Link Building for SEO – Learn the Tricks

Quality backlinks are mandatory for SEO campaign to be successful. That being said, heavy link building SEO strategies are very valuable for successful search engine optimization campaigns. So, what are backlinks? When external sites link to your website, they form what is called backlinks or external backlinks. These links can best be described as ranking puzzles.

Building Fewer Backlinks and Getting Great Results

The reality is that link acquisition isn’t only time-consuming but also very costly. However, it is very possible to rectify such issues by opting for quality backlinks. So, what exactly should you do?

1. Create Valuable Content

Content is invaluable for SEO. The success of SEO campaign hugely depends on the content. Even if your website has many backlinks or your website is optimized excellently, your SEO campaign won’t be successful if the content is terrible. So, it is important to write plenty of fresh and unique contents. You don’t have to be a pro to write a great content. But you should completely avoid publishing bad content.

2. Fix Technical Errors

Some of the problems experienced by users are caused by technical errors. As a result, the organic traffic growth of your website will be limited by Google. Most of the backlinks won’t work if your website is experiencing technical errors. As mentioned, SEO is like a puzzle. Thus, it can’t work if some pieces are missing. That’s is why it’s vital to technically optimize your website. Look for these technical issues and fix them.

• Canonical errors - You can check these using Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• 302 redirects - You can check these using Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Duplicate Metadata - You can check these using Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Incorrectly used directives such as nofollow, noindex and many more - You can check these using Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Website loading speeds – You can check this using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
• 404 errors – You can check these using Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Redirect chains - You can check these using Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Duplicate content – You can check this using SiteLiner
• Mobile friendliness – You can check this using Google’s Mobile Friendly

3. Develop Strong Website Architecture

Links get distributed to the website depending on the website’s structure. That is to say that if your site has excellent architecture, you’ll need fewer backlinks. You can quickly build site authority by linking to topnotch blog articles. You should avoid linking to boring category pages.

Rules for Building Quality Backlinks

If you are wanting to improve your website’s organic traffic, there are some rules that you must keep in mind.

1. Be a Friend with Authority Sites

In order to get better SEO results, the site must be very strong. Of late, Google never updates PageRank. That is why you should explore other tricks, for instance, using third-party metrics. Finding perfect third party tools is a challenge because there are many of them out there. A good number of them are great, though. Some of the link analysis tools you can use are Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, and Majestic.

2. Be Relevant

When it comes to link acquisition, relevancy is a top criteria. Your website can’t be penalized by Google if it has relevant backlinks. The Majestic’s Tropical Trust Flow Topics is the tool to use to determine the relevancy of the site’s links. You can also use Relevancy Pyramids to prioritize the link opportunities. So, how do Google base the relevancy?

• Google checks content on linking pages
• Google checks content theme of linking domains
• Google checks if the backlinks hitting domains are relevant

3. Spread the Anchor Texts Well

Spreading backlink anchor texts is very important for your SEO campaign. Distributing anchor texts carelessly will definitely hurt the website rankings. In addition, you can be penalized by using aggressive anchor texts. Your anchor texts should be naked link anchors or branded ones.

4. The Backlinks Should be ‘Clean’

It is not recommended to get backlinks from any site since there are many scammy sites out there and you don’t want your website to be part of them. You need to know what the sites are linking out to. Also, it is important to know if outbound links are relevant. Moreover, you should know if those outbound links are from trusted or respected websites.

The links to your site should be relevant just as mentioned previously. There are many SEO forums where you will see adverts about purchasing backlinks. In most cases, the advertisements are for private blog networks that aren’t the case. They are actually public networks. Google has the habit of smashing public networks. In fact, Google usually destroys websites that are using such networks. So, how does Google know if the website is receiving backlinks from such networks?

• The content of the posts is thin. The Google’s Panda algorithm usually don’t like thin contents, for instance, 250 to 300 words content.
• There are excess outbound links on the homepage. Usually, genuine websites don’t have very many outbound links on their homepages.
• There are some networks that block majestic or Ahrefs crawlers. But there are also some networks that never block such crawlers. The competitors of such networks will be more than ready to report these websites to Google.
• The outbound links lack relevancy. The links don’t make sense because some will be going to fitness sites, education sites, SEO sites, gambling sites and many more.

You should never allow some backlinks touch your website, for instance, gambling websites or those selling harmful drugs or medications. If you go ahead and use backlinks from such websites, you should be prepared to be penalized.

Footer, Sidebar Backlinks

Footer and sidebar backlinks are risky even though they work okay. Standalone links are similar to paid backlinks and Google really doesn’t like them. Many of these backlinks aren’t suitable for your website. Since these links are site-wide links, they can really hurt your site especially if the site has keyword-rich anchor texts. Such links damage the anchor text profile of your site.

Most of the marketing, as well as web hosting including web designers, use footer backlinks. If you have to use them, you should opt for branded anchor texts.

Automated Backlinks

You should completely avoid using automated link building tools. Ultimate Demon, GSA, SENuke just to mention a few are some of the software for getting automated backlinks. Some of this software has spammed platforms that may land you in trouble. You need to avoid these links.

DoFollow Blog Comments

If you are wanting inexpensive backlinks, then these are for you. However, they will land your website penalty. Backlinks having excess outbound links, bad outbound links and irrelevant links are toxic to your site. You need to remember that your website is supposed to reside in a ‘clean’ environment.

5. Concentrate on Real Sites Having Real Traffic

It is imperative to get backlinks from real sites having real traffic. Getting these backlinks isn’t a piece of cake. The backlinks are very rewarding, though. It is only possible to determine the correct traffic data of your site by accessing its analytics. The good news is that you can still use SEM Rush to accomplish this.

Growing Site’s Authority

The reason why you want to build links for your site it actually to boost the site’s authority. If your site is authoritative, it would be much simpler to rank for your targeted keywords.

• 404 Link Reclamation – The 404 errors on the website can be located using Screaming Frog/Google Search Console. The pages should be run through Majestic or Ahrefs if there are 404 errors. Then, the pages should be 301 redirected to the homepage or any relevant page.
• Change or Convert 302s to 301s – 302 redirects disrupts authority flow. As a result, the authority of your site would be stolen. That’s if why you should find 302 redirects on as well as off the site and then transform all of them to 301s.
• Fix Damaged External Links – It is worth noting that external links on the sites leak some of the authority. So, auditing site is imperative in order to track down broken or damaged external links on comment section and content. You can use Siteliner, Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Google Search Console to find the damaged or broken links.
• Fix Redirect Chains - One way of boosting your site’s authority is fixing redirect chains. Redirect chains are technical issues that rob other pages authority. Fixing redirect chains help in sending link equity or authority directly to the site or page.

The Power of Guest Posting

Guest posting forms an integral part for link building SEO. If you have publishing rights or connections with high authority sites, you can write a blog post and link it to your website. Guest posting is essential for brand building, link building SEO and more importantly, traffic generation.

Ending Thoughts

When it comes to building link building SEO, there are no quick fixes or shortcuts. You have to put value throughout the content, fix all technical errors and develop a very strong website architecture. When you do all these, the social shares and quality backlinks will build up over time.

We are here to help, you can contact us and we will take care of it for you! We are SEO Experts.