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SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is the practice of improving a particular website to boost its visibility online. This type of process involves increasing the traffic quality and quantity of the site, making it credible. Such work will then allow the business to appeal to people who might be genuinely interested in your products or services. Let's dig a little deeper and talk about organic search results and how to get them. In this article we'll primarily focus on the role backlink play in this process.

First, what are organic results?

Organic search results are listings that are shown on the search engine results pages because it is relevant to a user’s search term. But for it to appear on a SERP, valid SEO practices must be carried out first. This work is commonly known as organic SEO or white hat SEO. Such efforts are done to enhance the SERP rank of a website without any trickery like paying for backlinks.

Unethical practices, or more often called as black hat SEO, are efforts done through strategies that go against a search engine’s terms of service or guidelines. Unscrupulous actions such as paying for backlinks or keyword stuffing are said to be qualified as black hat SEO.

These tactics are not recommended because it can result in your website being banned or penalized by search engines. Ideally, if you are planning to establish a long-lasting business in the industry, then black hat SEO is not for you. Avoid these techniques, and search for alternatives that can organically help you boost your rankings.

Role of Backlinks in SEO

By definition, backlinks pertain to the links on other websites that lead directly to yours. When properly used, this can become a valuable asset that will help you get better SEO. In other words, backlinks play a big role in establishing the authority and strength of a site. And as we all know, the more authoritative a website is, the higher position it’ll get in the SERPs.

Aside from acting like a “vote of confidence”, SEO backlinks also provides an avenue for the people to find your site. For instance, if someone is reading an informative content and notices a hyperlink directing to your website, and finds that to be relevant to their research, then they will most likely click it and go to your page.

The action wherein the site visitor clicks that hyperlink is called referral traffic. Or, in other words, it is when someone visits your domain through another site, without actually searching for you on the SERP.

How to get backlinks

There are a number of ways that you can get a strong inbound link for your site. Below are some of them:

Guest blogging – While guest blogging can be a tedious task, it is still the best technique to build high-quality backlinks. To start, you’ll have to find quality websites in your industry and check which of them accept guest blogs. As to ensure that your pitch will be picked, create something that isn’t just well-written and highly relevant but also fits the site’s guidelines. Getting backlinks from high domain authority sites is the most effective way to transfer domain authority to your site. Google's algorithm picks up on the trust signal. This can lead to a boost in your rankings. Below we're going to get a little deeper into how you can measure whether or not your site has the kind of backlinks that lead to higher trust and a boost in rankings.

Link roundup posts – Another tip is to create link roundup posts that feature opinions of experts in your industry. Collate useful tips about subjects that relate to your audience’s interests, like their careers, hobbies, or goals. You can then add expert insights into the content to make it more interesting and engaging. So the primary benefit you’ll get here is that the professionals you feature will re-share or even link it back from their websites. This then boosts valuable signals to your webpage.

Blog comments – Checking out blogs from authoritative sites and commenting on them is also a smart move to get backlinks. You can either ask a thoughtful question or express your appreciation to the content. You can then include a link to your site when commenting. While this may be considered as nofollow, it’s still helpful in establishing a relationship with authoritative sites. However, make sure that you’re only commenting on relevant and appropriate blogs in your industry.

Industry statistics and case studies – Now, this might require a lot of work but if done right, it’ll be worth it. Know that content creators have a habit of linking to research-backed case studies or statistics. So if you got an original content that’s packed with data-driven insights, then others are more likely to link back into it. If reaching out websites isn’t going well for you, then get the links to come to you!

Connecting with clients – Garnering backlinks for your websites should not always be too complicated. Most of the time, all you need to do is to connect with your clients who own authoritative sites or online presence. And on their blogs, you can then get guest posts published. This will even enable you to get quality content for free as well.

One of the most effective ways to measure your efforts is by taking advantage of SEO metrics. And luckily there are tons of tools out there that deliver reports for you to look at the metrics. Two of the best free tools you can use are the Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Another great SEO tool used by digital marketers today is Majestic, or formerly known as Majestic SEO. Specializing in backlinks, this web-based SEO tool has a strong backlink index that you won’t see elsewhere. It primarily offers numerous visualizations and metrics that are useful in analyzing backlink data.

In this tool, there are two important metrics that every digital marketer must track in order to measure the success of their SEO work. These link metrics by Majestic are labeled as Flow Metrics, divided into two categories – Citation Flow and Trust Flow.

To fully understand what these metrics are all about and why they are vital in evaluating a site, check out the following sections:

Citation Flow

For many years, tons of websites have established a great reputation when it comes to utilizing the Internet. Such sites do not only affect online experience but also have an impact on users as well. In other words, influential websites have a better chance of bringing more impact, which Citation Flow is all about.

Citation Flow mainly points out to the link’s popularity on a website, disregarding the quality of links. This basically refers to websites that are gaining high traffic but do not have trustworthy content.

Measuring a link or website’s power or equity, Citation Flow relates to the score between 0-100. This allows you to determine how powerful a URL will be based on the number of links coming into it.

Trust Flow

While Citation Flow is all about quantity, Trust Flow is based purely on the quality. This specifically focuses on how trustworthy a URL is based on the number of clicks its page gets from trustworthy websites.

For instance, if your website is authoritative and qualitative then its trust flow will boost up. This particularly means your trust flow score is determined by the number of links that link to the URL, how relevant that linking website is, and how much clicks it receives. This kind of metric can be utilized to analyze competition, carry out link audits, as well as prospect for links.

Bear in mind that establishing a website’s trustworthiness takes a great amount of time and effort. The work doesn’t end with you writing and publishing content or producing them on a weekly basis. But it is also crucial to make sure that the content is of the highest quality. A good example of sites with great trust flow scores is news sites since they offer up-to-date and well-researched content, along with linking to reliable sources.

And since quality is the key data for this metric, getting a good trust flow is somewhat more challenging than acquiring a citation flow. Nevertheless, trust flow plays a significant role in organic traffic and also helps increase your position in the SERPs.

Which is better?

As said previously, getting a higher Citation Flow is considered to be easier than acquiring a good Trust Flow. But while this is a very common case, it is important to always prioritize Trust Flow over Citation Flow as it gives you a strong, healthy backlink profile.

It is a fact that producing content consistently does help in getting a high ranking in the search engine results pages. However, it is more crucial to have a strong and relevant content that addresses the needs and interests of your target market. This will eventually enable you to get the traffic you are targeting and increase your Trust Flow ranking for a particular search query.

In other words, if you want your page to rank higher in the SERPs, then you should ensure that the quality of your backlinks is stronger as well. This will also let Google know that you’re an authority for that particular topic resulting in a higher position in the SERPs as a reward. So the main point here is – quality always wins over quantity.

Useful Tips on How to Boost Flow Metrics on Your Site

Now that you know about the two crucial flow metrics, it’s time to learn how you can improve them. Here’s a list of useful tips to help you with that:

1. Improve your internal linking strategy by creating tons of high-quality content. However, make sure not to use “follow” links and not over-optimize the anchor text.

2. Get high Trust Flow websites to link to you. Take advantage of tools wherein you can check a website’s Trust Flow. If you want to know your Trust Flow score, message me and I'll be happy to get that for you.

3. Reach out to those who own authoritative websites in your industry and send them a friendly email. Build a relationship with these website owners prior to asking for backlinks.

4. Do not publish pirated content. Instead, work on producing articles that are of high quality and properly proofed.

5. Avoid relying on black hat SEO techniques. Such unethical tactics may give you tons of SEO backlinks but it’ll just lead your site to get penalized as well.

I specialize in digital marketing with special emphasis on SEO and PPC digital advertising. If you would like a free audit of your online marketing efforts just send a message.

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