SEO is one of those topics that really should come with a disclaimer its not so much a topic as it is a basket of them. Backlinking is one of the most important components of SEO because its a part of the fundamental operation of search and an accessible form of marketing that anyone with a site can partake in.
But backlinking is not quite as simple as merely finding ways to have sites publicly link back to your site there is a lot of nuance to how it should be done. There is also an entire array of businesses large and small trying to sell a variety of backlinking services which sound too-good-to-be-true.
Add to this the search engines themselves with their constant updates, mixed messages and opaque policies, and its no wonder there are quite a few unanswered questions floating around. This leads to a lot of confusion, even about basic things like backlinks themselves, which is why were writing this piece to hopefully bring some clarity to this subject.
In this piece, were going to answer five of the most essential questions about backlinking, giving you the information you need to make an informed decision about your own backlinking strategy.
Question #1: How many backlinks does my website need to rank?
This is a fantastic question, and its one that speaks, ultimately, to the balance between the quantity and quality of the backlinks in question.
The fact is, numerous factors drive the number of backlinks necessary to have enough influence upon search to facilitate the ranking of a given website.
Backlinks are valuable insofar as they pass Link Equity or Link Juice, which both are terms which refer to a value passed from one website to another when it links to it kind of like a vote of confidence.
A given backlinks link equity is based upon the linking sites authority does it have high Domain Authority (DA) or not?
If a given backlink is from a high DA website than it is much more apt to confer value, therefore it isnt just how many but how powerful which determines the outcome of backlinking.
There is a timeless argument at the strategic level amongst senior marketers as to which strategy is better more and lower-quality backlinks, or less and higher-DA. Both sides in this argument have strong points, ultimately both can be successfully pursued.
Competition online and within your industry, and even local competition, all can have an enormous influence upon how hard it is to rank for a given search phrase.
At the end of the day, the question to ask is perhaps not how many backlinks, but rather, what specific effort is it going to take on your part to rank, given your unique situation.
Ultimately, you will likely find what many others do that backlinking is an ongoing effort, and its worth it!.
Question #2: How does Google typically view backlinks?
Trying to explain how Google really views backlinks can be challenging, especially given that their public position on backlinking has seemed to drift and change over time.
A better place to answer the spirit of this question is to ask what is search doing today?
Search today is in a battle to provide relevant results to searchers who are increasingly mobile and in need of high-quality, relevant results if they dont get them, they might just leave.
So, the business model of search engines is in line with the needs of searchers and this means that backlinks have a bigger impact with search now, more than ever with a few caveats.
Officially speaking, backlinks and domain authority are only one of many used to rank websitesimportant, but not the most important.
Unofficially, domain authority and the method of conferring it backlinking, are considered to be extremely powerful and influential forms of marketing, well established to have the potential for a profound impact upon a given sites rankings.
This difference is real, and many theories abound as to why that is; well refrain from speculation and stick to what we know in our experience to be true.
Search Loves Domain Authority
The reason backlinks are successful is actually because of the underlying domain authority conferred via link equity to the target website.
It may seem like an exercise in semantics, but the difference here is essential to understanding whats going on.
Backlinks are like votes, and the backlinks from websites with a good reputation and high domain authority are worth more a lot more than websites without either of those things.
When search sees a major website put up a do follow backlink pointing to a small website, it has the effect of elevating that small website.
Quality vs. Volume
What this means is that search is looking at the quality of the backlink more today than in the past.
All of this is entirely logical and was mathematically certain to occur given the exponential growth in the number of sites which had the effect of thinning out the impact of their votes (backlink equity) individually.
Another way to visualize this and make sense of it is to understand that in the past there was a more equitable distribution of domain authority across a smaller pool of websites due to the newness of the whole system.
Due to exponential growth, today the numbers of low DA websites has grown in size immensely along with the size of the overall web itself.
So to summarize and simplify, searches view is from a big picture perspective and has to be examined closely to be understood.
Beyond Backlinks
When you ask How does search view backlinks? its important to look at the even bigger question of What does search see? because, we say search wants to deliver relevant results and it does.
In order for search to deliver relevant results, it means search needs to see relevant content.
This means that, as a site owner, it is strongly in your interests to produce and publish as much relevant content as you possibly can on your website the more, the merrier.
The reason for this is simple this content puts your site on searches map.
You dont have to develop high-end content, either, but how you publish matters.
Taking the time to maintain a blog on your site with the occasional video posted to YouTube with syndication across several social media sites is usually enough to help generate backlinks to your posts which search will index.
The underlying reason why all of this works is because search functions by crawling your website looking for new content to index.
When search finds new content on an ongoing basis, and it is all categorized in a relevant manner, the benefits become obvious as search indexes those pages and they start to turn up for searches.
The practice therefore of publishing content also creates backlinks! Its a win/win situation for your website.
Question #3: How can I obtain high-quality backlinks?
There are numerous ways your website can obtain backlinks, including through online directory submissions, link sharing and guest blogging, as well as organically obtain them.
Though there are more obscure ways to obtain backlinks, those three directory submissions, guest blogging and content creation represent perhaps 90% of all backlinks generated, they are the absolute majority.
There are three simple ways you can obtain backlinks for your website right away:
Link Sharing
Many websites exist which are owned by people willing to put a link on their website to someone else, in exchange for one to their own.
To find these sites, all you need to do is simply conduct searches looking for relevant sites you might want a backlink from.
When you find a website you want to link from, write them a simple direct email asking if they would be willing to exchange links, many times they will but they will need you to supply the content.
This brings us to the second of the three simplest ways to obtain backlinks guest blogging.
Guest Blogging
This kind of blogging is the practice of writing content and offering it to be published on someone elses site, usually in exchange for a backlink embedded within the piece of attributes elsewhere adjacent to it.
This is usually done as a form of outreach in a similar vain to link sharinghowever, its often much more effective.
If you offer to write a piece of content for someones site, they are much more receptive to you taking credit for it and linking back to your own site, since it benefits their website to get the content for free that they can publish.
To start guest blogging, all you have to do is find a website you want a backlink from and negotiate to write some content for it with a backlink to your site in it.
There are no rules which specify what kind of content it has to be a blog post, a blurb, it could be anything, its up to the two parties involved to figure this out.
Its also important to note that guest blogging is also done professionally by companies like ours.
At ORF, we employ writers to craft engaging content and publish it upon high domain authority websites with embedded backlinks as a part of our service as well.
The difference between our professional backlinking SEO service and self generated backlinking is that we have publishing venues with extremely high DA rankings.
We also have a huge volume of industry specific niche sites to publish on, thus ensuring high domain equity and relevance.
Directory Submissions
The last simple method of self-generating backlinks is to find and submit your websites correct directory information to any and all relevant directories online.
There exist numerous directories, some local, some national and some global, which host business information, website URLs and much more.
These are the directories used, hosted and maintained by a wide variety of public and private organizations.
These directories represent completely free backlinks. To find which directories are relevant to your business, simply go to search and begin looking.
Look for lists of business directories relevant to your industry, there are few hard and fast rules, simply do your due diligence with an emphasis on industry specific directories.
Also be on the lookout for duplicates of your businesss information these exist and sometimes contain incorrect information which can cost you visitors and customers, so always check and if you find them report them and get the info corrected.
Question #4: Are all backlinks the same?
Backlinks are not all created equally and some are much more valuable than others, while others can even be toxic!.
The way to judge a backlink is to look at the domain authority ranking of the website its coming from the higher the DA, the more powerful, or potent the backlink, will be in conferring link equity.
A high-quality backlink is one embedded within a piece of engaging content, and it is a do follow backlink a backlink that encourages users to click and leave, meaning that the site which placed the link believes in whoever they are linking to.
The quality of the content which surrounds the backlink matters too.
High quality backlinks are embedded within high-equality, well researched writing the kind of writing people want to read.
This is also the kind of written copy that publishers want to host so it tends to stay online for a long time.
This matters because when it comes to backlinks the difference between a poor quality backlink, placed on a low DA website embedded within poor quality copy, and its high-quality counterpart can be rather stark.
What are Toxic Backlinks
A tragically common type of scam backlink, are called toxic backlinks.
These are backlinks from sites such as PBNs or Link Farms black hat venues which operate in a legal gray area.
These type of backlinks are viewed extremely negatively by search because they are viewed as unnatural, scummy and rather analogous to a kind of technical fraud.
Essentially a backlink should be useful and informative and aid the visitor to the site. Sites with stuffed links are a big no-no. Essentially if the site does not look like one you would ever visit then its not a link that your site would benefit from.
Search does all that they can and they can do a lot to curtail or end any benefit wrought by these means, it is very advisable that you avoid this kind of backlink at all costs.
Sometimes its better to have no backlinks than toxic ones!.
Question #5: How do I know if my backlinks are working?
While its possible to theoretically analyze the impact of a given backlink, it usually doesnt work like that.
SEO is all about aggregates, or collective amounts of data, and when it comes to backlinking it is no different it takes more than a few to have an impact.
Quality vs. Quantity
There is a timeless argument that has raged since the inception of the Domain Authority system.
Marketers broke into two rival camps those who favored quality, high DA backlinks and those who favored sheer volume.
The theory is that it is easier to get numerous low quality or random links than it is to get a small amount of targeted links.
The fact is, the jury is no longer out we know what works, both of them!
Having a huge volume of random links is an effective strategy assuming some portion of them are quality.
Having a smaller profile of higher DA links is effective too and more reliable as well.
Though both of these strategies are viable, it is increasingly a targeted, relevance focused approach that search favors and this trend will no doubt continue.
In summary, all backlinks will confer some link equity, however targeted backlinks from high DA sites will confer more.
If you are running a dedicated backlinking campaign, expect it to take some time and allow for a number of backlinks to go online before expecting to see results.
The results from link equity upon search performance are slow to come but large in effect, sometimes a given website may not see results until they have fifty or more backlinks.
However, after they begin to see results, they may move up to page one for many search phrases nearly all at once.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization is a complex topic and backlinks comprise an important part of that conversation.
If youre like most site owners that we speak with than you already know the vital importance of ranking, the only question then is what strategy you will employ to rank for your own website.
At our company, we work with agencies and website owners at all levels to research, craft and provide high-quality backlinking campaigns that are tailor-made to fit their industry, niche and other unique needs.
Campaigns from us generate tremendous results because our content is crafted by qualified writers who are tasked with drafting engaging content.
Because content from us is high-quality and because we put our guest posts on high DA publishing sites, our guest posts tend to stay live online indefinitely.
What this means for those we work with is that they dont just get high-quality SEO, they get a durable edifice of marketing that will last and last as they gain in rankings and benefit for years to come.
To ask us more in-depth questions and learn what it is we at ORF can do for your business, dont hesitate to visit our website and schedule a time to speak with one of our consults.
