You may think writing and publishing great content routinely will help you compete with other High-Ranked Competitors, but you might be wrong. Although Google has mentioned in numerous updates that the content is the number one ranking factor, you cannot get a place in SERP by only publishing content. Google has said that content and a strong backlink profile are critical factors that will significantly improve your ranking. Being an SEO expert for many years and working on the backlinks of multiple websites, I have written this article for you to understand what Backlinks are and how to build a strong backlink profile.
What are Backlinks?
A backlink is a type of reference that is similar to a citation. A backlink to a certain web resource is a link to that web resource from another website. Websites, web pages, or online directories are examples of web resources. Backlinks’ amount, quality, and relevancy are among the elements used by search engines like Google to determine how valuable a page is.
In SEO, there are two types of Backlinks. First is Do-Follow backlinks, in which you allow the Google Crawler to crawl the external link that we have added to our website. The second is the No-Follow backlink, in which we stop the Google Crawler from going to the external link we have gained. Do-follow links hold more value than no-follow links.
Why are Backlinks important?
Backlinks are highly important for the growth of any website as they improve your trust rating and a strong backlink profile means a higher chance of getting traffic. Backlink helps Google understand that you are trusted by other sources that Google already relies upon. So, in return, Google also shows trust in your content and starts directing traffic towards your site. Over the years, I have seen websites not performing well and gaining exceptional traffic after high-profile backlinks.
In other words, having more hyperlinks to your website helps search engines recognize that other people have endorsed your material. It is beneficial since search engines will begin to rank your site higher in the SERPs due to this. Backlinks, in other words, are beneficial to your search visibility and rating.
How can you build your backlink profile?
In ideal cases, another website owner will add a link to your website and publish content on their website. In this scenario, you might not even know when someone has added a link to your website page. For that to happen, you have to post content on a relevant topic that is highly engaging, ever-green, and research-driven. It is also possible that a website owner contact you for exchange link so that both website has a link on their sites, but Google is against this practice and can you might repercussion on this link-exchange method.
However, as good as it may sound, getting a backlink from a quality website without having knowledge of it is quite impossible. Also, leaving your backlink profile like that can make you vulnerable to getting mentioned on websites with high spam scores and low trust ratings.
So, what can you do in this situation as it might seem reasonable on one end, but it is quite risky on the other? The answer is making a backlink profile by reaching out to good, high, authority websites that are trusted by Google and have a proper audience retention rate. It is known as manual link building, as you can build a relationship with other site owners and earn a backlink. Here are a few manual link-building techniques that you can apply to earn quality backlinks;
1. Brand Mention link Building
Brand mention link building is by far the simplest and most effective way of getting quality backlinks for your website. In this technique, you search for the website that has mentioned the name of your website while providing a piece of information in their articles. If you find such a website, try reaching out to the article author or website content manager, or contact the website owner through email. Some websites provide the Contact US form, and you can communicate with them through that channel and ask them to add a link to your website on those articles where they have mentioned your name.
2. Skyscraper Link Building
Skyscraper Link building is a technique in which you reverse engineer your competitor’s website to access the backlink it has obtained. You can use various SEO tools for this purpose, like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Bar. The right way to execute this technique is to find high-volume keywords and analyze the content and backlink profile of the website that is ranking at the top. Then you produce content that is much better than the competitor and SEO-optimized. After that, you request the backlinked website to add a link to their article on their site as well.
3. Broken Link Building
Broken links are inconvenient for users and can harm a website’s search engine optimization. However, keeping track of broken links is challenging, especially on a website with hundreds or thousands of pages. Thus, websites frequently link to pages that are no longer available finding these pages and contacting the websites that link them to inform them of the broken links and requesting that they replace them with a connection to your resource.
4. Digital PR for Link Building
The last technique is Digital PR, an ever-lasting method if executed correctly. Your competitors can replicate the abovementioned techniques, and you have no competitive advantage over them. However, Digital PR is a game-changer in which you get a backlink or, more precisely editorial link from a trustworthy source like New York Times and The Guardians. Your rival cannot replicate these links, and you will have an exponential edge over them. Digital PR is a long process and requires extensive research and outreach skills. In this technique, you write a research-based article on a trending topic that contains infographics and quality information. After publishing that article, you contact the newspaper and freelance journalists to go through it and use it as a reference for the stats and information you mentioned.
