use this tactic to artificially boost their page rank.
As of the Penguin update, Google still considers links to be important, but it now emphasizes high-quality links. A high-quality link is one that provides information to the reader and some type of value based on the keywords that were searched. If you are an affiliate marketer, there are a few strategies that you can follow to make sure that your affiliate links and sales pages do not harm your Google rank.
If you have two pages with all other page rank metrics equal, then backlinks can be the factor that makes your page rank above that of your competition. The number of Tweets, Facebook, and Google + shares also count, so ask for those shares in your content because they do count. These metrics tell Google what others think of your content and the value that they get from it.
How to get backlinks
The basics of any link building strategy begins with having good content in the first place. People will not want to link to it and share it if they do not get some value from it. Before you begin writing an article, you must first ask yourself what you expect the reader to get from it and what value they will gain from reading it. Next, you must use accepted formatting and copywriting techniques to make sure it is scannable and gets the point across clearly and concisely.
Once you have valuable content on your website, it is time to start building a backlink profile. If you happen to be picked up by a major website, such as a major news agency or a large corporation, you just hit the lottery of backlinks. This sometimes happens to a few lucky websites, but most of the time building backlinks takes effort and a well-executed plan. Here are a few tips on how to do it.
1. Relationship building
One way to build a backlink profile is to reach out to others in your industry and build relationships with them. Outreach not only helps you connect with others to get a link to your page, but it can also help you connect with major influencers in your industry. This can help build trust in your brand by association.
2. Guest blogging
Guest posting is a great way to connect to an audience that is closely related to your own. It is assumed that people who enjoy reading a certain type of content will welcome the opportunity to discover new voices on the same subject. When choosing sites that you would like to approach for a guest blog, choose them carefully. It is better to try to appeal to a smaller but more targeted audience than to a larger but more general one.
3. Examine your old material
If you have an old website that has quality links, they are an excellent way to update your current backlink profile. You can use a tool, such as Ahrefs backlink checker or another similar tool, and put the old website into the search. Once you have identified the outdated links, you can reach out to the site and gently inform them about the outdated link and suggest that they update to the new link.
4. Be Better than your competition
Backlinks that are earned are better than those that are sought after. The best way to earn a backlink from an authoritative site, such as a .gov or .edu, is to write content that is linkable and adds value. This means that you cannot just spin someone else’s content and expect it to do the job. You have to dig deep and offer something that your competition does not.
When reading a competitor’s content, you need to ask yourself how you could improve it, what information is missing, and how you could add value to the information and give the audience just a little more. You have to provide information that is better than what is out there already. One way to do this is to type your keywords into a search to see what comes up as a top-ranked website. You can then model your content after it and improve on it so that yours is more authoritative.
5. Evaluate competitor backlinks
One thing that you should be doing in your competitive analysis is checking which websites have backlinks to your competition. Ahrefs and other backlink checking tools are some of the best methods for how to check backlinks and analyze your competitor’s backlink profile. This might give you some ideas of websites that you could approach to help build your own profile. When using a tool to evaluate backlinks, make sure to use a dofollow filter so you do not get a list of links that are not followed.
6. Unlinked mentions
An excellent source of backlinks is pages that have mentioned you but did not include a link. They already like your content and thought enough of you to include you in their article. If you approach them, there is a good chance that they will add a link to your site, and that will help them with their outbound links, too. This creates a win-win for everyone.
7. Best of lists
Another easy way to be included in links is to explore local “Best of” lists, such as the “10 Best Coffee Shops in Seattle”. If you find a local best-of list, but you are not included, it might be easy to interest them. You already know that they are interested in your product or service, but maybe they do not know about you or forgot about you. These are good selling points for pitching a backlink.
8. Be active and proactive
The final tip for backlink building is to make a plan and stick to it. You will not build a backlink profile by just waiting and hoping for a big fish to bite. You have to get out there and ask. Start with making sure that your site has quality content that is better than your competition, and then use the suggestions on this list to find some prospects. Next, you have to make a plan, follow through, and ask.
Bonus tip: Answer questions for journalists, writers, and bloggers using the HARO link building strategy. If you successfully help a reporter produce excellent content through your expertise, they will reward you with a juicy backlink!
Understanding the importance of linking and how to get backlinks is one of the most important components of your SEOstrategy. Now, you have a few strategies for building a quality backlink profile that you can use to help build your own link profile and grow your audience in 2021. If you want to improve your page rank and the authority of your website in 2021, then you need to take a closer look at your backlink strategy and try some of these ways to take your page to the next level.
Backlinks are just one of the many working parts of the complete SEO checklist for your website this year. We produced The Ultimate SEO Checklist for 2021 at the start of the new year to help your digital marketing efforts and business growth.
