Create Backlinks for your Website and Reach Page 1 on Google

There are many ways to create more traffic to your website. Creating relevant content that is geared to the needs of your ideal audience has to be the starting point. In most cases that will propel your website onto the first page or two of Google search results.

However, climbing the search rankings further and eventually reaching position number one will be hard with just good content. That’s when building backlinks to your website becomes important. It’s one of the oldest methods in search engine optimization, and still one of the most important.

What are Backlinks to your Website?

A backlink or inbound link to your website is when another web page links to your site. They are like ‘votes’ for the popularity of your website. They are the most important ranking factors in the algorithm of Google, and very important to how well you rank for a specific search term. Basically, the more other websites link to your website, and the better the reputation of those linking websites, the better your website will rank in Google and other major search engines.

Here is a quick overview of different types of backlinks:

Internal and External Backlink

External backlinks are links from other websites to your website, whereas an internal link points to other pages on the same site. Internal links are easy to create, since you have full control over your own website. They do contribute to search engine ranking, but as you can imagine are far less important than external backlinks.

Follow and Nofollow Backlink

Backlink checkers will also indicate if a backlink is a “nofollow” link. A standard backlink will give value to your website, much like the popularity vote described above.

A nofollow link tells Google's algorithm not to pass on any value to your website. These nofollow links are used when websites have no control over the links that appear on their pages. Examples are directories such as YellowPages or Yelp, or social media platforms like Facebook and Linkedin. Whenever you are able to create a link to your website yourself it is quite likely that it will be a nofollow link.

These nofollow links will benefit your website, but it’s much less beneficial than a standard backlink. So in your link building strategy you will want to concentrate on getting followed links!

Different Types of Anchor Text

The anchor text of a link is the clickable text that the visitor sees on the web page. Here are the different types of anchor text and examples:

• URL: The link shown is simply the URL of your web page, e.g. “www.mawazo.ca”.
• Exact Match: The link contains the relevant keyword phrases, e.g. “website development”.
• Brand: the link is the name of your company or brand, e.g. “Mawazo Marketing”.
• Compound: the link is contains keyword phrases as well as other words, for example “Search Engine Optimisation by Mawazo Marketing” or “best methods for search engine optimization”.
• Natural: where the anchor text is words like “Click here”, or “homepage”.

For best results it’s important to have a backlink profile with a variety of anchor texts, but only few Compound and even fewer Exact Match links. If your link profile has too many Exact Match phrases then it is a signal that the backlinks may have been purchased and not natural link obtained by publishing quality content, and Google may end up penalizing your website.

What Backlinks do you have, and how many do you need?

The first step is to do a backlink audit: find out which websites are currently linking to your website.

There are many free backlink checkers available. Ubersuggest is a great SEO tool and free to use for up to 3 backlink reviews per day. It will give you an overview of the backlinks to your website, the authority of those websites, the type of links used etc. You can export all links and create a spreadsheet to track them. This will give you the starting point for your link building strategy.

With the same approach you can also get insight into the backlink profile of your closest competitors. This will help you understand how many links you need to add to your profile to improve your ranking in the Google search results. Choose the backlink profile of your most important competitors as a benchmark and set out to beat them!

A few words about Domain Authority

I’ve already mentioned that getting quality backlinks is just as important as having a sufficient quantity. The better the reputation of the linking websites, the higher the impact on your search engine ranking.

An important measure of the reputation of a website is its “Domain Authority”. This is a number between 1 and 100. The higher the score the better the website’s reputation and the higher the value of a backlink from that website.

Ubersuggest will show the Domain Authority of any website:

How to get Backlinks to your Website

Over time pretty much every website will get backlinks from other websites, but it’s a slow process. To get your website to rank on page one of Google will almost certainly mean that you need to actively reach out to the admin or webmaster of another website and ask for a link to be placed. If your content benefits their users, then they may place that link.

In the remainder of this article I’ll give an overview of the steps to generate backlinks:

1. Create great content
2. Create a list of backlink Opportunities
3. Link Building Outreach Campaign

Create great Content

If you don’t have meaningful content, then it will be very hard if not completely impossible to get a quality link from other websites. So creating relevant content is the starting point in your link building strategy.

It’s important to note that your content will have to be unique. Google has become very good at spotting plagiarism, and will flag your blog post or article if it is not at least 70% unique. You can check your content with plagiarism tools such as offered by Grammarly and SmallSEOTools.

There are different ways to create content and use it to generate backlinks. Here are some examples:

Skyscraper Technique

One of the most effective ways to create backlinks is to write a better and more exhaustive piece of content on a particular topic than what is available on the web. When your content is published you can reach out to the owners of the websites that link to your competitor’s article and ask them to replace the backlink with a link to your, better, content.

Guest Posting

Many websites will allow you to create a page of relevant and unique content, typically about 800 to 1,500 words, and submit it to the owner of another website as a “guest post”. The owner of the blog or website may allow you to put one or more links in the text body, or in the “About the Author” section.

Interviews

You can interview someone who is important in your industry. The interviewee will likely link back to your content and share the interview with their followers. 

Press Releases

Creating a press release is a great way to create a backlink to your website. It involves writing newsworthy information and distributing it on PR platforms where you can submit paid or free info on your services.

Once you have a good website with great content in place, and you have optimized the pages for search engine ranking, then you are ready to establish backlinks from other websites.

Create a list of Backlink Opportunities

The next step is to create a list of websites that you would like to get a backlink from. Here are some ways to find opportunities:

Opportunities in your Network

This is an often overlooked strategy. If you're a business owner involved in the community then you may be able to get links from an article in the local newspaper, your membership in a local business network, or a charity you sponsor.

Mentions of your Business without a Backlink

Sometimes other websites will mention the name of your company without actually linking to your website. A great way to find these opportunities is to set up Google Alerts. Whenever your brand is mentioned you will get an alert. Don’t forget to add the quotes to get relevant search results:

Once you find an unlinked mention then you can reach out to the webmasters of these websites and ask them for a backlink.

Competitor Backlinks

In the same way you used the backlink checker to find the backlinks to your website, it can also help you find backlinks to the sites of your competitor. These great opportunities for building links to your website, and when you’re successful it also reduces the number of unique links your competitors may have!

Topical Research

When the above easy backlink opportunities have been exhausted then the next step is to find websites that may be interested in linking to your website based on the topic.

Guest Posting

You can find opportunities for guest blogging with a Google search. For example if you wish to publish content on a manufacturing blog, then you can search for “manufacturing guest post” or “manufacturing write for us”:

Broken Links

When a website links to a page that doesn’t exist any more, then it’s called a “broken link”. When visitors click on the link they will get an error message. It can also negatively affect the search engine ranking of the linking web page.

Website owners therefore don’t like to have such broken backlinks on their website. As a result, broken links are a great opportunity to build a quality backlink to your website: find a broken backlink and reach out to the website owner to warn them of the problem and suggest replacing it with a link to a valuable resource on your website instead.

A great free tool is Ahrefs broken link checker:

These are some of the ways to create a list of backlink opportunities. Ideally you create a spreadsheet with all the information necessary to reach out to the webmaster such as the URL of the page, the relevant page on your own website, the type of backlink, and any contact information you can find to open up communication.

Once you have completed your list it is time to start your outreach campaign:

Link Building Outreach Campaign

When you reach out to website admins it’s important to understand what the benefit is for them to link to your website. After all, if there is no benefit, then you don’t have a chance of achieving your goal!

As Neil Patel points out in his blog “how to build backlinks”: most webmasters will be interested to place a link to your website only if:

• The content is relevant to their site
• The content is detailed and deep
• The content is well written
• The site is legitimate

Keep that in mind when you start your outreach campaign. Give the webmaster a good reason to link back to your content by creating detailed and relevant content and show how it will add value to their visitors!

The next step is to decide which link building opportunities to focus on. This will depend on a number of factors:

• The domain authority of the website.
• The cost, in time or money, to pursue a link.
• Whether you have been able to find the contact information of the webmaster.
• Whether you have good content already, or will need to create content for the campaign.

Once you have created a shortlist of links it is time to start your outreach campaign. You’ll contact each webmaster individually, probably by email. If they are like you, they’re probably getting 50 to 100 emails per day, if not more. So simply using templated emails will likely not do the trick...

Be genuine and personal in your email, and make sure you clearly communicate the value you’re offering to their users. If you offer value, then it’s a win-win situation and they’ll be more likely to give you the backlink you’re after.

The process can take some efforts. Sometimes the person you’re communicating with will not be very conversant with managing their website, so you may have to spend some time explaining what you’re proposing.

Sometimes you’ll need to follow up a few times before the backlink is created. This is likely not going to be a priority for the person you speak to, so a gentle reminder may be necessary. Keep track of your communication so you don’t lose the opportunity...

In Conclusion

Link building is an important activity to get your website ranking well in Google search results and a main focus in SEO. With a consistent and systematic approach it will generate great results. If you prefer to spend your time growing your business, then please reach out for a no-obligation strategy session to discuss your digital marketing needs!

This article first appeared on the Mawazo Marketing blog at https://www.mawazo.ca/create-backlinks-for-your-website-and-reach-page-1-on-google