#howtobuildbacklinks

It’s no secret that a blog is a very effective form of content marketing. If you can get your blog in front of the right eyeballs, you can build your brand whilst building a stronger relationship with your audience. Then, conversions and sales rise. Awesome, huh? If producing all-star content comes easy to you but driving traffic and establishing your brand doesn’t, you’ve probably been told to go and chase some high-quality backlinks. The more top-notch backlinks you have, the higher your blog starts to rank in the SERPs. But what does this mean exactly and how do you capture those A++ backlinks? This article is going to first take a look at what a high-quality backlink is, before demonstrating the steps you need to take to bag yourself more of them.

What Is a High-quality Backlink?

First of all, a backlink is an inbound link from one site to another. Let’s imagine I have a blog for my pet store, and that a dog food company links out to me via an article. That’s a backlink. When folk read that article and see that link, they might be inclined to click on it and come see me. Thus, I’m getting more traffic. However, not all backlinks are good. Low-quality Backlinks If a site has been penalized by Google for spam or other bad activities, their backlinks will be of a poor quality. You can go ahead and grab as many as their links as you want, but they’re going to send you tumbling down the SERPs. Moreover, they’re just a total waste of time. For example, a low-quality backlink doesn’t always come from a site that’s been penalized. The website might be perfectly legit but if its content is wholly unrelated to yours, it’s going to be of no use to you because their audience isn’t your audience. In other words, you might be driving traffic, but it will be the wrong traffic and your bounce rate will soar. And because bounce rate is a ranking factor, your position in the SERPs might change for the worse.   A poor quality backlink is also an inbound link from a low-traffic site. For example, let’s say that I secure a link from a dog food website to my pet store’s blog. I’m pretty happy at first - until I hire an SEO agency who find out that the dog food website has non-existent organic traffic. High-quality Backlinks A high-quality backlink, on the other hand, is an incoming link from any of these sources: A reputable website that’s related to your niche A website that enjoys high Domain Authority (DA) A website that drives a very healthy amount of organic traffic on the regular Recommended: 5 Link-Building Tactics You Should Stick with in 2019 So, you want to avoid all poor quality backlinks and land more superstar ones. Here’s how to do it:

Guest Blog

The most common method most used by those in search of backlinks is guest blogging. What does this mean? Essentially, you come up with an idea for a topic related to your niche, reach out to a blog that’s got a good amount of traffic, and pitch your idea to the owner. If they like your idea, you’ll then write the blog article and publish it on their site. The magic is in the little link you include in the blog post that links out to your website. For example, if I have a social media app, I might go on the offensive and reach out to several related tech blogs with a few topic ideas. I’ll write the articles, they’ll publish them, and I’ll get lots of fresh traffic that’s being driven to my website from theirs. And all because I included a little link in my blog post. Here are some tips: 1) Identify high traffic blogs in your niche. There are tools that help you do this, such as Nightwatch. Nightwatch gives you information regarding how much traffic a website has, as well as what their backlink situation is like. This is key because a bad backlink profile should act as a warning sign that a website is spam. Also, it’s very important that you only target high traffic blogs. These blogs are already seen as experts in your niche, and if you can drive that traffic to your site, you’re onto a winner. 2) Only target related blogs. If a blog doesn’t fall within your niche, always avoid it. 3) Create a list of these blogs and keep them in a document for future use. 4) Carefully read the editorial guidelines before submitting your idea. Some blogs want you to pitch a few lines, while others just want a headline, while still others want the whole article there and then. Moreover, some don’t let you link to any products or services that you’re selling, while others do. 5) Reach out to the blog via a submission form. Introduce yourself and briefly explain why you’d like to post on their blog. What’s your field of expertise, and what kind of value are you going to provide? Remember to demonstrate what you’re going to do for them. Recommended: 4 Ways to Find Best Sites for Guest Blogging

Create Viral Content

Yeah - creating viral content sounds hard. But the thing is that viral content doesn’t become viral by luck - there are certain determining factors that cause internet users to share the heck out of an article. Before I show you how to create viral content, let me explain how viral content can help you gain more top notch backlinks: Essentially, the more your content is shared, the more your name grows, and the more you become known. Before long, there’s a buzz around your brand and blog. People know you, trust you and see you as the expert … and others are now linking out to you! It’s pretty sweet. But how does content go viral? Here are some tips: 1) Nail the headline. Check this stat out: Many of us will share an article without even reading it! This means we share an article on the strength of its headline. 2) Create valuable content. Now, you could create silly content that gets shared like wildfire purely because it’s so silly and internet people like silly stuff. But silly won’t get you high quality backlinks and won’t position you as the expert. Instead, you need to produce in-depth, long-form content that offers the reader an insane amount of value. Just take a look at the content we shared the most in 2016. It was informative, valuable content. People shared it because it actually had a positive impact on them. And if you think long -form content gets shared less than short-form content, reconsider. Kissmetrics checked their own data and found that most of their traffic is heading to their long-form, in-depth content. 3) Tell people you want them to share your content. Look, you’re not Mother Theresa. Sure, you’ve just created a long-form, in-depth, fabulous piece of content that took you a while to write, but you do expect something in return - for example, a share. At the end of each piece of content, and on the accompanying message on social media, tell folk you want them to share it. Don’t be boring, though. Recommended: A Roadmap to Great Content – From Idea to Viral Post 

Get Involved with Influencer Marketing

What is influencer marketing? In a nutshell, it’s when you write a top-notch, high-value post that’s stuffed with facts, data, and numbers, and ask an influencer in your niche if they could kindly take a look at it - and perhaps even share it with their audience. Influencers are big deals on the internet, and especially on social media. They have a lot of power, and they have something you want - a massive audience. There are differences between influencer marketing and guest blogging. Influencers are: Bigger on social media Harder to reach Harder to impress The last two points are worth expanding on. Influencers are harder to reach because they don’t generally have a submission form. They’re not always actively pursuing contact from outside sources. The thing is, though, they, need fresh content. So why wouldn’t they listen to your pitch? Well, you’ve gotta make yourself seen, heard and known. A good way to do this is to build a relationship with them before hitting them with your idea. Engage on their social media profiles. Be active. Ask questions, answer questions. Get in and among the community, add lots of value and make it known that you know your stuff.  Once the influencer has noticed you, it’s easier to DM or email them and be noticed. And the truth is - investing in influencer marketing can be a game changer for your website. To impress them? Well, your piece of content that you want them to share can be nothing short of amazing. These people are the experts in their niche. Their audience turns to them for the raw data, the facts, and the figures. So you need to provide all of that, plus anything they haven’t covered yet. Once you’ve pitched your amazing piece of content and outlined what’s in it for them - your content will reinforce their audience’s perception of them delivering lots of value - kindly ask them to promote and distribute it. Recommended: 10 Influencer Marketing Strategies You Should Follow 

Host an Interview with an Expert

People trust experts. When you interview an expert in your field, your credibility grows - and you gain more backlinks. How? Let’s say I arrange an interview with an expert in my field. I publish the transcript to my blog and the video version, and I then publish it to all my social media profiles. The expert — who has lots of followers — does the same. All of a sudden, I’ve got an influx of top quality backlinks. Simple but magical stuff, huh? Here are some tips: 1) Introduce yourself. The best way to reach an expert you want to interview is via email. If you don’t know someone’s email address, you can use an outreach tool like hunter.io. Then, shoot them an introductory email. Be polite, mention how you know them and what you do. 2) Offer an incentive. What’s in this for them? Often, the answer is “more exposure” and a chance to cement their position as an authority figure. 3) Outline what will happen and how you’ll use the interview. If you don’t plan to publish the interview for another 6 months, by gosh let them know. Be upfront, honest, and transparent. This is crucial for relationship building. 4) Don’t ask too many questions. The last thing you want is for an interviewee to grow tired and frustrated because you’re pumping them with an endless amount of questions.

Collaborate on an eBook

Backlinks are on top of the list of SEO ranking factors. That makes it crucial when it comes to ranking on SERPs and boosting organic traffic. But don't celebrate your thousands of inbound links yet. I've got something to discuss with you that may change the ambiance of your backlink party. Some of these links could be a huge source of search engine penalties and traffic loss. That's because not all links are same. Some are toxic and must be dealt with accordingly.

Backlinks from Toxic Domains Kill

Toxic domains are domains that have failed Google's quality checks following Penguin update. Most of these are involved in buying and selling links, Private Blog Networks, massive link building exercise, thin content, links from unrelated sources, etc. Links from such domains are toxic and dangerous. Instead of transferring link juice and rank boost vote to your site, they will contaminate your link profile and make your domain equally suspicious. Toxic links are the SEO backlinks that have the potentials to ruin your SEO and completely annihilate your SEO marketing. You do not want to see your site completely removed from Google Index because of intoxication. Recommended: Small Businesses Can Use SEO to Great Effect for Their Ultimate Success

Who Is Creating Your Backlinks?

I do not know who is creating your backlinks. You probably are doing it yourself or you hired an SEO agency to help improve your organic traffic. While working with SEO services may help in handling your SEO campaigns, the danger is most of these firms ain't what they claim to be. For the most part, they get involved in some black-hat link building activities. Some extend to outsourcing to link sellers on Fiverr and other micro job sites, which is potentially dangerous. Before you hire any SEO firm for your search engine marketing, you've got to do your due diligence to ascertain the quality of their services. Some domains are registered by some unscrupulous SEO consultants for the sake of links. Trust me Google can quickly unveil them at a reasonable distance.

Victim of Negative SEO?

Negative SEO is an SEO activity done to sabotage and ruin competitor's search ranking. This is actually practiced in the industry and if it's not handled on time, the domain targeted might be penalized by Google and that makes it toxic. You might have had a backlink from a domain with a healthy SEO profile. But that doesn't give you the liberty to not do anything. With time, some of these 'clean' websites may become toxic because of negative SEO. That brings the necessity to constantly audit your link profile and get rid of toxins.

How to Get Rid of Toxic Links and Clean Your Backlink Profile

This is one of the easiest things to do in SEO. Follow these 3 steps to clean up.

1 - Get the Right SEO Link Auditing Tool

You will need an SEO tool to help and easily create a list of toxic domains linking to your blog. Without this, it may become a very difficult task. I do use and recommend SEMrush. You may want to check out this post on my blog for more information about it. Here is a link Audit report for one of my clients:

21% toxic links is a dangerous status and my client isn't comfortable with this. But nothing to worry about because salvaging this is quite easy.

2 - Clean up Your Domain

Now your SEO tool has helped with a list of toxic domains linking to your site. The next step is to clean up and there are two ways to handle this: a) Disavow and Ask Google to Ignore the Domains This is a quick step that requires you to create a disavow text file and upload to Google Disavow Tool. Using the most appropriate tool, you can generate the list of toxic domains with the click of the mouse.

The disavow file simply has a list of domains Google should ignore while accessing your site. You need just one text file per property in your GSC account. Each time you have more domains to disavow, you'll have to simply download the file, add the domain to it and re-upload. b) Send a Mail to Webmaster to Take Down Link The second option (which may not be quick and friendly) is to get the contacts of the webmaster of the toxic domain and actually get to him to remove the link to your site. Trust me you may face resistance or some slowness in this option. If you have 600+ toxic domains, you'll have to get the contacts of all these, send them mails one after the other with links to the toxic pages. This isn't going to be bread and butter. After all, it's up to you to decide which direction to take.

3 - Always Keep an Eye on Your Link Profile

It's a mistake to completely ignore your link profile. As an active SEO marketer, you'll have to constantly audit your backlink profile and get rid of domains that may attract search penalties. Recommended: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks for Your WordPress Blog in 2019

How to Attract Backlinks from Healthy Domains

It's one thing to go create backlinks. It's another thing to attract and earn them. But how do you get links from webmasters and bloggers with healthy domains without you asking for them?

1) Create Link-worthy Content

The Internet is saturated but people need content that stands out. Linkable content is content that has all the meat. This is content that meets the intent of the reader. Gone are those days of keyword optimization and writing for search engines. We are in the age of Semantic SEO when text content producers optimize for topical relevance not keyword. This is the best approach to create content that attract links. NB: I have created a post on Semantic SEO you may want to read. Articles that are semantically fully optimized are often in-depth. Using a Semantic SEO tool, be sure to optimize to its optimum.

2) Create Healthy Relationships with Bloggers

Did you know that having warm relationships with other bloggers in your niche can earn links for your blog? I live this experience everyday. There is nothing as exciting as having blogging friends who link out to your content, then mention you on Twitter or Facebook. If you've been blogging in solitude, it's time to step out and network with others in your niche. There are simple things to do to create these relationships: - Start by creating excellent content that positions you as an expert. - Read other blogs and drop meaningful comments. - Follow other bloggers on social media. - Link out to their contents from your blog. - Promote their content on different platforms. - Guest post on their blogs and allow them to submit to your blog as well. - Respond to their comments on your blog and social media. - Send out friendly mails, appreciating your friends. Don't try to sell something. - Etc. Doing these and more will gradually get you connected with many more bloggers, who see you as a pro and someone to trust. If you are a selfish blogger operating like an Island, you end up suffering the consequences alone.

3) Avoid Showing up in Black Hat Forums

SEO black hat forums are places where black hat methods are discussed and implemented. One of the baddest things you are ever going to do is expose your website in such places. Avoid signing up and participating in black hat discussion. Don't allow your domain name mentioned there. It may happen that someone does that but that shouldn't be you. Keep away completely from such forums.

A Grey Hat SEO Technique Used by Many

'Grey' is between 'black' and 'white'. I have seen many trusted bloggers indirectly buy backlinks and it works for them. They actually pay their trusted friends to guest post and build their links. If for instance you have someone with access to post on  searchenginejournal.com, what you do is pay that person to slide your link in one of his articles. How much they pay depends on the level of friendship and the Domain Authority of the blog to get the link from. If you want to use this link building approach, here are some points to note: - Make sure you get someone to create links from related domains. - While you may focus on domains with high DA, don't neglect average DA domains as this will certainly grow big. - Avoid domains with high citation flow. This for the most part is spam.

Avoid Fiverr and SEOclerks at all Cost

These are two popular micro job platforms where SEO link selling services thrive. But it's the main source of toxic and dangerous backlinks. Buying a link building service from these platforms exposes your domain to links you have no control on. The service providers have bought hundreds of low quality domains on which they publish spun articles, creating extremely dangerous backlinks. Some of the providers do get backlinks from account profiles, which is a thread to SEO as well. Others get from Private Blog Networks (PBN), which is equally dangerous. Initially, you may have a rank boost but that will be for a short while. The long term won't only be you losing the rankings. You stand a chance of being penalized as well.

Conclusion

Are you falling behind on your competitors? The natural response to situations like this, is to do all you can to get ahead of the competition. So, if your competitors are ranking at the top of Google for the keywords that you're prioritizing, then it's likely that they have a solid backlink profile. You hear people talking about how important user experiences is, and how exceptional content impacts your audience and your search rankings positively. But included in that list, is the fact that links are perhaps one of the most important pieces of your SEO strategy. You will struggle to achieve the ranking you want on Google search without them. "I can tell you what they are. It is content. And it's links pointing to your site." ~Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google. But, your competitors are already way ahead of you. They have tons of backlinks, and you're just barely doing all you can to keep up. That's a bad thing, right? Well, not exactly. Look at it this way. If these same people are linking to your competitors, then chances are, they'll be happy to link to you too. (Since you and your competitors are in the same niche). It's just a question of who has better goods to offer. And this is where you come in…

Identifying Your Competitors in the Same Niche

The general advice would be to keep an eye on the competitors you can easily find on the first page of Google's search results. But don't jump in so hastily. There are two types of competitors that you need to keep an eye on. - Domain competitors: These are the competitor sites that compete with yours for search terms across every page you have in your website. - Page competitors: Some page-level competitors aren't entirely large competitors on a whole. They compete with your site on specific topics and keywords. To locate these two types of competitors, you’re going to have to employ the use of certain tools, like Ahrefs to get a complete backlink profile. And then arrange for a spreadsheet to compile your finds all together.

How to Spy on Your Competitors and Get Their Backlinks

Spying on your competitors doesn’t have to be as seedy as it sounds. It's all about learning and growing. In being aware of what your competitors are doing, or in this case, what kind of links they're getting, you learn their strengths and their weaknesses. You get to find out what works, and what doesn't. So, let's jump into these tactics you should totally do to take advantage of what you can, and improve your brand's link profile. #1 Find sites that link to your competitors You can easily replicate links and find great opportunities by finding a site that links to more than one competitor. "Hub" is the popular term for sites like this. And you can think of them as fertile soil to do some link building. For niche forums, signing up in sites like Medium to showcase your content and your knowledge in a particular subject. Recommended: 5 Link-Building Tactics You Should Stick with in 2019 #2 Use the Skyscraper technique Let's take a little refresher, and recall back in 2015, when Brian Dean first coined the term, "Skyscraper Technique." In a nutshell, you need to find your competitors' most famous piece of content. You create something better. And you promote that remastered article to earn even better links. Recommended: 5 Ways to Create Content that Will Attract Backlinks in 2019 One of the biggest benefits that come with implementing the use of the Skyscraper Technique is that you already have a list of sites you could reach out to once your content is live. #3 Target the same sites for guest posting One of the more well-known and effective ways of link building is guest blogging. And it's not going to be just you doing this, it's your competitors too. It’s safe to say that you’ve probably even spotted a couple of guest post links while you’re scoping out your competitors. Learning how to find the sites that your competitors are guest posting can be accomplished through these three tactics: Reverse Searching Gravatar Images There's a handy-dandy trick you can do with Google's reverse image search function. For those who don't know how it works exactly, right-click an image while you're using Chrome, and click on the option.

When you do so, you can find posts that have the author's Gravatar image.

Using Google Search Type in the author's name into the search bar coupled with the keyword that says 'guest post'.

Utilize a Tool like Ahrefs If you're using a tool like Ahrefs, you can navigate to the tool's Content Explorer. Here, you can find content written by a particular author.

#4 Research Competitors' Homepage Links For research purposes, find one of the best SEO companies. To make it easier, choose one from this list of top ranking ones. To illustrate an example, we'll look at DMA Digital Marketing Agency and use Ahrefs to check out their homepage links.

You will notice that the large majority of links actually use branded anchor texts. That is because people have a large tendency to link to home pages when generally mentioning a brand, rather than something more specific. By analyzing competitors' homepage links, you can find where your competitors are being mentioned. The next thing we'll do is explore DMA's domain-level competitors. Choosing one, we'll paste their link to the Site Explorer. And then we'll navigate to the Backlinks report and add a dofollow filter.

This tool will then show you all the backlinks pointing to your competitors' homepage. The next question you need to ask is why did these links mention your competitor and not you? By looking at the anchor text, the surrounding link text, and the page title, you can easily find the answer. #5 Keep an Eye on New Competitor Backlinks Most of your direct competitors will attract new backlinks regularly. That's the way it is in an active and competitive niche. But does it have to be a bad omen for you? Well, not always... That is proof that there are link opportunities in your niche. Also, you don't have to do most of the heavy lifting. Your competitors can do it for you as you keep an eye on them. Again, the main tool we use for this is Ahrefs; because it presents the opportunity to set up alerts for specific links that you would want to keep a close eye on.

Doing this can help you ensure that you have an endless supply of linking opportunities.

Prioritizing & Qualifying the Links You need

As you plan to gain competitive advantages, you should also know which links are qualified and which ones you should prioritize. Just because there is an endless supply of links, doesn't mean you have to replicate all of them. Beware, because there are spammy pieces of content just lurking everywhere. To qualify a link as your own personal prospect, simply take a look at the site and think about if Google manually reviewed that site or page, would they have problems with the link? In regard to prioritizing links, you should choose the ones that you can easily replicate.

The Takeaway

Whether you’re entirely new to the world of digital marketing or an experienced website owner, backlinks are one of the hardest things to get a grip of when it comes to promoting your platform.  But actually, they’re quite simple when you break it down.  The reason links are shrouded in mystery and avoided so much is that the information out there is intimidating. Website owners are worried that one wrong move could result in a manual action penalty and there’s a lot of very strong opinions about ‘blackhat’ link building.  It’s important to bear in mind that a lot of the information available out there is outdated. Google Algorithms update, on average, every single day, with around 4 major changes a year. This means that the best practice for building links develops.  In fact, factoring links into their algorithm and how they determine ranks is what began to set Google apart from other search engines in the first place. So they definitely are going to continue to develop in this area.  To help you thrive online, the team at an expert Digital Marketing Agency in London have put together this bible for beginners starting to build backlinks.  Recommended: How Backlinks Can Kill Your SEO and What to Do about It

But First, Why Are Backlinks Important?

A backlink builds a connection between sites. It is one platform giving the thumbs up to Google or another search engine that your platform can be trusted, is useful and relevant. This is called authority.  The aim of the game is to make sure you have a high-quality website pointing to yours in order for your site to benefit. This is how you build up your authority. We talk more about how to identify a high-quality site further on.  Gradually improving your authority over time helps to move your website up in the search rankings, which has a whole ream of benefits, including increased sales and leads.  The process of building links requires you to outreach to publications, influential websites and peers in your industry. It can help you to establish relationships and encourages word of mouth for your business. We will look at some different kinds of links that help to establish your site as the authority in the industry which can encourage visitors to your business, too.  Link building softly targets traffic. Companies gaining placements in positive, well-written articles can expect to see user’s following that links to their website. This is called referral traffic. It boosts brand awareness and nurtures user’s into the conversion funnel.  Recommended: How to Spy and Gain Advantage through Competitor Backlinks

Before You Start 

So now you understand the benefit of backlinks, should you start placing links all over the web? Not quite.  There are a few things to consider to make sure that you are gaining high-quality placements. These tips will make sure you get the most out of your efforts and climb in positions even quicker.  As with all marketing strategies, you need to know what you’re looking to achieve with backlinks. This ensures you can measure the success of your digital marketing, but also helps to focus your strategy. We’ll look at a couple of the ways you can tell if a link is going to help your site’s performance below. But first, here are the different kinds of link strategies you could employ: 

Different Types Of Backlink

Guest Posts  - When you are actively trying to improve your website’s rankings and build up a backlink profile, this is most likely the route you are going to take.  Guest posts, as the name suggests, means to feature an article on another website. Like a cameo. Within this article, there will be a link back to your website in there. Ideally, this link would be as close to the top of the content as possible.  To achieve placements on authoritative websites you will need to come up with a pitch to sell yourself. Give the webmaster or editor of the site a reason to feature you.  Some webmasters say that they respond to 1 in 267 requests for guest posts they get. This shows you how important it is to stand out.  Somethings to think about for your pitch message: Flexibility - Make sure you’re not too rigid with the idea/s for posts Referral - Some site owners want to know where the page will be linking to make sure it’s still relevant to their audience Relevancy - Highlight why your article is appropriate for their site and their audience Availability - Tell the webmaster you can be contacted to bounce ideas around - you never know, you might build relationships Email length - A lot of webmasters or blog owners are also running their businesses, try not to send essays.  When you’ve nailed your pitch, you can start writing your content. Make sure it’s high quality, well-researched and has an angle. Unique, interesting articles that give value to a reader are best. Finally, send it over to the webmaster for publication.  Naturally Occurring Links - To generate links, you can try a strategy that means they come to you rather than manually outreaching.  This seems like it’s too good to be true, right? It’s not, but there are a few things to consider.  Naturally occurring links means that people find your resources informative, useful and contextual to their audience enough that they are going to link back to it.  To maximise your potential for naturally occurring links, you should implement a robust content strategy on your site that goes beyond the simple 500-word blog posts. Start creating diverse content wherever the topic warrants it, for example, some of the best performing content-types for generating links include:  Infographics Case studies Listicles Long-form guides that answer questions Research studies and white papers Creating this content will help to establish a credible image for your website. And don’t forget to give users the tools to share your content by making sure your social icons and ‘share’ buttons are clearly visible and working.  One thing to bear in mind is that you cannot control the websites that are going to be linking to you.  If they are of low quality, this can impact your own ranking positions.  Referral Links - First, it’s important to bear in mind that referral links should not be the only authority-building aspect of your digital marketing strategy.  Referral links are when you feature your website in directories or on owned profiles on third-party platforms. For example, in your Google My Business page. These to transfer link equity, but can look extremely spammy when done to excess or on irrelevant sites.  Investigate directories and resources used in your industry. Often, these are featured quite high up in SERPs so are rarely a struggle to find. Simply submit a request to feature in the list with a link back to your website.  This is useful for referring (see, not rocket science) quality traffic back to your page. Remember, make sure you actually provide the products or services that a user would be looking for on the directory. Failing to do so is likely to look unnatural and increase your bounce rate. 

The Technical Parts Of Backlinks  

Industry Of The Website - In order to benefit from the connection between two websites, the referring website must be relevant to yours.  Think about it in terms of a senior member of staff recommending you to a hiring manager for a better position at work. The recommendation will have a lot more weight behind it if that senior member of staff is also an authority and has experience in the department you are looking to move into. This translates in exactly the same way as backlinks. A senior website that engages in the same industry or topics as yours will be most beneficial to boosting your position.  Gaining placements on relevant websites also ensures that your links appear natural to Google and that you are not engaging in any ‘blackhat’ SEO tactics. In turn, you’re also more likely to see qualified traffic coming through to your website via that referring link. This means they are more likely to be interested in what you are offering.  You don’t have to manually decide which sector a website fits into, especially if you are worried because they cover multiple topics. Use Majestic’s topical trust flow tool for an accurate measure of the influence a placement website has in your industry. Adding this extra step to your backlink strategy can make your efforts so much more lucrative.  Anchor Text - Anchor text is the words or phrase you imbed your link into. This carries relevance for your backlink as it is the phrase that crawlers (search engine bots that index the internet) associate with your destination page.  The most common tactic in linking strategies is to use a keyword as an anchor. However, it’s really important to shake things up and make sure you don’t overdo it: For example, if your keyword is “cycling tours in Europe” you can use that as your anchor text, but use variants too, such as “Europe cycling tours” “Best cycling tours in Europe” and “How to book a cycling tour in Europe”.   Variations ensure that your link building does not look unnatural - and yes, again that word, spammy - to Google or other search engines.  Domain Authority - Domain Authority is a numerical score developed by SEO tools and resource centre, Moz. It is a metric for predicting how well a site will rank in SERPs based on its authority. A website will have a score from 1 - 100 with 100 being the most authoritative.  Moz’s Domain Authority will investigate the number of sites linking to yours and the subsequent domain authority of all of those, too.  Although this is not a ranking factor that Google’s own algorithm uses to determine positions, it is a very accurate prediction of the value you can expect to achieve from a backlink.  As previously mentioned, a connection between a high-quality website and yours passes through some of that authority. This is known as link equity. Or sometimes, link juice.  Domain Authority is also a great way to measure the success of your backlink strategy. If your domain authority is gradually increasing over time, then it indicates that the placements you have acquired are benefiting your performance.  Recommended: 5 Best SEO Tools that Will Boost Your Reach Trust Flow & Citation Flow - These metrics are a kind of breakdown of how domain authority is calculated.  The exact formula is undisclosed and DA was developed by Moz, whereas Trust and Citation Flow were developed by Majestic so you can expect there to be a few discrepancies.  However, these metrics are just another layer of analysis you can use to make sure your backlink profile is boosting your performance.  Trust flow measures the quality of the domains referring to a site.  Citation flow measures the quantity of the domains referring to a site.  Both are a score from 1 - 100.  These two metrics complement each other. If you have a really high citation flow, it means there are tons of websites linking to you, which can look spammy to search engine crawlers because they are not high quality (trust flow).  In turn, having a low trust flow could mean that there are not enough high-quality websites linking to you, which can look risky and irrelevant to search engine crawlers who ultimately decide you shouldn’t be shown in top positions on SERPs.  A basic rule of thumb for using the site analysis tool on Majestic is that your citation flow and trust flow should be relational, for example, within 15 points of each other. If a site you are looking to place an article on has poor trust and citation metrics, it’s likely to be unbeneficial to your SEO performance. 

To Finish Up…

Are you falling behind on your competitors? The natural response to situations like this, is to do all you can to get ahead of the competition. So, if your competitors are ranking at the top of Google for the keywords that you're prioritizing, then it's likely that they have a solid backlink profile. You hear people talking about how important user experiences is, and how exceptional content impacts your audience and your search rankings positively. But included in that list, is the fact that links are perhaps one of the most important pieces of your SEO strategy. You will struggle to achieve the ranking you want on Google search without them. "I can tell you what they are. It is content. And it's links pointing to your site." ~Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google. But, your competitors are already way ahead of you. They have tons of backlinks, and you're just barely doing all you can to keep up. That's a bad thing, right? Well, not exactly. Look at it this way. If these same people are linking to your competitors, then chances are, they'll be happy to link to you too. (Since you and your competitors are in the same niche). It's just a question of who has better goods to offer. And this is where you come in…

Identifying Your Competitors in the Same Niche

The general advice would be to keep an eye on the competitors you can easily find on the first page of Google's search results. But don't jump in so hastily. There are two types of competitors that you need to keep an eye on. - Domain competitors: These are the competitor sites that compete with yours for search terms across every page you have in your website. - Page competitors: Some page-level competitors aren't entirely large competitors on a whole. They compete with your site on specific topics and keywords. To locate these two types of competitors, you’re going to have to employ the use of certain tools, like Ahrefs to get a complete backlink profile. And then arrange for a spreadsheet to compile your finds all together.

How to Spy on Your Competitors and Get Their Backlinks

Spying on your competitors doesn’t have to be as seedy as it sounds. It's all about learning and growing. In being aware of what your competitors are doing, or in this case, what kind of links they're getting, you learn their strengths and their weaknesses. You get to find out what works, and what doesn't. So, let's jump into these tactics you should totally do to take advantage of what you can, and improve your brand's link profile. #1 Find sites that link to your competitors You can easily replicate links and find great opportunities by finding a site that links to more than one competitor. "Hub" is the popular term for sites like this. And you can think of them as fertile soil to do some link building. For niche forums, signing up in sites like Medium to showcase your content and your knowledge in a particular subject. Recommended: 5 Link-Building Tactics You Should Stick with in 2019 #2 Use the Skyscraper technique Let's take a little refresher, and recall back in 2015, when Brian Dean first coined the term, "Skyscraper Technique." In a nutshell, you need to find your competitors' most famous piece of content. You create something better. And you promote that remastered article to earn even better links. Recommended: 5 Ways to Create Content that Will Attract Backlinks in 2019 One of the biggest benefits that come with implementing the use of the Skyscraper Technique is that you already have a list of sites you could reach out to once your content is live. #3 Target the same sites for guest posting One of the more well-known and effective ways of link building is guest blogging. And it's not going to be just you doing this, it's your competitors too. It’s safe to say that you’ve probably even spotted a couple of guest post links while you’re scoping out your competitors. Learning how to find the sites that your competitors are guest posting can be accomplished through these three tactics: Reverse Searching Gravatar Images There's a handy-dandy trick you can do with Google's reverse image search function. For those who don't know how it works exactly, right-click an image while you're using Chrome, and click on the option.

When you do so, you can find posts that have the author's Gravatar image.

Using Google Search Type in the author's name into the search bar coupled with the keyword that says 'guest post'.

Utilize a Tool like Ahrefs If you're using a tool like Ahrefs, you can navigate to the tool's Content Explorer. Here, you can find content written by a particular author.

#4 Research Competitors' Homepage Links For research purposes, find one of the best SEO companies. To make it easier, choose one from this list of top ranking ones. To illustrate an example, we'll look at DMA Digital Marketing Agency and use Ahrefs to check out their homepage links.

You will notice that the large majority of links actually use branded anchor texts. That is because people have a large tendency to link to home pages when generally mentioning a brand, rather than something more specific. By analyzing competitors' homepage links, you can find where your competitors are being mentioned. The next thing we'll do is explore DMA's domain-level competitors. Choosing one, we'll paste their link to the Site Explorer. And then we'll navigate to the Backlinks report and add a dofollow filter.

This tool will then show you all the backlinks pointing to your competitors' homepage. The next question you need to ask is why did these links mention your competitor and not you? By looking at the anchor text, the surrounding link text, and the page title, you can easily find the answer. #5 Keep an Eye on New Competitor Backlinks Most of your direct competitors will attract new backlinks regularly. That's the way it is in an active and competitive niche. But does it have to be a bad omen for you? Well, not always... That is proof that there are link opportunities in your niche. Also, you don't have to do most of the heavy lifting. Your competitors can do it for you as you keep an eye on them. Again, the main tool we use for this is Ahrefs; because it presents the opportunity to set up alerts for specific links that you would want to keep a close eye on.

Doing this can help you ensure that you have an endless supply of linking opportunities.

Prioritizing & Qualifying the Links You need

As you plan to gain competitive advantages, you should also know which links are qualified and which ones you should prioritize. Just because there is an endless supply of links, doesn't mean you have to replicate all of them. Beware, because there are spammy pieces of content just lurking everywhere. To qualify a link as your own personal prospect, simply take a look at the site and think about if Google manually reviewed that site or page, would they have problems with the link? In regard to prioritizing links, you should choose the ones that you can easily replicate.

The Takeaway

Backlinks are on top of the list of SEO ranking factors. That makes it crucial when it comes to ranking on SERPs and boosting organic traffic. But don't celebrate your thousands of inbound links yet. I've got something to discuss with you that may change the ambiance of your backlink party. Some of these links could be a huge source of search engine penalties and traffic loss. That's because not all links are same. Some are toxic and must be dealt with accordingly.

Backlinks from Toxic Domains Kill

Toxic domains are domains that have failed Google's quality checks following Penguin update. Most of these are involved in buying and selling links, Private Blog Networks, massive link building exercise, thin content, links from unrelated sources, etc. Links from such domains are toxic and dangerous. Instead of transferring link juice and rank boost vote to your site, they will contaminate your link profile and make your domain equally suspicious. Toxic links are the SEO backlinks that have the potentials to ruin your SEO and completely annihilate your SEO marketing. You do not want to see your site completely removed from Google Index because of intoxication. Recommended: Small Businesses Can Use SEO to Great Effect for Their Ultimate Success

Who Is Creating Your Backlinks?

I do not know who is creating your backlinks. You probably are doing it yourself or you hired an SEO agency to help improve your organic traffic. While working with SEO services may help in handling your SEO campaigns, the danger is most of these firms ain't what they claim to be. For the most part, they get involved in some black-hat link building activities. Some extend to outsourcing to link sellers on Fiverr and other micro job sites, which is potentially dangerous. Before you hire any SEO firm for your search engine marketing, you've got to do your due diligence to ascertain the quality of their services. Some domains are registered by some unscrupulous SEO consultants for the sake of links. Trust me Google can quickly unveil them at a reasonable distance.

Victim of Negative SEO?

Negative SEO is an SEO activity done to sabotage and ruin competitor's search ranking. This is actually practiced in the industry and if it's not handled on time, the domain targeted might be penalized by Google and that makes it toxic. You might have had a backlink from a domain with a healthy SEO profile. But that doesn't give you the liberty to not do anything. With time, some of these 'clean' websites may become toxic because of negative SEO. That brings the necessity to constantly audit your link profile and get rid of toxins.

How to Get Rid of Toxic Links and Clean Your Backlink Profile

This is one of the easiest things to do in SEO. Follow these 3 steps to clean up.

1 - Get the Right SEO Link Auditing Tool

You will need an SEO tool to help and easily create a list of toxic domains linking to your blog. Without this, it may become a very difficult task. I do use and recommend SEMrush. You may want to check out this post on my blog for more information about it. Here is a link Audit report for one of my clients:

21% toxic links is a dangerous status and my client isn't comfortable with this. But nothing to worry about because salvaging this is quite easy.

2 - Clean up Your Domain

Now your SEO tool has helped with a list of toxic domains linking to your site. The next step is to clean up and there are two ways to handle this: a) Disavow and Ask Google to Ignore the Domains This is a quick step that requires you to create a disavow text file and upload to Google Disavow Tool. Using the most appropriate tool, you can generate the list of toxic domains with the click of the mouse.

The disavow file simply has a list of domains Google should ignore while accessing your site. You need just one text file per property in your GSC account. Each time you have more domains to disavow, you'll have to simply download the file, add the domain to it and re-upload. b) Send a Mail to Webmaster to Take Down Link The second option (which may not be quick and friendly) is to get the contacts of the webmaster of the toxic domain and actually get to him to remove the link to your site. Trust me you may face resistance or some slowness in this option. If you have 600+ toxic domains, you'll have to get the contacts of all these, send them mails one after the other with links to the toxic pages. This isn't going to be bread and butter. After all, it's up to you to decide which direction to take.

3 - Always Keep an Eye on Your Link Profile

It's a mistake to completely ignore your link profile. As an active SEO marketer, you'll have to constantly audit your backlink profile and get rid of domains that may attract search penalties. Recommended: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks for Your WordPress Blog in 2019

How to Attract Backlinks from Healthy Domains

It's one thing to go create backlinks. It's another thing to attract and earn them. But how do you get links from webmasters and bloggers with healthy domains without you asking for them?

1) Create Link-worthy Content

The Internet is saturated but people need content that stands out. Linkable content is content that has all the meat. This is content that meets the intent of the reader. Gone are those days of keyword optimization and writing for search engines. We are in the age of Semantic SEO when text content producers optimize for topical relevance not keyword. This is the best approach to create content that attract links. NB: I have created a post on Semantic SEO you may want to read. Articles that are semantically fully optimized are often in-depth. Using a Semantic SEO tool, be sure to optimize to its optimum.

2) Create Healthy Relationships with Bloggers

Did you know that having warm relationships with other bloggers in your niche can earn links for your blog? I live this experience everyday. There is nothing as exciting as having blogging friends who link out to your content, then mention you on Twitter or Facebook. If you've been blogging in solitude, it's time to step out and network with others in your niche. There are simple things to do to create these relationships: - Start by creating excellent content that positions you as an expert. - Read other blogs and drop meaningful comments. - Follow other bloggers on social media. - Link out to their contents from your blog. - Promote their content on different platforms. - Guest post on their blogs and allow them to submit to your blog as well. - Respond to their comments on your blog and social media. - Send out friendly mails, appreciating your friends. Don't try to sell something. - Etc. Doing these and more will gradually get you connected with many more bloggers, who see you as a pro and someone to trust. If you are a selfish blogger operating like an Island, you end up suffering the consequences alone.

3) Avoid Showing up in Black Hat Forums

SEO black hat forums are places where black hat methods are discussed and implemented. One of the baddest things you are ever going to do is expose your website in such places. Avoid signing up and participating in black hat discussion. Don't allow your domain name mentioned there. It may happen that someone does that but that shouldn't be you. Keep away completely from such forums.

A Grey Hat SEO Technique Used by Many

'Grey' is between 'black' and 'white'. I have seen many trusted bloggers indirectly buy backlinks and it works for them. They actually pay their trusted friends to guest post and build their links. If for instance you have someone with access to post on  searchenginejournal.com, what you do is pay that person to slide your link in one of his articles. How much they pay depends on the level of friendship and the Domain Authority of the blog to get the link from. If you want to use this link building approach, here are some points to note: - Make sure you get someone to create links from related domains. - While you may focus on domains with high DA, don't neglect average DA domains as this will certainly grow big. - Avoid domains with high citation flow. This for the most part is spam.

Avoid Fiverr and SEOclerks at all Cost

These are two popular micro job platforms where SEO link selling services thrive. But it's the main source of toxic and dangerous backlinks. Buying a link building service from these platforms exposes your domain to links you have no control on. The service providers have bought hundreds of low quality domains on which they publish spun articles, creating extremely dangerous backlinks. Some of the providers do get backlinks from account profiles, which is a thread to SEO as well. Others get from Private Blog Networks (PBN), which is equally dangerous. Initially, you may have a rank boost but that will be for a short while. The long term won't only be you losing the rankings. You stand a chance of being penalized as well.

Conclusion