We all meet people at networking events who can talk all day about what they do. It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable they sound, you are always going to take what they say with a grain of salt.
But if someone we already know, like, and trust comes up and says, “Hey, this person really knows their stuff!” Suddenly we sit up and pay attention, especially if the person vouching for them works in the same industry.
Google works much the same way. Yes, the content we create and publish on our website goes a long way towards telling Google what we’re all about and convincing it we’re a thought leader in our industry, but everything we say Google takes with a grain of salt. But if someone else Google already trusts starts talking us up, that’s going to have a lot more weight than anything we could say in our own favor.
A backlink is a type of referral. It’s a way of voting for someone else and saying, “Hey, this person really knows their stuff, you should check them out.”
Just like referrals can make or break a business, backlinks can also be an incredibly powerful tool for growing your audience, and hence growing your business.
But, as with referrals, there are the backlinks you want and the backlinks you don’t want.
There are effective ways of getting backlinks, and there are tactics that can backfire in a big way.
In this article, I’m going to break down what you need to know about the different types of backlinks, how to identify high-quality backlinks, as well as the dos and don’ts of linkbuilding.
Table of Contents
- What Are Backlinks?
- Linkable Assets
- How to Get Backlinks
- How to Find Opportunities for Backlinks
- How to Give Backlinks
- How to Identify Good Backlink Opportunities
- Need Help Creating Linkable Assets?
What Are Backlinks?
A backlink is a link embedded into the text on one piece of online content that leads to another piece of content.
Internal Backlinks vs External Backlinks
And internal backlink is a link that leads from one page on a website to another page on that same website. There is an SEO benefit to internal backlinks, but not nearly as much of a benefit as we see from external backlinks.
An internal backlink is a way of using yourself as a referral, whereas as an external backlink is a way of someone else using you as a referral.
An external backlink is when someone embeds a hyperlink to a page on your website into the content on a page of their website.
External backlinks leading to your own website are SEO gold, especially when they come from high-quality sources. So let’s talk about what makes a high-quality source and how to get those backlinks.
Linkable Assets
The first step to getting high-quality backlinks is creating content someone wants to link to. This is known as a linkable asset.
If you just pump out generic content no one cares about, no one will have a reason to link to it.
But if you create unique, high-quality content that answers the questions your target audience is asking while providing your unique perspective, then, yes, Google will sit up and pay attention.
Other people in your industry (and related industries) will also sit up and pay attention, because that’s the kind of content that will provide value to their audience. That means they’ll be more likely to provide a link to your content from their website, which, in turn, will make Google more likely to notice (and value) your content.
Some examples of linkable assets include:
- Blog posts
- Original research
- Webinars
- Online courses
- Books/Workbooks/Journals
- Infographics
- Podcast
- Apps/Tools/Calculators
- Awards
- PDFs
- Contests
- Reviews
- User-Generated Content
How to Get Backlinks
Knowing you need to get high-quality backlinks is one thing. Actually getting those links is another matter entirely.
So start with these tips:
Linkable Assets
As mentioned above, no one is going to link to your website unless you have something on there that is worth linking to.
So, if you have not already done so, start by creating content that is worth linking to.
See the above list for linkable assets.
Be a Podcast Guest
Most podcast hosts provide a link to your website in their shownotes, which means guesting on podcasts is a great way to showcase your expertise in front of a new audience while getting high-quality backlinks.
Online Forums
While my generation (millennials) are most likely to go straight to Google with their questions, other people (especially younger generations) are more likely to go to online forums, such as Reddit.
That means the key to getting in front of your target audience is to get on the online forums where they’re already hanging out and asking questions about your industry.
Not only does that give you an excellent chance to engage with them in real time, and to know what questions they’re asking about your industry, it also gives you a chance to get high-quality external backlinks from those forums.
Just make sure you’re not blasting those forums with links to yours website. No one wants those.
Q&A Sites
Similar to online forums, Q&A sites, such as Quorum, are a great way to get in front of your target audience when they’re asking questions about your industry. Answering those questions on those sites is a great way to position yourself as an expert in your industry.
It’s also an excellent opportunity to gain high-quality backlinks.
That’s because those Q&A sites already have a very high domain authority, which means Google sees them as very credible. That means links from those sites to your website are gold!
Events
Never underestimate the power of a good event to drive traffic to your website.
As a bonus, when you host an event, especially if it’s a local event, you have the opportunity to post it on a variety of local, communal calendars. Those all count as backlinks, which can then be used to improve your SEO.
Social Media
Social media sites already have a ton of credibility with Google. That means that, when used properly, social media can be a great way to improve your SEO, especially when it comes to external backlinks.
For more information on that, here’s an internal backlink to another blog post I wrote on how social media can boost your SEO.
Ask Nicely
Sometimes it really is as easy as just asking nicely. Find some fellow enthusiasts in your industry (or a related industry) and ask them nicely to provide a backlink to your content in their website.
Pro tip: this is a whole lot easier if you give them a reason to link to your content. Remember your linkable assets, and make sure you’re asking people to link to content that’s relevant to their audience. Otherwise, you’re just wasting everyone’s time.
One of my favorite tools for doing this is CheckMyLinks, a Chrome browser extension that lets you find broken links on any webpage you pull up. Once you find a broken link, all you have to do is email the editor of that content and say, “Hey, you have a broken link you might want to look into. I just happen to have a new article I wrote on a related topic. If you want to link to that article, the link is here.
Give to Get
This rule holds true in the world of backlinks as much as in any other world. If you want to get backlinks, one of the best ways to accomplish that is to give backlinks.
So who in your industry is creating awesome content that would resonate with your target audience?
Share those linkable assets … as long as it’s relevant to the topics you’re covering in your own content.
How to Find Opportunities for Backlinks
Now that we know the value of high-quality backlinks, we know gaining those backlinks is another matter entirely.
Here are some tips to help you out. In the cases below, replace [market] with your target keyword and/or your target audience. If you want to get in front of someone, there’s no better way than by joining the communities (both online and off) of which they are already a part.
- Find Niche Forums and Social Networks
- [market] community
- Intitle: [market] forum
- [market] inurl:blogs
- [market] answers
- Find and Use Professional Associations
- [market] associations
- [market] associated
- [market] intitle:”of America”
- Find Resources
- [market] roundup
- [market] resource
Things to Be Aware Of
I put “White Hat Linkbuilding Tips in the beginning of the headline of this article to stress the fact that I would be talking about the things you should be doing to gain high-quality backlinks for your website.
That said, despite the popular terms “white hat” and “black hat” SEO tactics to refer to things you should and should not do, respectively, sometimes there are gray areas. There are some linkbuilding tips that Google is not thrilled with, but are nonetheless beneficial.
Here’s what you need to know about “gray hat” linkbuilding tactics.
Guest Posting
One of the things to be aware of when it comes to backlinks is that, in addition to boosting your SEO, they’re also a great way to organically get in front of an entirely new audience.
Guest posting used to be a great way to earn high-quality external backlinks, but, for some reason, Google decided they don’t like this tactic. So, from now on, all backlinks from guest posts need to be tagged “nofollow,” which tells search engines like Google to ignore the backlink and act as if it’s not there.
This is frustrating, but I still recommend guest posting as a great way to get in front of entirely new audiences — or a new subset of your audience who as never heard of you before.
Just because it doesn’t count towards your search rankings doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.
Sponsored Links
Any links you get paid for (such as affiliate links) need to be disclosed to Google as affiliate links.
For example, you can click on this link to Serpstat. It’s my affiliate link with them, which means, because you clicked on that, specific, link, I’ll get credit if you end up buying a subscription to Serpstat (which I recommend, and recommended even before they gave me my affiliate link.)
For obvious reasons, Google doesn’t want people getting SEO credit for links they’re getting paid for, which is why they don’t give as much credit to affiliate links.
While you can’t see the HTML around my affiliate link, I’ll tell you it looks like this: rel=”sponsored”
Content Partnerships
You can choose to partner up with someone in your industry (or a related industry) so you can each link to the other’s content for some extra SEO benefit.
The problem with that is that Google is getting better and better at identifying these kinds of trades.
I’m not saying you should not participate in content partnerships. Just that they should not be the only backlinks you give or receive.
Buying Links
Don’t buy links.
For starters, there’s no guarantee said links will be relevant to your content, much less your audience. And if they’re not relevant, why are you bothering?
The other reason is that Google is getting better and better at identifying which backlinks have been paid for and which ones are legit. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly not worth risking Google’s wrath. Just don’t do it.
How to Give Backlinks
As with anything in life, there’s a right way and a wrong way to provide backlinks to other websites.
To make sure you’re providing backlinks to worthy candidates, here are some things to look out for:
Check for Relevance
Is it relevant to the content you’re creating?
If it’s not relevant, why are you bothering?
Check for Quality
The content to which you’re linking needs to be high-quality content.
First of all, why would you point your audience towards content that’s not high quality?
Second, Google is getting better and better at identifying high-quality content. If the content you’re linking to doesn’t make the cut, Google will notice. As a result, not only will your backlink not improve your SEO, it might hurt your SEO.
How to Identify Good Backlink Opportunities
When receiving backlink opportunities from other websites, Google assumes like hangs out with like.
You might think your high school days are over, but some aspects of high school never die.
If you’re hanging out with what Google considers to be the “cool kids,” then Google will likewise assume you’re a “cool kid.”
If you’re hanging out with the “troublemakers,” then Google will likewise assume you’re a troublemaker.
So make sure the links you’re getting are high quality.
How can you be sure?
Well, you can’t, thanks to Google being notoriously tightlipped about its algorithm.
But there are some things you can look out for.
Moz’s Domain Authority Checker
I feel like I would be remiss if I let this entire post go by without mentioning Moz’s Domain Authority Checker.
Nevertheless, I recommend taking all its scores with a big grain of salt.
In theory, this domain checker is supposed to tell you how much Google trusts a particular website.
In practice, Moz has said it relies primarily on existing backlinks (not content or keywords) to determine a site’s domain authority.
Google has said there is no such thing as domain authority. Yes, backlinks play a part, but they’re a fairly small part compared to the quality of your content, presence of keywords, etc.
So, use Moz’s domain authority tool if you feel so inclined, but don’t rely on it too heavily. Personally, I don’t use it in my linkbuilding efforts, and I have no plans to start doing so.
Keywords Appear in URL
If your target keyword appears in the URL of a page on another website, chances are pretty good there’s some synergy there, in which case you should absolutely link to it in your content, assuming the content on the other website is relevant to the content on your website.
Not seeing the keyword in the URL is not a dealbreaker, but it will require digging deeper to make sure the content checks other boxes before deciding to give them a backlink or ask for a backlink from them.
Keywords Appear in Title
URLs are all well and good, and hopefully keywords that appear in a URL also appear in the title, but we should all know by this point that such is not always the case.
For whatever reason, keywords might appear in the title of a piece that never appear in the URL and vice versa. So check for both.
Keywords Appear in Body Text (but not too many times)
If someone is putting keywords in the title and/or URL of a web page, but not throughout the content, chances are pretty good they’re trying to pull one over on you.
At the same time, if a piece of content contains a keyword too many times, that’s called keyword stuffing and Google does not like that.
Google has been known to punish websites for that.
Instead, a high-quality piece of content will use synonyms for their target keyword and related keywords sprinkled throughout their content as a way to signal to Google what they’re all about.
Page Type (does it make sense for the search intent of your target keyword?)
If you’re targeting an informational keyword, don’t provide a link that leads to someone’s sales page.
By the same token, if you’re targeting a transactional keyword, don’t link to someone else’s blog post.
They key to SEO is to lead people to the content they’re looking for. If they’re looking to buy, it doesn’t make sense to lead them to a blog post that teaches them how to DIY something.
By the same token, if they’re looking to DIY something, it doesn’t make sense to lead them to a sales page.
So, before you provide a link to a page on another website, start by making sure it’s relevant to the keyword.
Is It a Competitor?
I have mixed feelings on this, because I always like collaborating with other marketers.
But other people feel it’s stupid to provide a backlink to a competitor.
So I leave this one up to you.
If you feel providing a backlink to a website that provides the same services you provide will take business away from you company, then don’t do it.
But if you feel doing so will provide value for your audience, then, by all means, go ahead and do it.
Is the Text Human Generated?
Finally, we get to the elephant in the room: AI.
Personally, I don’t think content needs to be 100% human-created to be valuable.
I do think that, at the very least, it needs to be human edited.
Remember that AI systems like Bard and ChatGPT tend to give incorrect answers about 50% of the time, so never rely on the information they give you.
You can use AI to create/organize the boring parts of your content. But, at the very least, you should edit the content it gives you to a) check for accuracy and b) make sure it’s in line with your brand.
Before providing a backlink to another piece of content, you can use an AI checker to make sure the content was at least primarily created by humans.
Does the Blog Have Recent Posts?
If a website does not have recent blog posts (meaning published within the last 30 days,) I give it up as a lost cause.
Once per month is the minimum blogging schedule for updating your audience on news and new developments in your industry.
Any less frequent posting, and Google (not to mention the real, live humans visiting your website) will start to wonder if your website is legitimate, or if you’re just another scam.
Are the Grammar and Spelling Correct?
Websites without spelling/grammar mistakes are about twice as likely to lose prospects as websites that are free of typos and grammatical errors.
The more words in your content are misspelled, the greater the chance prospects will click away to find what they need from a more professional-looking website.
So, if you don’t think misspelling a word here or there is a big deal, think again.
Are the Web Design and Images High Quality?
There’s a reason I only work with certain web designers and developers.
It’s because I know the web design matters, not only to the SEO of a website, but to the ability of that website to engage and convert leads.
Is there high-quality content that covers recent industry news and developments?
Any website worth its salt should be covering the news and updates of its industry on their blog.
If they’re not, how can they expect anyone to consider them a thought leader in their industry?
Need Help Creating Linkable Assets?
There’s a reason I mentioned linkable assets more than once in this article. It’s because none of your other efforts will be effective if you don’t have strong linkable assets.
That’s where we come in. Whether you need help with your blog posts, a lead magnet, or that book that will position you as the go-to expert in your industry, we can help.
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