Have you been avoiding nofollow links while working on your SEO?

You might be surprised to learn that nofollow SEO links actually have their place and time. Once you understand nofollow links better, you can learn how to use nofollow links to your advantage, instead of writing off these opportunities.

In this essential guide, we’ll go over what nofollow SEO links can do for your website.

Keep reading to learn more!

Why Use Nofollow SEO Links?

Links are an essential part of SEO. However, not all links are quite the same. You might have a handle on backlinks, internal links, and external links. However, nofollow links are another story.

The truth is that it takes a mix of different kinds of links to make a successful SEO strategy, and nofollow links are just as much a part of the strategy as the rest.

What makes a link nofollow, and why are they so useful? Let’s get into it.

Every link gets crawled or “followed” by a search engine by default, unless you give instructions otherwise. The way to instruct a search engine not to crawl a link is to use the nofollow attribute.

This attribute is a small piece of HTML code that reads as:

Generally speaking, you want Google to follow the links you post. If those links are relevant and useful to readers, Google won’t punish your blog.

However, nofollow links can be helpful for certain types of links that Google will punish. Now, let’s take a look at what those are.

1. Product Links

Similarly, you should always nofollow links to a product that you put on your website. Sometimes, you might agree to place links on your site in exchange for a company’s service or product, but just be sure to nofollow them every time.

2. Review Links

For standard, unpaid review links, you can use regular follow links. But for paid review links you’ll want to make them nofollow every time. If you allow the links to products you were paid to review to be followed, Google will punish you.

3. Affiliate Links

The same goes for affiliate links. If you’ll get money from sales that use the links you post, always make them nofollow.

Google recognizes affiliate links as potential sources of revenue, which is why it punishes follow affiliate links. Google uses this to discourage sites from using affiliate schemes – but if you’re going to do it, just make the links nofollow.

4. Shady Links

If, for some reason, you have a link to a shady or untrustworthy site on your blog, make sure it’s nofollow so you don’t get punished for that site’s behavior.

What’s an untrustworthy site? Any site in an industry known for spam, or a site with poorly constructed content. These low-quality websites will negatively impact your search rankings otherwise.

5. Noindexed Links

If you noindex one of your links, it’s important that you nofollow it too.

Noindex links prevent pages from showing up in Google searches, even if it’s linked to. This allows you to control which pages can be accessed on your site. If you don’t want these low-quality links messing up your rankings, be sure to add the nofollow tag as well.

6. Links Used in Images or Widgets

You should also turn any links that your feature in your widgets or images into nofollow SEO links.

For example, if you’re going to feature an icon with a link on a third-party website, make sure that it’s a nofollow link. Otherwise, Google may see it as a link scheme and punish your site.

7. Guest Post Links

Google has stated that it punishes guest posting for SEO purposes. If you want to avoid Google’s wrath, just make sure to make those links nofollow.

8. Admin Pages

There are some standard pages on your site that Google never needs to follow, including your cart, privacy, login, terms of use, and so on. Go ahead and make those nofollow SEO links.

9. Social Media Buttons

If you include social media share buttons on your site, you’ll want to nofollow those as well.

In this case, Google isn’t going to punish you for having them as follow links. However, you don’t want to be giving precious link equity to outside websites, especially massive social media sites.

The Importance of Nofollow SEO Links

Let’s dig deeper into why these nofollow strategies are important.

Google claims that it won’t transfer anchor text or PageRank on links that are marked as nofollow. However, Google is known for not always abiding by the rules it sets.

Sometimes, Google may actually follow and register links that are marked “nofollow.” For example, all the links on Wikipedia are marked nofollow. However, a backlink from Wikipedia makes a huge difference in a site’s rankings, hinting that Google does follow some nofollow links after all.

The reason for this is probably because Google knows a massive site like Wikipedia wouldn’t use low-quality or spammy links, so it automatically counts Wikipedia links instead.

This means that links from valued websites might be followed, no matter how they’re tagged.

Of course, even if nofollow links actually aren’t followed by Google, they can still be followed by web users. Every link can bring potential customers to your site and translate into valuable conversions.

Nofollow links that bring great traffic is an important part of a solid SEO strategy. Links also build more links, of all kinds. So, nofollow links can eventually translate into dofollow links, especially if they come from a valuable site.

Ready to Use Nofollow Links?

Nofollow links get a bad rap, but they’re actually an important part of your SEO strategy.

Be sure to strategically mark the right links as nofollow, while also welcoming nofollow links from reputable sites if you can get them. With this approach, you’ll be growing your traffic in no time.

Want to get help building links? You don’t have to do it alone – check out why you should use a link building agency here.

According to Google, backlinks are 1 of 3 top ranking signals. Without them, your amazing site will have no chance of being seen. You turn to building links as a way to boost your rankings. But what can you really expect?

How do backlink experts capture those page 1 spots?

One incredibly vital component to their success is that they understand how backlinks really work. They can, therefore, more effectively manage their own expectations and those of their clients.

Can you? Let’s explore the truth about backlinks and how managing expectations will help you develop a winning long-term strategy.

1. Attracting Links Naturally is a Catch 22

What the goals of all webmasters who invest in quality content? They want to create link-magnet content. Who can blame them? Even though they have to invest in this content, these somehow seem like “gimme links”.

And influencers we won’t mention by name tell them that this is how links get built.

This is an admirable goal and we’re not saying you shouldn’t create amazing content that people want to link to. That’s important.

The problem arises when people expect their content to be so “linkable” that they envision moving up in the ranks fast with only natural links.

Natural link building takes time. And acquiring natural links is nearly impossible if you’re not already ranking. This catch 22 leaves a lot of aspiring link-builders feeling frustrated and lied to.

But by managing expectations and building links naturally as part of your overall strategy for acquiring links, you can succeed.

2. Crawling Takes Time

You’re not new to SEO, websites, or building links. But like all people, you want to see results fast. As we discuss managing expectations, it’s important to make this point.

Links must be crawled by search engines before they’ll begin giving you that boost you’re looking for.

They may not all appear at once — even from the same domain. It may take some time for all backlinks to be recognized and weighted by the big players like Google.

Start building. Keep building. And as the links appear in tools like Google search console, you’ll start to see the fruits of your labor.

3. Recognize Tool Limitations

Even some of the most trusted tools like Moz, AhRefs, SEMrush and so on have their limitations. Search engines like Google have massive resources at their disposal.

Google has indexed over 130 trillion pages. It indexes and re-indexes billions each day. Top tools will attempt to capture as many links as possible. But to find all links, you’d need to use multiple tools.

It’s important to realize that you probably have more links that you can account for. What really matters is the results you achieve from these links — not whether you can account for them.

4. You May See Results Before You’ll See Links

Because of the limitations in some of these tools, you may see a small ranking boost before the links actually appear in most tools. Others may take more time to realize.

As you invest in building links over the long term, you realize compounded results.

5. High DA Links May Not Give You the Boost You Expect

You want high authority links. Link authority is a known ranking factor. But links should also be relevant.

Relevant links don’t have to come from a website that does exactly what you do. That wouldn’t be normal. But the context at a page or at least a paragraph level should be there to be of most value to you.

If you have people offering to sell you thousands of high DA links, but they’ve no concern for the relevance of those links — beware.

Authority + Relevance = Great Link …Assuming it’s “do follow”, of course.

6. The Law of Diminishing Returns Applies

As an SEO or webmaster, you know how difficult it can be to build partnerships with other webmasters for building links.

Whether you’re capitalizing on mentions or writing guest posts, outreach to thousands can result in a handful of websites willing to work with you.

Because of this, you may want to make the most of that relationship. You might want to acquire as many links as possible from that one domain. But unfortunately, diminishing returns apply.

That first link might give you a great boost. But each subsequent one will only give you a fraction of the link juice.

Diversity is important. 100 links from one high DA site doesn’t hold the same weight as 100 links from various relevant websites.

Working with someone who’s already built partnerships with thousands of sites relevant to your industry is the way to get the best return on your investment.

7. Sustainable Results Take Time

Even some professionals have this idea that they’re going to get that magical backlink from a 95 DA website and suddenly they’ll shoot to a number 1 spot. If only it worked like that.

While it’s 100% true that a 95 DA backlink can strongly impact your rankings, there are many factors that impact ranking like:

• Age of your website
• How visitors are responding to your UX
• Competitors
• Content quality
• Industry/Niche

As well as things we discussed like:

• Link profile diversity
• Relevance
• Follow or Not

That’s why the best strategy for building links is a long-term comprehensive strategy that builds on itself to pay you back exponentially over the long-term.

Building Links for Long-Term Success

Natural link-building is important. But as a stand-alone link building strategy, it just doesn’t work. If people can’t find you, they can’t link to you.

Google is crawling billions of pages a day. It can take time for it to find all of your links. And the tools you use may take even longer to find your links. That’s why setting realistic long-term goals is key to your success.

Acquiring 1000’s of non-descript links may seem like the answer. But if those links aren’t authority, relevant, do follow links, they only look good on paper.

At Backlinks.com we make it easy to get the right kinds of backlinks fast. Get diverse, relevant, authority, do follow links now. Set up a free account to start improving your SERPs today.

Considering all the moving parts involved in a good SEO strategy, building quality backlinks can seem like a daunting task. The process takes time and a focused expertise.

Occasionally, you may hear that linking no longer influences a website’s search engine rankings. This is a complete misconception. A good linking strategy is as important as ever.

What’s changed is that backlinks to a site need come from trusted sources and be contextually relevant. Quantity over quality is no longer good enough.

This is why expert link building services are crucial to your SEO campaign. It benefits you to work with an agency instead of trying to do it yourself.

But there are other advantages of turning to the pros in order to build links.

How Backlinks Help You

A website, especially one for a business, isn’t effective unless it ranks well in search engines. At least, not nearly as effective as it could be.

Aside from quality content, a keyword strategy, responsive design, and other SEO tactics, a site needs inbound links. They’re one of the top factors that cause a site to rank well in Google.

Think of an inbound link as a vote of confidence for your site. They add value in the eyes of search engines and the reward is higher rankings.

However, at some point, search engines made algorithm changes that applied stricter rules when it comes to backlinks. As a result, the quality and relevance of inbound links became more important.

In the past, simply acquiring as many links as possible was good enough. Now, more thought needs to go into a linking strategy.

This is why expert link building is so important. But there are other ways you benefit from working with an agency.

Improper Linking Can Hurt You

Understanding the incorrect tactics is just as important as knowing the right ones.

Digital marketing is growing more and more competitive. It’s crucial to stay on top of algorithm changes and trends in user behavior. This is what expert link building brings to the table.

In this competitive environment, it may seem enticing to go after as many inbound links as possible. While there’s a chance this could initially lead to higher rankings, it’s likely you’ll soon see a sharp drop-off.

This is a result of Google’s emphasis on high-quality links rather than high-quantity.

But a drop-off in rankings may be the least of your problems if you cast your net too wide. In fact, too many backlinks could now get you penalized by search engines. The result could be hard to bounce back from.

Poor linking devalues your credibility. It can severely compromise your site, leaving it buried in the rankings due to penalties imposed by search engines. Working with an experienced agency ensures this won’t happen.

Save Time and Money with Expert Link Building

A successful linking strategy is extremely time-consuming and complicated. Expert link building requires the proper training and experience in order to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Working with an agency allows you to leave this intimidating task in the hands of experts so you can concentrate on other elements of your SEO campaign. Remember, there are professionals solely dedicated to link building, which is proof this is an enormous undertaking.

A link building strategy can also be potentially costly if not properly executed. An agency will already have access to the tools necessary so you don’t have to invest in something you don’t fully understand.

Hiring an agency also puts the accountability in someone else’s hands. In the event of an error, they will have the proper analytics tools to diagnose a problem and take the necessary steps to correct the issue.

The reputation of your site is at stake. Working with a link building agency takes the burden off you and saves time and money in the process.

Long-Term Success

We mentioned earlier that going after as many inbound links as possible may result in higher rankings, but only for a short amount of time. On the other hand, a methodical and legitimate approach to link building will result in long-term success in search engines.

Quality inbound links build authority and give your site the invaluable benefit of a good reputation in the eyes of search engines. This can’t be achieved without the proper resources and experience that a link building agency provides.

Because improper linking techniques can result in getting penalized by search engines, it makes no sense to shoot for short-term success. Instead, let an agency build a linking strategy that will help your site achieve and maintain the rankings you want.

The Expertise of an Agency

You may be under the impression that a link building agency does fairly one-dimensional work. That they simply concentrate all their effort on getting inbound links.

In fact, an agency employs a number of tactics which encompass an overall strategy.

Depending on the type of service you decide on, an agency could provide a number of automated features such as link monitoring and auto replacement. You could also take advantage of referral programs.

They’ll also offer link analysis and website assessment services that will provide feedback on what areas of your site need improving. They also have solid relationships within the industry and can bring a collaborative approach to the table when needed.

They offer the full scope of a linking campaign that you won’t be able to provide or afford on your own.

Get Better Results with A Link Building Agency

As an SEO professional, results are your bottom line. High-quality inbound links are crucial to getting the rankings you’re looking for. But the time, money and expertise required to acquire them are most likely out of your reach.

Instead of attempting a link strategy yourself, turn to expert link building and leave the job to the professionals. The long-term benefits they’ll bring to your site will be well worth the cost.

We provide a trusted link automation platform for link advertisers and publishers. Contact us today to learn more.

Anchor text is an important part of SEO optimization and content marketing. Google uses anchor texts to understand what a webpage is about and rank its value.

But anchoring is no longer a simple strategy.

Google and Penguin are constantly updating the way they rank web pages. What worked great five years ago can kill a web profile today.

Follow this up-to-date guide for the best anchor text practices. Your SEO ranking will improve in no time!

1. Branded Anchor Text

Branded anchor text simply means linking your brand name to another page. It is one of the best anchor techniques for national brands.

Linking brand names can significantly improve your ranking and works best when used on a homepage.

Website names are also allowed by Google. This provides an easy and reliable anchoring system when speaking about your own business or another.

Branded anchoring also provides a way to avoid anchoring keywords (more on this later).

For example, if the keyword is “natural shampoo”– link to “latest collections at brand”. It’s a win-win.

2. Natural Anchor Text

The word “natural” in web development and design refers to value and reality. Search engines are looking for websites that are real– designed and maintained by real people, provide real value, and have credible objectives.

Providing value to users means providing them useful information when necessary. Search engines are going to look at your anchor text to see if they are necessary and valuable.

This means only linking when it is useful to your readers. It also means avoiding repetitive and keyword anchors.

Using natural anchoring is especially helpful for improving the ranks of local homepages. But when used within inner pages, they increase SEO optimization for any type of business (national or local).

Anytime you place an anchor link, ask yourself if it feels natural. This simple step will lead to the best anchor profile.

3. Avoid Exact Matches

Be careful in how much you use the exact title of an article, page, or blog post as your anchor text. While it is not disallowed, overusing this strategy will hurt your ranking.

Why? Because it isn’t natural (we’re back to that natural thing again). It is rarely natural to include a full title in a sentence. It also is more likely to be missed by the user.

Instead, link to the vital piece of information the article provides and leave out the title altogether. Your readers probably are not going to care what the title of a blog post or article is anyway.

This rule includes avoiding exact-match keywords, too. Linking keywords is not natural. Instead, change the keywords around and place them naturally in a sentence

For example, if the keyword is “SEO tools”: instead of linking to the exact match, link to something like “the best tools for SEO building”.

4. Keep it Short

Think about the best way to describe the page you’re linking to without using an exact match and with the least amount of words possible.

The general rule is to link no more than five words.

Linking an entire sentence is offputting and it will not stand out. Users want to click on specific words because of an interest to learn or see more.

Always ask yourself “what will the reader want to click on?”.

5. Keep it Relevant

When you’re creating a page or writing a post, make sure the pages you link to make sense for the copy. You want to choose to anchor text to pages that directly relate to what you’re writing about.

Anchor texts actually get ranked by search engines to check for relevancy. If your page has irrelevant anchor text, it will hurt your SEO.

An example of a good level of relevance would be linking to an article on “this year’s hottest interior paint colors” while writing an article on interior design and decorating.

A bad anchor for the article is linking to a page about a topic outside of home interior design such as lawn care or roofing.

6. Never Anchor to the Top

What does that mean? It means avoid anchoring to forefront pages of a website such as a homepage, contact page, and product page.

These pages are considered “shallow” pages. Linking to them creates an unnatural chain leading to poorer SEO.

It doesn’t help your online presence, either. Think about it–it is highly unlikely that someone is going to share your homepage.

Instead, link to “deep” pages such as a specific blog article or product. This will allow users to navigate to the landing pages on their own and further increase SEO.

Remember, keep the anchor relevant and concise.

7. Be Picky About Who You Link To

The websites you choose to link to will affect your SEO ranking.

Google uses a method called Co-citation in which it includes the webpages you link to as part of your ranked profile. They view the links as a relationship between two pages.

According to Google’s guidelines, linking to low-quality pages or websites that may have spam will cost you. Google warns against excessive link exchanges, too.

Focus on linking to high-quality, credible, and relevant websites. Look at the site’s Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Trust Flow before linking.

Get the Most Out of Your Links With the Best Anchor Strategies

Understanding what makes a white-hat link is vital to having a successful website and marketing campaign.

At BackLinks.com, we are experts in the best anchor techniques. We specialize in backlink building that will lead to guaranteed improved SEO and business.

Whether you’re in need of information, text links, or have links to sell, we can help.

Visit our website to learn more and register for free today. Your website and business will thank you.

Looking for a little more attention? Aren’t we all!

Forget trying to keep up with changing search ranking algorithms. The true secret to success in link development is the same as it’s always been: make your site indispensable.

So how do you transform your site into one that everyone needs to link to? Here are the 5 strategies you need to start using.

Show Your Quality

Search engines are getting smarter about shortcuts to link development. That’s why one of the most effective methods is also the most honest.

Having Grade A content is the quickest path to building links. If you provide top-tier content, you won’t have to “trick” anyone into linking you – they’ll want to do it anyway.

Quality content will get you noticed. Other sites will want to use it to back up their own articles. Your visitors will want to share it on social media, which expands your reach considerably.

Of course, generating quality takes a bit of work. You’ll have to put in the research. You need to understand your niche, but also what sort of content your audience wants to see.

That’ll pay off big time when the links start coming through, however. There’s a lot to be said for leading the pack, instead of following it.

Plug The Gaps

It’s easy to forget that as the internet grows, it also dies off.

Sites disappear or change ownership. And it only takes a few site redesigns to break a carefully-curated list of sources.

No webmaster wants broken links on their site. They provide no value to the visitor and may impact their search rankings. So it’s in their interest to get them fixed.

That’s where you come in. There are ways to track down sites featuring broken links. Using the right browser extensions, you can find these in your niche. Once you’ve got them, speak to the site’s owners and offer your own links as an alternative.

Just like that, you’ve improved their SEO and developed your links.

Even better, those webmasters will remember you, so you might even find a few offers for guest posting kicked your way.

Get Out There

One overlooked method of link development is through creating a real-world impact, whether it’s hosting an event or sponsoring.

This is especially useful for businesses with local appeal.

Running an Event

Hosting an event boosts your brand signal and ensures people will link to you. It makes you the hub of a brand awareness wheel, so any mentions of the event will revolve around you.

When you’re hosting an event, you’ll naturally talk about it a lot. Your site will appear on any discussion or coverage of the event, and as your event gains traction it’ll end up in the local news cycle and on social media.

By hosting an event, you’re also positioning yourself ahead of the other brands involved, because they’ll all talk about you. Along with the positive press from the event itself, this discussion will be a huge boost to your links.

Sponsoring

Don’t worry if you can’t afford to host an event. They’re expensive, and you could lose money if the event doesn’t go quite right.

In that case, sponsorship is a safer option. While it won’t put you at the center of attention, it’ll often get you a mention in promotional cycles, which will still result in backlinks for you.

Try to find some key cornerstones in your niche or local area. Businesses like charities or educational institutes depend heavily on popular awareness, so attaching your brand to these is a great way to get noticed.

Make sure to draft a press release for when you find a sponsorship partner. It’ll be the first link your partner runs with, and likely the first of many more to come.

Be Resourceful

Most niches have some kind of resource that people want to tap into.

This could be a business list or tools that others will want to use. It could be some kind of search service or a collection of public domain documents.

Whatever kind of resource suits your niche, try to tap into it. If you can become the place to go for something in your niche, new links will come flooding in.

Other sites in your niche will soon find your resources too useful to ignore, so they’ll only be too happy to link to their competitor.

Simply having these helpful resources on your site will also give you some additional credibility, which will help to bring in larger audiences to your other content. It’s amazing how much authority you can gather in your niche just by offering a few simple tools.

Guest Post

Guest posts are a tried and true way to build new links. It’s a classic for good reason.

Like more traditional forms of publicity, guest posts widen your brand awareness. It puts new eyes on your content and gives you a chance to dazzle new visitors with your content.

You’ll naturally link back to your site within your post. But you can also use contextual links in the post to bring viewers back to your site. If your quality is up to scratch, you’ll want to refer to the great content you’ve created before.

Reach out to sites aligned to your niche, or use Google to find new candidates. You’ll always find someone looking for contributions because it’s a real time-saver for them.

If you’re worried about boosting your competitors, aim for sites just outside your niche, but with crossover appeal. That way you’re sure of a captive audience without giving your competitors an advantage.

Link Development Never Stops

But don’t rest on your laurels just yet. With these tips, you can boost your site to new heights, but link development should always be an ongoing task. Keep at it, and keep looking for new ways to take your site to the next level.

Want to become a backlink baron? Be sure to follow our blog.

How can you improve your backlink profile?

There are countless ways to get backlinks to your site.

What if you were told that you can piggyback on your competitors’ backlinks to build your own?

Yes, you can do so using white hat tricks, too. There’s nothing black hat about it.

Would you like to know more?

Keep reading for the top tips to use your competitors’ backlinks to build a solid foundation.

Quality Backlinks Are Not Dead

As an SEO pro, you have heard that backlinks are important. Notice that the heading to this section says quality backlinks. It used to be that backlinks were important, and it didn’t matter where they came from.

Web developers would buy links from anywhere and they’d boost their rankings. Google caught on to this tactic, and in an effort to provide quality search results for their users, they drastically changed the algorithm.

A backlink profile is still one of the top factors in rankings, but instead of focusing on the sheer number of links, webmasters need to focus on obtaining links from sites that have a high Domain Authority.

You can start building your backlink profile from websites that have a high domain authority by analyzing your competitors and use their backlinks as a starting point to build your own.

Know Your Competitors

The first step in building your backlink profile is to know who your competitors are. There are a couple of ways to do that.

The first is to go to SEMRush and do a search for your own domain name. You’ll then find a list of organic competitors, which you can use for SEO purposes.

The other way requires a little more research but is as every bit as effective. Think of your core product or service. Then put yourself in the shoes of your customer.

How would your customer search for your service? Use those search terms to start with and see who comes up. Those are your competitors.

If you serve a particular area, try searching from different locations, such as coffee shops in your service area. Google’s search results are also tied to the location of the user and their proximity to a businesses’ location.

This will give you an overall view of your key competitors. You can create a list of ten of your competitors. For the next steps, you’ll want to choose 1-2 competitors to start with. Otherwise, you’ll be overwhelmed by a huge list of backlinks.

As you start to gather your data, you’re going to want to keep everything on a single spreadsheet for reference.

Use the Right Research Tools

It’s time to really have some fun.

There are two tools that you can use to find your competitors’ backlinks: Open Site Explorer by Moz and Ahrefs.

Ahrefs requires a paid account, but you can take advantage of their 14-day trial to get the information you need.

With these tools, search one of your competitor’s sites. You’ll then get a list of inbound links linking to the site.

Open Site Explorer will also give you the Domain Authority of the sites backlinking to the competitor’s site. These are the sites you want to start to focus on.

Be a Backlink Copycat

Take your list of backlinks and do additional research. Just because your competitors have a bunch of backlinks doesn’t mean you should trust them.

For all you know, they could have used black hat or spammy techniques to get those backlinks and Google hasn’t penalized them…yet.

You’ll want to do a link audit on those sites. If you find sites with a high domain authority, then you’ll want to use the same exact way the

If your competitor got a backlink through a guest post on a site, submit your own guest post on the same site.

Use the Right Anchor Text

As you’re building your backlinks, the anchor text you use is just as important as the domain authority of the site.

Think of it this way, each link you get from another site is a vote for your site. As we discovered earlier, some votes are weighted more than others through Domain Authority.

What your anchor text does is tell Google what the vote is for. Let’s say that you’re creating a backlink for a health coach in Portland, Oregon. You go into a fitness forum and create a link to the health coach’s site with the anchor text being “health coach in Portland.”

That’s a relevant link, in a high-quality forum, and tells search engines that you’re essentially voting for a specific health coach in Portland.

Continue to Build Your Backlink Profile

Once you used your competitors’ backlinks to build a solid foundation, it’s time to branch out on your own to acquire more.

Even if you go about it the right way, you can have too many good backlinks. If you have too many bad backlinks, you’ll be penalized by Google’s algorithm.

For backlinks to be truly effective, the site giving the backlinks must have quality content and be relevant.

For example, if you’re trying to create a backlink for a fitness center and you’re posting a backlink in a forum about cars, it may look a little spammy. If the link doesn’t make sense to the forum readers, it won’t make sense to search engines, either.

When building your backlink profile, err on the side of caution. The best way to do that is to think from a reader’s perspective and aim to give as much value as possible. Do that, and the link building opportunities will come naturally.

Take the Guesswork Out of Building Backlinks

These tips are meant to give you a solid foundation to build your backlinks. You can take it a step further with Backlinks.com.

Our services help SEO pros and web developers take the guesswork out of building backlinks for you. Out proven system was one of the first automated link building systems. Ten years later, we are one of the top brands in the industry.

Sign up for your free account today.

In today’s digital market, SEO is all-important. Specifically, white hat SEO is all-important. A common tactic is white hat link building.

But what is white hat link building? For that matter, what is white hat SEO and how does it differ from regular SEO?

Read on to find out.

What Is SEO?

SEO is short for search engine optimization.

Every search engine is programmed with algorithms. Those algorithms help it pick out web pages that are relevant to Internet users’ searches. Additionally, the algorithms sort out potentially poor web pages and place them below better web pages.

This process is called ranking.

Thanks to their algorithms, search engines take a number of factors into account when ranking a page. Common factors include relevance, safety, reliability, and popularity.

White Hat SEO Versus Black Hat SEO

There are a variety of techniques that web pages can employ to rank higher. Unfortunately, not all of these techniques are recommended or helpful. Some of even hurt web pages’ SEO.

Proper SEO is called “white hat SEO.” In contrast, unhelpful and harmful SEO is called “black hat SEO.”

White hat SEO entails using fair techniques to influence search engine techniques. One of the most common techniques of white hat SEO is link building. Other common techniques include keyword usage and high-quality content.

Black hat SEO, on the other hand, stoops to using cheap tricks to manipulate search engines. Switch-and-bait content, invisible text, and keyword stuffing are all considered black hat SEO tactics.

Search engine technology has come quite a long way since SEO was first conceived. Now search engines can recognize black hat SEO on a web page and rank the page lower as a result.

For that reason, it is imperative that you stick to white hat SEO while developing websites and website content.

The Importance of White Hat Link Building

Search engines use links to rank websites’ relevance and trustworthiness.

In the past, web developers could get away with linking any word or phrase to any site on the web. In fact, the more links your content had, the higher your site’s pages were ranked.

That isn’t the case anymore. Search engine bots crawl over every readable part of web pages, including the links. Poorly implemented or irrelevant links are tossed to the bottom of the pile.

7 Techniques for White Hat Link Building

Thankfully, there are numerous techniques for white hat link building.

Let’s check out seven of them below.

1. Affiliation Links

One of the easiest white hat link building techniques is getting friends and partners to put a link to your site on theirs. In return, you’re expected to include links to their sites on your site.

Affiliation links are valuable in terms of SEO and networking.

Relevant, appropriate links both to and from your site are a sign of credibility and trustworthiness. As such, search engines rank sites with such links higher.

Site features on other sites also increase traffic to your site.

2. Directories

There are numerous business-oriented directories online.

Universal directories include Google My Business and Yellow Pages. Some directories host information for professionals in certain fields. For example, there are numerous directories just for lawyers, doctors, and dentists.

Search engine bots also crawl over these sites during the ranking process. Search engine algorithms read multiple instances of the same information as a sign of credibility. As a result, search engines rank websites with business profiles higher.

For that reason, it is important to open as many business profiles as possible. Once you’ve opened your profiles, include a link back to your website.

3. Linked Mentions

Often times, other websites post about products and services without linking to the products’ and services’ brand website. Common “mentions” include reviews, analyses, and recommendations.

Make a list of the sites that talk about your product. Reach out the web hosts and ask for a link back to your website.

A link back isn’t an unreasonable request. After all, the content that they’ve posted is about something you offer.

Additionally, keep track of the sites that praise your products and services. Linking to those sites in future content is a nice gesture that could further your networking opportunities.

4. Guest Blog Entries

Currently, guest blog entries are one of the most efficient white hat link building techniques.

Many websites have a blog area. Occasionally, web hosts will let a guest contribute a blog entry. The entry should be optimized like the rest of the website.

Guest blog entries are an excellent networking and SEO opportunity. Not only can you include links back to your website, you can develop a relationship with the site runners. The better the relationship, the more likely they’ll link to your site or invite you to guest blog for them again.

5. Regular Blog Entries

Don’t forget about maintaining your own blog!

A blog is a valuable opportunity for websites. In their blogs, web hosts can cover a variety of material related to their products and services.

The more material you cover, the more audiences you can appeal to. More material also means more space for white hat link building and keyword usage.

6. Visuals

Consumers love infographics and other visuals. In fact, 65% of consumers identify themselves as visual learners.

As such, be sure to include infographics on your website and in your blog entries. Make sure they’re easy — as well as fun — to read. Many infographics include cartoons and bright colors to help demonstrate facts and figures.

Easily absorbed information will make your website more likely to receive a link back.

7. Internal Links

An important but often overlooked white hat link building technique is internal links.

Internal links are links that go elsewhere on your website. They are most commonly used in blogs. Newer blog entries often reference older entries and thus include a link to them.

Search engines read these links as any other links. As a result, internal links help build your online credibility.

Internal links also funnel traffic to older material and give that material a view boost.

Need More Link Building Tips? Contact Us!

At BackLinks.com, we know you rely on link building to boost your website’s SEO. For that reason, we facilitate the buying and selling of links. We also provide our customers with online resources about SEO.

For more link building tips, please feel free to contact us!

If you’re a typical small to medium-sized business, you’re spending at least half of your marketing budget on digital marketing. This is a pretty serious expenditure and you might have trouble determining whether or not you’re getting the returns you need.

That’s why you should try low-cost strategies with great ROI like high quality backlinks.

Getting a return on your investment is one way to track whether or not your marketing dollars are being well spent. If you’re not in the top few results for businesses like yours in your area, you need backlinks to improve your SEO.

Improving your SEO doesn’t mean spending hundreds of thousands to get a few more hits. It can also mean building connections across your web community to share knowledge as you grow your customer base.

Here are 8 tips for building high quality backlinks to your site.

1. Share Your Links

Most of the phrases typed into search engines are in the form of a question. Sites like Yahoo, Reddit, and Quora are devoted to being resources for people who have questions.

To start building backlinks from these sites, begin by creating an account for your brand on each site. Then look for questions related to common questions that you get from potential clients. If you can briefly answer a question, add it as a comment.

If you’ve started a blog for your site, you can start adding relevant links as an example of a way to approach the problem. If you haven’t started a blog on your site yet, it’s time to start one. Along with backlinks, great SEO strategies must offer fresh content to share.

2. Write Guest Posts

Being a guest poster will help you attract new clicks to your site through the implied endorsement of the site you’re posting on. If you’re not a professional writer, you may not be able to venture too far outside of your level of expertise.

Start by finding blogs that relevant to your niche and seem to have a strong domain authority. So long as the sites rank higher than you, you should see some improvement in traffic. Don’t waste your time posting for blogs that have less traffic that you do.

Build a relationship with the editor or owner of the blog. Ask if you can submit some writing every few weeks. Rather than just promote yourself, try to add value to their website by getting to know what their goal is.

3. Add Links To Comments On Related Articles

This is a bit of a tightrope to walk because some blog owners will accuse you of spamming if you do this one wrong. Spamming will not only get you blacklisted by blogs but will also penalize you in the eyes of search engines. Even their bots know spam when they see it.

Find some articles that are written on a subject you know a lot about. When you see that a point is missed or if someone has an important detail wrong, add a comment with a link directing them to your rebuttal.

Be constructive and add meaningful commentary to the conversation. Your opinions will be welcomed if you seem friendly and sincerely interested in dialogue, even when you disagree.

4. Replacing Broken Links

This tactic is a little more time consuming but can result in some high quality backlinks.

Go through your favorite sites related to your field. Search for links that might be broken. If you find one, email the site administrator and suggest one of your own links to replace it.

You’ll build trust and have the endorsement of the site administrator built into your links.

There are “broken link checker” tools available on the internet. Run the site you’ve targeted through that tool and see what kinds of results you can get. You’ll be doing the site administrator a favor and giving yourself some extra support in the process.

5. Join A Blogging Community

Inbound, GrowthHackers, and Bizsugar are just a few examples of blog communities made for bloggers, by bloggers. People who subscribe are the kind of people who like to read blogs, so you’ll already have gotten over that initial hurdle.

Take a look at a site before you submit. Having your links supported by a spammy or unpopular site is no use to you.

Start by registering and building a profile. Whenever you post a link, tell people why it’s a valuable link. No one wants to follow a random link down a rabbit hole to spammy nothingness.

6. Write Testimonials

Do you rely on a certain group of products for your business or brand? Build high quality backlinks by reviewing those products on Yelp, Amazon, or whatever marketplace you get them from.

You might even see a little bonus from the manufacturer as a thank you.

7. Turn Mentions Into Links

If there are some sites where you’ve noticed you’ve been mentioned in a post with no accompanying link, don’t just comment with a link.

Contact the site administrator or author and see if they can add a link to your site. They’ll likely be more than willing to oblige, hoping that if they need the same, you’ll also give them a link.

8. Press Releases

Do you spend a fair amount of time sending press releases out to companies and websites announcing new products or company changes? Use this as an opportunity to build high quality backlinks.

If someone is reading your press release, you can bet they’re interested in your company. Take advantage of their attention by giving them even more reasons to love you.

High Quality Backlinks Can Be Helpful and Profitable

The aim of your backlinks is to share helpful information with your reading public. While your overall goal with your brand is to build profit, commitment to a brand is built on trust. High quality backlinks build trust with a community of clients.

If you’re ready to take your backlinks up a notch, contact us today to get started.

Link building is among SEO marketers’ most difficult responsibilities. It’s hard enough to generate links from prominent websites. But broken links could be dragging you down even more, putting your business in jeopardy.

Marketers often assume a new inbound link is a job well done. But links to your old or removed pages can accumulate. They will hurt your traffic and search rankings over time.

SEO experts call this ‘linkrot’. Once helpful inbound links can no longer serve their purpose. Outbound links to once great resources can hurt your credibility as well.

You need broken link building campaigns to maintain your domain and page authority. Marketers must have deteriorated links replaced with fresh, authoritative new ones. Keeping these connections updated is part of maintaining a healthy website.

Almost half of companies devote a majority of their budget to link building. So why do so many fail?

The Pitfalls of Broken Link Building

Broken link building is the process of updating broken links on third-party websites. When those websites link to outdated content on your website, they have become broken. Your goal is to have that third-party update their links to your relevant content.

Many organizations have little recourse for updating broken links. That’s because those links can appear anywhere. The process of identifying those links can be tedious without the right methods.

As a result, many companies come short in their broken link building campaigns. Many websites don’t undertake these campaigns at all. But identifying your problem areas can put you on track to a more successful website.

5 Reasons Broken Link Building Campaigns Fail

You may be taking great efforts to replace broken links. You may find that you are still coming up short. If this is the case, it’s likely a problem with your methods.

It may not be a question of what you are doing. It might be a question of what you aren’t doing. We’ve identified five likely reasons your broken link building efforts have failed.

1. You Aren’t Finding Broken Links Successfully

Discovering all broken links is a challenge for most internal teams. That’s because they can appear anywhere without notice. These links can go unnoticed for years and become toxic for your website.

Your first step in improving this problem is finding desirable sites. These are relevant sites you would like to link to your content.

Start with general search criteria. Refine your searches to bring back results more specific to your subjects. Then, identify the most recent content to ensure a long lifespan for inbound links.

You’ve now identified several desirable websites. It’s time to locate the undesirable ones. Even with sophisticated tools, this can be a long process for your team.

Choose the best resources for finding your broken links. Locating all these links will take time. But doing so will maximize the value of your campaign.

2. You Aren’t Focusing on Qualifying Pages

Reaching out to every website with a broken link can be an impossible task. You would have to craft messages for each individual website owner. You would have to follow up and negotiate on taking down the links.

You can maximize your time and improve results by qualifying pages. That means establishing which pages are most important to your SEO. Pages that rarely show up in search results aren’t worth your time, for example.

Start by looking at certain criteria. Don’t bother with sites that have too many ‘spammy’ outbound links. Sites that have no valuable content are a waste of time as well.

Identify sites that receive heavy traffic. They should be sites that attract your target audience members. They should meet your standards before you start reaching out.

3. You Aren’t Reaching Out to Prospects Successfully

Reaching out to prospects is another time-consuming effort. You don’t know how website owners will respond, if at all. You have to craft the right message to produce any results.

Start by building an outreach list in Excel. You will need to craft a unique message for each website owner. Find email templates online for a framework to start.

Be prepared to follow up with website owners. Track your progress in your outreach list. Create rough templates for each type of follow up email, increasing urgency as you go.

Don’t make your messaging complicated. Highlight this as a mutually beneficial effort. But don’t hesitate to double down on sites where replacing the link is critical.

Identify your existing pages that will serve as great alternatives. You’ll want to offer something of value when you ask them to remove the link.

4. You Aren’t Sharing the Right Resources

Website owners come in different shapes. Realizing their link is bad, they might remove it immediately. But they need to be motivated by a better alternative.

Be prepared with a few recent options relevant to the previous subject. You can share them in one or across several emails. You can keep track of the new links you share in your outreach list.

Try to minimize the amount of rewriting they must do. If a small rewrite is necessary, offer a suggestion for the new text. The less effort you request of the website owner, the more likely you’ll see the results.

5. You Aren’t Recreating Content When Necessary

You may encounter stubborn website owners that won’t update your links. Perhaps some of these are critical to your success. It might fall upon you to recreate old content.

That means creating a new page to which the existing link directs traffic. You will have to populate the page with relevant content. That may require a simple update to your old content.

You should also begin engaging website owners from your list of desirable sites. As you fix old links, you need to acquire new ones.

No broken link building campaign will produce perfect results. But performing these occasionally is a great way to maintain the health of your website.

Partner with Link Building Professionals

Broken link building is a process for which many internal teams are not prepared. It is infrequent enough so that those capabilities aren’t in place when you need them. Adopting the right tools can help you overcome these challenges.

BackLinks.com has revolutionized link building campaigns for over a decade. We take the hassle out of link building using automated tasks for your team. Contact us for a free SEO consultation and get started on your next campaign today.

Search optimizers are a special breed of marketers. They have a knowledge of marketing, buyer’s psychology and back that up with technical wizardry to get websites ranked highly in search engines.

It’s not an easy feat, yet they do it for countless small businesses every day. Businesses invest at least $500 a month on quality SEO, meaning no shady tricks that you might be penalized for later.

Do you want to know how a search optimizer works to make rankings rise?

Keep reading to find out how they work and why you need to hire one.

Why Is Search Optimization Important?

Search engine optimization, when done well, can be a boon for business. Let’s put it this way:

• 75% of users never click past the first page of search results.
• Leads from SEO have a 14% close rate vs. 1.7% for traditional ads.
• 60% of website traffic goes to the first three search results.

Having your company on the first page can turn into more traffic, more leads, and more revenue. That makes the investment in SEO worthwhile.

When SEO is done poorly, the consequences can be severe. Google can penalize your website, making it drop in rankings or disappear altogether.

When you hire a search optimizer, you want to be crystal clear that they use white hat SEO strategies. Here’s what else a top-notch search company will do for you.

Know Your Marketing Strategy

The first step to search engine optimization is to understand how it fits into your marketing strategy. Search optimizers will take the time to learn about your target market, what you do for them, and your marketing messages.

You’ll be asked who your competition is, how you’re marketing your business and what’s currently working in your marketing.

These questions will help the SEO pro to research keywords and your competition in the next steps.

Search Optimizers Will Perform an SEO Audit

An SEO audit is an in-depth look at your website from a technical perspective and from a user perspective.

An SEO audit ensures that any work performed on your website is done on a solid foundation. The search optimizer will make sure that search engines can find your website. They’ll also check how fast your website is.

Search optimizers will look at each individual page to see how they are structured and written. They’ll look at keywords, potential pitfalls as to why your page isn’t ranking highly.

Competition Research

Competition research is important to understand what you’re up against to rank your site. This type o research includes the keywords your competition ranks for, what their backlinks are, and how their site is structured.

This type of research also reveals where the opportunities are and discover keywords that your competition missed out on.

Keyword Research

Keyword research takes all the information from the first three steps to determine potential keywords. Those keywords are researched to determine the level of competition and the amount of traffic that keyword gets.

You want to hit the sweet spot between a search term that gets a good amount of traffic but doesn’t have a lot of competition.

For example, if you want to rank for fitness, you’ll find there is a huge amount of competition and traffic. If you drill down to a niche like suspension training for fitness, you’ll find that search term hits the sweet spot.

Internal Link Structure

If you have a website that’s been around for a while, you may have a lot of pages. Search optimizers decide what the most important pages are on your site and make sure they’re getting link juice.

That lets Google know that those pages are important pieces of content on your site. Google will then give those pages priority in search results.

Create Backlinks to Your Site

If you want to rank highly in SERPs, you need backlinks.

The first is that quality is much more important than quality. Backlinks are weighted according to domain authority.

The higher domain authority, the more weight a backlink from that site will have. The more weight a backlink has, the higher you can appear in search results.

What do you think has more weight, a link from a mom and pop shop around the corner, or a link from The New York Times?

The second thing is that blackhat backlinks don’t work. These tactics include duplicate content, commenting and adding links in forums and other blogs, and keyword stuffing.

The best SEO companies know this and will optimize your site accordingly.

Provide Content Direction

A search optimizer has put a lot of time into your website already. This is next step ensures that once people get to your website, they’ll stay because the content is interesting to readers.

They’ll come up with article ideas based on the keywords found in the research phase. Some search professionals will write the content for you or give you specific instructions so you can write the content yourself.

If your company serves a specific geographic area, the search optimizers will make sure that your content includes local references.

They’ll look to see if your traffic is coming from mobile devices or desktop computers. Then, they’ll make sure the content and the website are optimized for users.

Stay on Top of Trends

Google changes its algorithm between 500-600 times every year. That’s a lot of changes to keep up with. Search optimizers live and breathe SEO, and it’s their job to keep up with all of these changes.

They’ll keep up with trends in content marketing and social media. That gives you an advantage and increases your chances to improve your search rankings.

Hire Search Optimizers to Grow Your Business

Search optimizers wear a lot of hats from marketing to web programming. The level of expertise required to perform high-quality SEO work is huge.

That’s especially true when it comes to building backlinks for your website. Backlinks.com has over 10 years of experience working with businesses to build quality backlinks that get results.

Contact us today for a free SEO consultation.