One of the successful SEO techniques to rank your website on search engines is 'Link Building'. Your SEO expert should acquire quality backlinks to make your web pages rank higher on Google, Bing and Yahoo. A lot of information about link building is available on the World Wide Web and this blog will help you understand backlinking strategies, required skills and tools for backlink analysis.
An activity of obtaining new inbound links to web pages from external websites is termed as 'Link Building'. Backlinks from popular websites can assist you in driving organic traffic from search engines. There is always a very high correlation of link popularity with Google search rankings. Your web page will appear on search engines for a targeted keyword if it accumulates more quality backlinks.
A. The number of factors that influence rankings are: A linking to your web page from a high authority website can be more beneficial as compared to the link from a low authority site. Domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA) are the two important metrics to analyze the authority of an external page or website. You can use SEO tools 'Ahrefs' and 'Moz Pro' to check DA and PA of a web page. Nofollow is an SEO term and SEO experts use rel="nofollow" attribute to inform search engines about the links that should not be followed. It is always beneficial for your rankings if you have nofollow backlinks with high trust. The backlink profile of your website will be more natural if you consider both 'nofollow' and 'dofollow' links. One more SEO term 'Anchor Text' can have a positive impact on rankings. Be sure that you do not use too many anchor text links for a web page or else you may face link penalties. The relevancy (anchor text and other external links) of a link is an important ranking factor. The backlinks that are flagged by Google are termed as 'Unnatural' and these links may lead to a decrease in traffic and keywords rankings. If you built your backlinks manually then your SEO for business and schema strategy will always be safe.
B. Link Building Techniques: Here you would require an analytic thought process, a creative mind and communication skills for engaging someone to link to your web pages. The key areas are: Backlinks analysis of competitors helps you to track the link building strategies and replicate links such as classifieds, blog comments, social profiles and more. Use powerful SEO tools 'Ahrefs' and 'SEO Review Tools' for competitive analysis of backlinks. Reaching out quickly and asking someone for linking to your website is the most important skill.
C. Backlinking Strategies: Now let's discuss the strategies that are proven to be effective:
Newsjacking: This strategy refers to including your brand into the trending news. Here timing is everything and your website can get high-quality backlinks from authoritative domains. Newsjacking is a difficult task and thus Digital Marketing Boy would like you to hire an agency to perform the same.
Guest Blogging: If you want to achieve white hat links then prefer high-quality guest blogging websites for link building. This strategy is an effective one to build authority boosting links.
Infographics: This could be an interesting link building tactic because infographics on your web page can easily engage someone for backlinking. Be sure that your infographics are of high quality and informative.
Interviews: Grow your niche profile by conducting webinars, podcasts and blog interviews. These links can drive traffic to your web pages.
Link Bait: Content is not required to be promoted in Link Bait. The unique proposition of content in your web pages attracts links naturally. The engagement of content is basically due to a survey, unique data, in-depth research, a free tool, attractive images and more.
Broken Link Building: There is a possibility that a web page linking to your site is no longer active. In this case, you will have to reach out to sites with broken links and request them for alternatives. This tactic is meant to be quite effective in an SEO strategy.
Content Structure: Organize the content using a video, an infographic or Slideshare presentation to acquire high quality backlinks.
Image Linking: Create attractive images and include them in your web pages. These images will encourage visitors to share them across various websites. Image linking strategy is an effective way to pick up links.
Directory Submissions: Submission of your web pages in good or bad directories depends on you. You should always analyze DA, PA and Spam Score of the directory before considering the same for your website submission.
Press Release Submissions: You can expect some benefits with this link building strategy. Press releases are known for brand awareness.
Blog Commenting: An indirect ranking factor helps you to communicate with other bloggers. Your SEO expert should post quality comments and this will help you to grow your organic traffic.
Forums Posting: Your business can easily gain trust in the community if you consider forums posting.
Questions and Answers: The best link building strategy to improve your authority in a niche.
Paid Links: Buying backlinks to rank high on search engines is not acceptable by Google and should be avoided. Paid links can be effective if you advertise your brand on large authority websites.
D. Link Building Tools: Digital Marketing Boy suggests you use several tools for effectively acquiring backlinks. These tools help you to perform activities such as competitive analysis, content research and setting up email alerts.
Moz Pro: Download MozBar extension and use features such as Page Analysis, Highlight Links, Page Optimization, PA, DA and Spam Score. Moz Pro is an excellent tool for competitive backlink analysis.
Ahrefs: This is a very good tool to analyze each backlink to your website in detail. It includes parameters like Domain Rating (DR), URL Rating (UR), number of domains and traffic.
CognitiveSEO: The graphical representation of backlinks is an excellent feature of this tool. You can access various tabs of this tool for an in-depth analysis of your backlinks.
Google Alerts: Always be informed about the indexing of your new content with the 'Google Alerts' tool.
SEO Review Tools: An efficient tool provides you with a lot of information related to your backlinking strategy. One important feature is to know the Dofollow/Nofollow status of each backlink.
Link building will always be an important ranking factor in an SEO process. Always acquire backlinks using white hat techniques.