How can our business obtain more backlinks?

Introduction

If you’ve ever read an SEO report, or attended a meeting at your marketing agency, you will know that backlinks are a fundamental part of seo.

That’s to say often the success of a business will hinge on how many good quality backlinks they can obtain.

So often to put a business out in front of a competitor often the business will need to obtain good quality backlinks.

But how is this achieved? How are good quality backlinks earned?

Well hold your horses, as we will explain what you need to know.

What are backlinks?

Let’s start right at the beginning, as we appreciate that some businesses may have been told they need backlinks, but not know exactly what they are.

When you’re on a website, and say you are looking to purchase a new t.v, you may click on various televisions. Now when you click on say a picture of a television, you will be taken to that page to read more about that product, this is called following a backlink.

These sorts of backlinks are often internal backlinks, meaning they only take you to another page on the same website.  

So, for instance, the website may provide a link to the television manufacturers website, so you can read more about that television.

Now the company that manufacturers the t.v may link back to that website which retails the t.v, so the first website will also have an external backlink pointing either at the homepage, or another page on the website.

 

Votes of confidence

Backlinks are important to an seo strategy simply because they are like votes of confidence.

For instance, if a number of high-quality websites link to your website, well this reflects well on your website, therefore helping to improve your businesses seo.

Yet, as we will come onto later on, not all backlinks are worth the same, that’s to say your business should only be looking to obtain high-quality backlinks, from relevant sources.

Quality backlinks

When your building backlinks for your business you must remember this rule, quality is much more important than quantity.

So many seo agencies built backlinks for their clients just to say they have built X amount that month, yet often these would be the businesses that were hit with a penalty.

Instead its far better to only build quality backlinks, that’s to say links from businesses or websites that high-quality.

For example, if you run a solicitor’s practice, then the news websites for solicitors that are widely regarded as a respected source for reliable information, these are the websites you would want links from.

 

Relevant

The backlinks that lead to your website should be from a source that’s reliable to you. So for example, if retail used cars, well there’s no point at all obtaining a backlink from your local golf club.

 

Anchor text

Anchor text is simply the highlighted text that you click on, that’s in order to follow the link. This text should be useful to the user of the website, it shouldn’t be used as an opportunity to just place text that you want the business to rank for.

So, for example, say you were a builder, a low-quality marketing agency may keep placing “builders + city name” in the websites anchor text, this is a sure-fire way of the business incurring a penalty.

Instead, if the page was talking about loft conversions, then simply use the term loft conversions as the anchor text.

Google Penguin and why spam backlinks are a waste of time

Google’s Penguin update penalised businesses that had low quality backlinks.

Other search engines have developed their own way of filtering out spam links. Some businesses also falsely believe that if they haven’t been affected by Google Penguin, then they are unlikely to in the future, this is simply untrue!

The Penguin update is now part of the algorithm, meaning if a website was to have low quality backlinks linking to the site, then this could mean the business incurs a penalty.

How do you earn backlinks?

As we’ve already mentioned, its crucial to get your businesses link building efforts right, as otherwise you could incur a penalty.

We therefore believe at this marketing agency, that the best way to obtain backlinks is naturally, which is sometimes referred to as obtaining backlinks organically.

 

Organic

If you place a really interesting and useful blog post, or page on your website, then people may link to that piece of work.

This means your business can earn backlinks just by offering good quality work. For example, say your businesses manufactures power tools.

And you wish to obtain backlinks from websites that are connected to power tools. So you may create articles that will be useful to people who use power tools.

So, for instance, you may publish an article on how to build a loft conversion, and which power tools you require.

Then people or builders that are about to embark on building a loft conversion may mention the work.

DIY websites may link to the work, and therefore your business will obtain backlinks.

 

Manual

Some seo agencies build links manually. However, its worth remembering that the backlinks must be high quality and from a relevant source.

With this in mind some marketing agencies contact another website, and offer them an article, then this article will have a backlink.

For example, the business may manufacturer running shoes, and they may contact websites that offer advice to those interested in running.

Then the company that manufacturers the running shoes may write an article explaining how their trainer is revolutionary in terms of how it absorbs and cushions against the impact of running on tarmac.

This article will therefore be placed on the website that offers advice to runners, and then has a backlink that leads back to the running shoe manufacturer, therefore a backlink has been created.

 

Audit

Your seo agency should audit your businesses backlinks on a regular basis, this is to look for spam links.

Competitor backlink analysis

Often marketing agencies will look at your competitors backlinks, then they may spot backlinks that they may wish to obtain for their own business.

Therefore, some seo agencies use their clients competitors as a way of spotting link building opportunities.

 

How we can help

If your company requires more help in order to build backlinks, or requires more SEO advice, then why not give us a ring?