If you’re familiar with the basics of link building, then you already know that not all links are created equal. There are good links and there are bad links, and sites with lots of the latter will undoubtedly perform worse in the SERPs.

But what are bad links exactly, and how can you recognize them at first glance? That’s what we’re here to explain. Up ahead, you’ll discover all the answers you’re looking for, plus 15 types of bad links you need to steer clear of and why.

• What Are Bad Links?
• How Do I Find Bad Links?
• How Do I Stop Bad Links?
• 15 Bad Links to Avoid At All Costs
• 1. Comment Spam
• 2. Discussion Forum Spam
• 3. Paid Links That Pass PageRank
• 4. Excessive Link Exchanges
• 5. Excessive Guest Post Links
• 6. Sitewide Links
• 7. Links Included in Contracts
• 8. Press Release Links
• 9. Links Embedded in Widgets
• 10. Links from Private Blog Networks
• 11. Links from Low-Quality Directories
• 12. Links Created with Automated Programs
• 13. Social Bookmarking Links
• 14. Excessive Guestbook Links
• 15. Links from Unrelated Sites
• Bonus: Broken Links

What Are Bad Links?

Put simply, bad links are low-quality backlinks that lower Google’s opinion of your site. Such links can be described as spammy, toxic and unnatural, and the effect is the same whether you created them or not (and no, affiliate links don’t count).

This can be chalked up to Google’s algorithms and their heavy emphasis on link quality. The search engine giant has been leading the way for backlink analysis since its 1990s debut—prior to that point, many search engines generated results based on keywords alone.

This meant that if a page contained the same keyword repeated hundreds of times, it was liable to rank higher than a page containing truly relevant content about the same topic. But Google’s founders thought there must be a better way, so they developed a search engine that evaluates links and anchor text as well as keywords.

Crucially, it views backlinks as votes of confidence. In other words, the more links a website has pointing back to it, the more trustworthy and respectable it must be. But where there’s a ranking system there are people who will try to exploit it, so Google uses advanced algorithms to determine when a link is good (i.e., when it constitutes a genuine vote of confidence) and when a link is bad (i.e, when it was created in an attempt to game the system).

How Do I Find Bad Links?

Given the sheer size of the web, the challenge of finding all the suspicious links leading to your site is a formidable one.

Fortunately, there are a host of both free and paid tools available that can help you turn that monumental task into a simple one.

If you’ve got the resources to pay for a top-tier tool, Semrush’s Backlink Analytics is undoubtedly one of the best. As of May 2021 it has 36 billion backlinks, making it the most extensive of all available databases.

Simply enter the domain of your choice and you’ll be presented with a wealth of detailed information about its backlink profile, including an extensive list of links:

In the upper right-hand corner of the report you’ll see the overall toxicity score; This metric will indicate how many bad backlinks are in your site’s profile.

Looking for a free tool instead? Moz Link Explorer, Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker and Majestic’s Link Graph are fantastic and effective options, although none of those tools are backed by a database quite as comprehensive as Semrush’s:

And if you have Google Search Console set up, you can always use its links report feature to see who’s linking to you (and get lots of valuable information about your own internal links, too. Similarly, Google Analytics can reveal where your traffic is coming from via its Acquisition reports.

Regardless of which tool you choose to use, you’ll have made a significant step toward identifying (and ultimately removing) bad incoming links that are tarnishing your site’s reputation.

How Do I Stop Bad Links?

If you’re lucky, your site won’t have any toxic links pointing in its direction. But if your backlink analysis does reveal some bad backlinks, the next step is to get rid of them.

Note that Google Search Console says that it can already determine which links to trust without outside input but you’re still free to stop bad links yourself for peace of mind.

You can do so in one of two ways:

• Request removal: If you discover that your site has backlinks on low-quality directories or a similar location, you can simply reach out to the site’s webmaster and request that all links to your site be removed (or at least be changed to nofollow links).
• Disavow: If another site’s webmaster won’t remove the spammy links in question, or if there are simply too many toxic links to request removal for each one, you can instead add the links to a disavow list yourself. Google Search Console provides a straightforward way to do this, as does Bing.

15 Bad Links to Avoid At All Costs

You’ve done your due diligence by learning what bad links are, how you can find them and how they can be stopped. Now you can take your knowledge to the next level by learning about 15 specific types of links you must always avoid.

1. Comment Spam

It’s not unusual for people to link to their or someone else’s website within comments on blog posts and articles, and it’s entirely possible to do so in a natural and non-spammy way.

But when comments sections across multiple websites are filled with keyword-stuffed links leading to a site, search engines start to take notice.

For example, a non-spammy comment on an article about page speed optimization might look something like this:

Conversely, a spammy comment on the same article might look something like this:

And even if a blog comment link doesn’t look spammy on its own, it may raise some red flags if it’s repeated over and over again in an identical way.

The lesson: Only link to your site in comments sections when it makes contextual sense to do so, don’t repeat the same comments across multiple sites and never keyword-stuff your anchor text.

2. Discussion Forum Spam

Unnatural links are also known to appear in comments made on discussion forums. For example, users may add keyword-stuffed links to their signature.

These types of bad links are nearly identical to their comments section counterparts, and can sprout up on any type of discussion board, whether it’s on a major social network or a niche website.

The lesson: If you’re active on industry discussion forums, keep keyword-optimized links out of your signature and forum posts.

3. Paid Links That Pass PageRank

To be clear, it’s perfectly fine to purchase or sell pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements that contain links which don’t pass PageRank to the buyer of the ad.

But if you buy or sell inbound or outbound links that do pass PageRank then you could be subject to a penalty.

The lesson: Don’t buy or sell links that pass PageRank, and always use a qualifying attribute (e.g. rel=”sponsored”) to let Google know when a link is paid for rather than organic.

4. Excessive Link Exchanges

Webmasters are no stranger to the concept of “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” Practically since the dawn of the search engine, they’ve found ways to help each other achieve higher search engine rankings.

This can take place in the form of link exchanges, i.e. agreements between webmasters to link to each other’s sites in an effort to boost organic traffic.

This practice isn’t bad on its own, but when performed in excess it can be viewed as a link scheme.

The lesson: Be careful to not overdo it when exchanging links with other websites, even if they’re quality sites.

5. Excessive Guest Post Links

Guest posting can be a great way to get your name out there and expand your brand’s reach, but it’s not the best idea if search performance is what you’re after.

That’s because Google views excessive guest post links as being manipulative toward its algorithms, specifically when they contain keyword-rich anchor text.

The lesson: Don’t include links with keyword-rich anchor text in any guest posts published on external sites.

6. Sitewide Links

Some unscrupulous site owners might think they can fool Google’s algorithms by embedding links in headers or footers that appear on every page, but the search engine’s algorithms are smarter than that.

These types of links are often referred to as sitewide links, since they can be found on every page of a site.

If such practices are discovered within the headers or footers of a site, Google is liable to penalize it and the site it’s linking to.

The lesson: Don’t embed sitewide links to your site in the headers or footers of other sites.

7. Links Included in Contracts

Google values authentic links above all others, so it’s no surprise that it doesn’t approve of contractually obligated links.

For instance, a site could add the inclusion of an outbound link to its terms of service and not allow the other party to qualify the link as they please.

The lesson: Never try to forcibly grow sites’ backlink profiles by including mandatory links in contractual agreements and not permitting them to be qualified.

8. Press Release Links

For many companies, press releases are a crucial part of their marketing strategy. Google knows this, so there’s nothing inherently wrong with publishing them.

But when press releases start including links that pass PageRank, Google doesn’t listen. As the company’s own John Mueller said in a 2018 office-hours stream:

As with all types of bad links, you typically don’t need to worry if you have a few links leading to your site from press releases. But if you have press releases widely distributed across many sites and each one is littered with keyword-optimized links, you should quickly remove those links before your site’s search performance suffers because of them.

The lesson: Don’t publish press releases with links that pass PageRank, especially at scale. Instead, just use nofollow links.

9. Links Embedded in Widgets

Much like sitewide links embedded in headers or footers, links embedded in widgets don’t stand a chance of fooling Google’s algorithms.

For instance, a spam site might try to gain lots of new backlinks by hiding links to itself within a helpful widget designed for other sites to use (such as a visitor counter or carousel). However, Google will at best ignore those links and at worst take manual actions against the site responsible.

The lesson: If you create widgets for other sites to use, let their quality speak for themselves and resist the urge to include inbound links.

10. Links from Private Blog Networks

If you’re not sure what a private blog network (PBN) is, just imagine a scaled up reciprocal link exchange. In other words, a PBN (also referred to as a link farm or link network) is a group of websites that includes mass amounts of outgoing links to each other.

As Semrush explains, PBNs often utilize expired domains with the goal of capitalizing on their already established authority. Disreputable SEOs who engage in PBNs will also attempt to hide their actions by:

• switching hosting providers;
• using different registrars; and
• using different domain extensions.

Such tactics never work for long, though, and can only end in penalization and plummeting rankings.

The lesson: Stay far, far away from PBNs (and avoid links from sites that belong to them) if you want to keep your reputation and rankings intact.

11. Links from Low-Quality Directories

Just as phone book listings once helped people find local plumbers or restaurants, online directories now allow users to discover businesses and sites of every kind. But ever since their inception, such directories have been plagued by spammers attempting to get an unfair advantage in the SERPs by adding their sites to as many as possible.

Directories which are primarily filled with links from such spammers are viewed as being low-quality, as are the sites they link to. So, it makes sense that Google doesn’t exactly favor sites whose link profile is full of spam links from low-quality directories.

The lesson: Don’t seek out link spam from low-quality directories, and instead stick to reputable ones like Yelp and Google Business Profile.

12. Links Created with Automatic Programs

Automation is fantastic for lots of SEO-related things, from analyzing metrics to diagnosing a site’s performance issues. But one thing it isn’t good for is generating high-quality backlinks.

These links can be placed in comments sections, forums, low-quality directories or other locations, and none of them will do your rankings any good.

So although many link-generating programs exist, Google is well aware of them and qualifies any external links created using such programs as link schemes.

The lesson: Avoid using automatic programs to generate backlinks to your site—Google will be quick to catch on.

13. Social Bookmarking Links

As Sprout Social puts it, social bookmarking is “the process of tagging a website page with a browser-based tool so that you can easily visit it again later.” As the web has grown, massively popular communities (think Reddit and Pinterest) have been created around this practice.

But when sites go overboard with posting their own links on social bookmarking sites (especially low-quality ones), they can actually harm rankings rather than help them.

This doesn’t mean you should avoid social bookmarking sites altogether—instead, it means you should brush up on your Pinterest SEO skills instead of creating hundreds of low-quality Pins linking to your site.

The lesson: Ensure your site’s presence on social bookmarking sites is genuine and centered around engagement, not spamming hundreds of links.

14. Excessive Guestbook Links

You might remember guestbooks as a relic of the early days of the internet, but they still exist in one form or another. For example, a site’s homepage might have its own comments section, or it might include a way for visitors to leave public feedback.

Whatever the case, Google knows that when a website has lots of spammy backlinks coming from such guestbooks they’re typically not high-quality links or worth counting toward its rankings.

The lesson: Only use guestbooks as they’re intended, and certainly don’t use them as a place to spam links.

15. Links from Unrelated Sites

If you know the basics of how Google’s algorithms work, then you also know that relevancy is a big deal. That applies to both paid and organic traffic, too.

Google doesn’t just evaluate relevance when matching search results to user queries, though—it also takes relevance into account when determining how backlinks will affect a site’s rankings.

For example, if a site about legal services gets many of its backlinks from sites selling off-brand electronics, Google will be quick to realize that those links likely aren’t legitimate votes of confidence.

The lesson: Don’t seek out backlinks from unrelated sites.

Bonus: Broken Links

While broken links might not fall under the category of spammy, they certainly qualify as being bad.

In short, a broken link is one which leads to a moved, non-functional or deleted page. In some cases, that means the user is presented with nothing more than a blank webpage. Or if you’ve taken the time to create a custom 404 page, visitors will see that instead.

But whether broken links lead readers to an empty page or a well-designed one, the truth is that they’re still broken, and they still have an inherently negative effect on the user experience. So if you’re committed to avoiding bad backlinks, then you should also be committed to eliminating broken links too.

Luckily, finding bad links is no big deal. With free tools like Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker, all you need to do is enter your URL and click “check broken links.”

Alternatively, you can use Google Analytics to find your site’s broken links — the process is a bit more involved, but it can also provide you with more details and context if you need them.

So if you truly want to rid your site of bad links, be sure to nix its broken links too.

In with the Good, Out with the Bad (Links)

Every SEO professional wants to master the art of advanced link building for better search engine rankings and more visitors, but low-quality links from low-quality sources aren’t the way to do it.

To truly refine your search engine optimization strategy, you’ll benefit from learning what bad links are and how to eliminate them, as well as what natural links are and how to earn them from relevant sites. Trust us, your rankings and domain authority will thank you in the end.

Image credits

Screenshots by author / July 2021
Semrush / May 2021

If you’re new to SEO or simply don’t have much link building experience, the prospect of link building can be an intimidating one. From link velocity to link reclamation to time-consuming techniques, many guides to link building are overwhelming for those who just need to learn the basics.

That’s why we’ve created this beginner’s guide to link building. Here, you’ll learn about the essential concepts of link building and how to execute them easily, effectively and quickly.

• What Is Link Building?
• Why Is Link Building Important?
• How Do I Get Started With Link Building?
• Learn About Bad Links
• Learn About Good Links
• Focus on Shareability
• Build Genuine Relationships
• Get Local
• Ask for Help From Your Network
• Get Inspiration From Competitors
• Track Your Progress

What Is Link Building?

First thing’s first: What exactly is link building, anyway? As one of the core pillars of SEO as a whole, it must be a pretty complex concept, right? Not necessarily.

In short, link building describes the process of acquiring backlinks from other sites to yours:

That’s it! If you successfully get another site to add a link to one of your pages, then you’ve just engaged in link building.

Why Is Link Building Important?

As with all aspects of SEO, link building is important because of the value that search engines place on it. It comes as no surprise that this is especially true for Google, one of the first search engines to prioritize links andkeywords instead of just keywords alone.

As Google founders Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page stated in the 1998 Stanford paper that marked the search engine’s debut:

In other words, a page about dog treats won’t rank highly just because it contains the phrase dog treats hundreds of times. Instead, it will rank highly if other reputable websites link to it and it includes a contextually appropriate number of keywords. And with the continued advancement and refinement of Google’s algorithms, that’s even more true today than it was in 1998.

The takeaway? If you care about SEO, then you need to care about link building too. In addition to top-notch content and relevant keywords, a portfolio of high-quality backlinks is one of the core components of a successful SEO strategy.

How Do I Get Started With Link Building?

Now you know what link building is (getting links from other sites) and why link building is important (search engines love links!). But as a beginner, you’re still probably wondering how you can get started with link building on a practical level.

It all comes down to trial, error and patient persistence.

Learn About Bad Links

In order to build high-quality links, you first need to know what constitutes bad links, i.e. links that lower search engines’ opinion of your site.

These are often links considered to be part of link schemes. As Google explains, some examples of link schemes include:

• Buying links that pass PageRank.
• Excessive link exchanges (cross-linking between sites).
• Expansive article marketing or guest posting campaigns that make use of keyword-heavy anchor text.
• Automatically generated links.
• Requiring links as a part of a contract or legal agreement.

Also remember that Google is smart enough to detect any kind of spammy links, so don’t be tempted to flood discussion forums with links or submit your site to dozens of low-quality directories just because doing so doesn’t technically qualify as a link scheme. Google refers to these types of links as unnatural links, and they’ll only serve to hurt your site’s rankings.

Once you know what bad links are, you’ll be able to avoid them and keep your site’s reputation squeaky clean. And if you ever do come across a low-quality link to your site that you don’t want Google to take into consideration, simply use the nofollow attribute.

Learn About Good Links

We’ve established why bad links are, well, bad, but what makes good links good? It all comes down to a few key concepts:

• Authority: A page gains authority in Google’s eyes when it establishes itself as a reliable source of information on a given topic. This can be any topic under the sun, from celebrity gossip to quantum physics. If a link to your site comes from an authoritative site, Google is more likely to view it as good.
• Relevance: To provide users with the best results possible, Google is highly concerned with relevancy. If a link to your site comes from one that’s topically relevant, it’s more likely to be viewed as high-quality.
• Naturalness: If you’ve been keeping up with Google’s algorithm updates over the last few years, then you know that context and naturalness are top priorities. The search engine’s machine learning models are carefully tuned to determine whether a link is natural (i.e. genuine) or unnatural (i.e. spammy), and the more natural-seeming it is the better.
• Anchor text: Much like the presence of backlinks themselves, each link’s anchor text should be natural and not keyword-stuffed. To find out more, you might wish to brush up on anchor text SEO.

As with all of the factors that influence Google’s rankings, no one of those concepts will be solely responsible for determining whether a link is good or not. Instead, each one will play a role in forming Google’s opinion.

The lesson? Throughout the course of your link building strategy, you need to value authority, relevance, naturalness and anchor text alike when deciding which links to pursue and how you’d like them to be formatted.

Focus on Shareability

It’s true that creating high-quality content will increase your chances of gaining backlinks, but it’s important to view shareability as a key aspect of quality.

After all, an article can be well-researched, factually accurate and thorough, but it wouldn’t be considered shareable unless it compels readers to show others.

So what makes an article shareable? That’s subjective, but it generally comes down to elements that are either unique, eye-catching or both. For example:

• aesthetically pleasing graphics;
• interesting statistics;
• appealing photos;
• easy-to-read infographics;
• attention-grabbing quotes (hint: a Click to Tweet button makes quotes extra easy to share); and
• valuable takeaways.

Those are the types of things that people are compelled to share on their social media feeds, send to their friends or cite in their own content, so be sure to incorporate them into your content whenever possible.

Build Genuine Relationships

The saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is oft repeated for a reason. The same applies to SEO, particularly in terms of backlinking. This is because Google wants links to be based on genuine recommendations and endorsements between websites, not on transactions or spam.

The best way to fulfill that wish is to create and nurture genuine relationships with key players in your vertical. These can include people like:

• industry journalists and editors;
• bloggers;
• social media influencers;
• owners of related websites; and
• employees of related organizations.

If you’re not sure where to start, begin by simply conversing with some of those people on social media. Don’t jump right into self-promotion, though—just have authentic discussions about topics relevant to your site.

Then once you’ve built a casual rapport or at least made your name more visible, try emailing those same people when you’re about to publish an interesting article or release a new product. Refrain from directly asking for a backlink, and instead just share what you have to offer. If they like it, they may link back to it.

In the same vein, you can indirectly strive to get backlinks from thought leaders and influencers by adding some ego bait to your site’s content. In other words, mention them in a complimentary way in order to tempt them to engage with and link back to your site.

These techniques likely won’t yield instant results, but they will help you achieve more potent long-term results that Google will value even more.

Get Local

If the website you’re optimizing is associated with a business that has a brick and mortar location, you can gain more backlinks and boost traffic by participating in local directories and building connections with nearby residents.

You’d do well to start by optimizing Google My Business (GMB), Google’s own database of local business listings. When you do so, a GMB listing for your business (complete with a link back to its website) will show up on both Search and Maps:

Once your GMB listing is set up, you can also connect with nearby residents and visitors by:

• getting your business listed on reputable local directories;
• promoting your social media posts to a specific geographic area;
• communicating with local influencers; and
• learning how to start a Facebook group for your brand.

All of those activities will increase your chances of earning organic backlinks and expanding your business’ reach.

Ask for Help From Your Network

Link building guides often place a large amount of emphasis on optimizing outreach, and rightfully so. But for beginners in particular, it’s important to remember that your existing network of colleagues, friends and contacts can be leveraged too.

It’s as simple as this: Do colleagues associated with the website you’re optimizing have Twitter accounts? Then you can ask them to help by linking to new blog posts. Do your LinkedIn contacts sometimes publish links to various articles? Then you can shoot them a message to see if they’ll post a link to one of yours.

As long as your network’s posts don’t appear spammy or ingenuine, this is a fantastic way to take advantage of the connections you already have.

Get Inspiration From Competitors

Every beginner’s link building strategy needs to include basic competitor link analysis. In simpler terms, you should find out which backlinks your competitors have and try to get them for your site too.

But how can you tell where your competitors are getting their links from? With Ahrefs’ free Backlink Checker it’s nothing short of a breeze.

Just enter a competitor’s URL and you’ll soon see a breakdown of their backlink profile:

Just like that, you can gain a valuable look at your competitors’ most important backlinks and start using that information to conduct targeted outreach and build more links to your own site.

Track Your Progress

Last but certainly not least, it’s vital to track your site’s progress so that you can ascertain which of your link building tactics are working and which need to be improved.

The easiest way to do so is with the help of a free traffic analysis tool like Similarweb. To use this tool, all you have to do is enter your site’s URL and you’ll see detailed information about its traffic and performance:

On Similarweb, this information includes total visits, traffic by country, top referring sites, top referring social media platforms and more:

Once you’re able to see where all your traffic is coming from, you’ll also be able to keep an eye on your link building efforts’ progress over time.

Effective Link Building: Not Just for Experts

Link building can involve advanced tactics, but it doesn’t necessarily need to. It’s possible for even complete beginners to start building a well-rounded backlink portfolio, and now you know how to do it.

So don’t get intimidated by complex link building software or niche terminology. Instead, use the techniques outlined here to start getting genuine links that search engines will love.

Image credits

Graphic by author / July 2021
Screenshots by author / July 2021

Advanced link building includes tasks that are a little harder than intermediate level, but may be easier to scale, and that achieve links that are second to none on the value list. These tasks may require additional skills to complete. They range from things like instructographics to guestographics, creating original research, and becoming a thought leader within your industry.

Many of these approaches make things easier to scale while still moving forward with link building, which will continue to be effective for your site in the long run. In other words, you’re removing the human element from the equation and allowing your automation to take over.

Automation itself doesn’t necessarily mean that link building is advanced, because you can automate relatively simple tasks that will help you later.

When we talk automation, we are not talking about using automated programs to build links. We’re talking about automation that doesn’t violate Google’s guidelines—things like automating simple tasks, for example contacting websites or finding website addresses.

Advanced link building includes those techniques that set themselves apart from the rest of the pack, and let you concentrate on those other tasks that you want to spend your time on.

Create Your Own Tools

Creating your own tools is a recipe for link building success, because the more tools you create that turn out to be valuable for your users, the more people will share it.

This in turn helps to create assets that will be permanent link-builders for your site.

For example, if you’re an attorney website, you might want to create legal contract templates in a software program that people can then fill out and print. This software program could be linked directly back to you, so if they ever want to hire an attorney, they’ll be redirected to your website.

If you’re an SEO website, you might want to create automatic JSON-LD script creators, meta tag formatters, and page templates. All of these types of digital assets work to scale your link building so you don’t have to do much work on the promotion side of things.

There are limitless ideas in this category. Depending on your industry, you could find something that could lend itself well to digital media asset creation.

Create Wikis With Treasure Troves of Links

When you’re creating links on sites like Wikipedia, you could easily find yourself in the cross hairs of many thousands of people visiting these types of sites.

If you aren’t already doing so, you will want to create these. Starting with your own brand is a great place to begin.

Expert Roundup Posts

This is a great advanced link building technique! Think about it—who would this ego bait appeal to more than anyone who is listed in the roundup?

They are a great way to get links because this ego bait will (generally) earn links on its own through people who are listed in that post.

Find specific roundup lists in your niche. You’ll want to maybe get in touch with the curators of these lists and ask if they’d like to mention your resources.

Resources can be anything from your tool, your content, or your digital media assets with your brand name with a link attached.

That’s why expert roundups continue to be a staple of anyone’s advanced link building strategies.

Create Many Additional Formats for Your Content

This one is not exactly hard, but it can be time-consuming, especially if you don’t have assistance in this area.

You can create many different types of formats of your content based on one longform article: create a video, then an infographic, then a podcast.

All of these types of content formats lend themselves well to additional digital media assets that you can then use to build links.

And, once you get going on your own process for creating these, you can count on these formats to work their magic on their respective platforms as you continue promoting them.

You may want to develop a schedule that allows you to create at least 5-10 different types of formats of your content.

More examples of this type of content includes images for instagram, videos for YouTube, PDF training materials on document sharing sites, and others.

The goal is to increase your online presence on as many channels as humanly possible.

Actually Be Newsworthy

When you are newsworthy, you will naturally attract attention from the press.

This is what you want to do: become a newsworthy mention in your local press.

Doing something that’s unusual and noteworthy (and something that not everyone else is doing) is one of the best ways to gain attention from your peers along with the media.

Invent a Phrase and Monitor it for Online Mentions

You can create a brand-new industry buzzword that is something centered entirely around your brand.

However, not everybody is going to link to your site with the brand-new term.

So, you should set up Google alerts to track the mention of that phrase.

Do a weekly check to see how much that phrase is mentioned without being linked.

Perform follow-up with those webmasters to see if they would be willing to turn that unlinked mention into a link.

404 Error Link Building

Finding content that has 404’ed around the web is something of an art. The objective of this method is to help webmasters fix that errored content.

In turn, when you do, you can ask for a link. The idea is that they will be grateful that you reached out and like the free content so much that they will add a link back to your site.

The trick is to make sure that your content is significantly better than what they would have on their site otherwise (or at least a close match in quality, to increase the chance that they will include it).

Reclaiming Links That Are Dead

As it usually happens on the web, links back to your site die. They become dated, and they might not exist anymore.

That’s where link reclamation comes in.

The process is you look throughout the web for links that you once had, that are now dead for some reason or another.

For sites you have a relationship with, you could potentially reclaim those links by emailing said webmasters and requesting they re-establish your link.

Don’t forget about redirected links! These could be links on all external websites that have been redirected by these webmasters.

They could have at one point sent value back to you, but for some reason they were redirected.

Reclaiming both dead links and redirected links can work wonders in returning your rankings to where they once were.

Reverse Engineer Your Competition’s Link Profile

Guess what happens when you dig into your competitor’s links? Something magical.

You find out—exactly—what they are doing to earn those links. Whether it’s through guest blogging, influencer relationships, or local reaching out, you will be able to deep dive and figure out exactly how your competitor achieved the links they have.

You can do this by leveraging the use of Semrush or AHREFs. Assess who your top competitors are in the top 5-10, and download the CSVs of your competition’s backlinks.

This should allow you to sift through and find those gold nuggets that you can then use as your own link building targets.

It’s a great idea to really geek out and deep dive into your competitor’s link profile.

Become a Thought Leader in Your Own Industry

When you become a thought leader, public trust and brand loyalty become your ticket for building natural links the right way.

Thought leaders who have built up their brand loyalty along with a brand following tend to garner many more links as a result of their work.

If you succeed, the articles, videos, and other links you produce will become fodder for your audience, who will be enamored and entirely enthused every time you publish a piece of content.

In addition, it will become much easier to ask your audience for that all-important link on their social networks.

Becoming a thought leader in your industry can be done by:

• Speaking at industry conferences
• Getting on well-known industry podcasts
• Contributing to well-known industry blogs
• Adding your advice to expert roundups
• Creating social media content that has a high chance of going viral

All of these methods have the potential to create specific opportunities where you can ask for a link from your audience, and thus continue to build your backlink profile.

Reclaiming Your Links from RSS Feeds

This is a brand-new technique that Bill Hartzer shared on his YouTube Channel.

He coined it as RSS feed link reclamation via Feedburner URLs.

Here’s how Bill explained the method in his video:

You can watch his video demonstrating the technique here:

How Do You Plan on Building Links Next?

There are many ways to build links. Almost as many ways to build links as there are creating websites.

While that might be an exaggeration, it’s mostly true. These are just a small sampling of the ideas you may encounter as you continue building your brand and working through building your link profile.

Just make sure you stay on the right side of Google’s guidelines (or that you don’t get discovered pursuing more aggressive and riskier methods).

At the end of the day, the person with the best quality link profile wins, and that doesn’t always mean the most links.

How do you plan on building your own links next?

Image Credits

Featured Image: Shutterstock / July 2021

You’ve probably heard of link building, but what exactly does it mean? Link building is the process of acquiring inbound links from other websites. These links act as editorial votes for your website and help increase visibility online. You can use link building to improve a site’s authority, get a boost in search engine rankings, generate traffic and much more! In this guide we will go over how link building works and teach you how to build high quality backlinks that will help your business grow.

As link building becomes more and more of a crucial part of any marketing campaign, it’s important to have an understanding of where you stand. This article is for those who are looking to build their link profile in order to rank higher in the search engines or drive traffic back to their site.

This is a link building guide for intermediate link builders. You will learn how to build links, increase your link profile, and much more. These tips are perfect for link builders who have been doing link building for at least 1 year or longer.

What Link Building Is and What It’s Used For

What exactly is link building, and what is it used for? Link building is the process of creating link networks that link to your website, which increases its visibility in search engine results pages.

It’s used to help get relevant websites to link back to yours, and to help increase your authority by doing so. Per Google’s Gary Illyes, he has stated in the past that backlinks and mentions are one of the signals that contributes to the concept of E-A-T, and to a site’s overall authority.

Why Link Building Should be Important for You

Link Building is very important because it can increase your online visibility and link equity to your website, just like the children’s game of musical chairs. The link building process is a zero-sum game: For every link that you build there are likely going to be some who try to tear them down. This is why link velocity is important to keep consistent over time: if you lose some links, others may need to do the job of replacing them.

Link building’s importance to SEO is sometimes misunderstood and understated, but make no mistake: building links is critical to your SEO campaign’s success. While in some cases, and in less competitive industries you can run into situations where just comprehensive content can win the day, that is not always the case. In more significantly-competitive niches, you must have both content and links. A thorough competitor analysis will help you identify where your link building opportunities are and how you can take advantage of them most effectively.

When it comes to your content, you have to promote that content. This can be done by promoting it either to your social media channels or to other sources where you have a live audience. Only then can you gain the eyes and ears of people who will help you by placing those links.

How Link Building Can Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

The number one reason people do link building is to help increase their own website ranking in the search engines.

When it comes to Google, the quality of your inbound links is more important than the quantity. While in some circles, SEO practitioners believe that quantity of links outweighs quality, this is not a fair comparison. The quality of your links usually means that your link profile has fewer links in general. In other words, quality and quantity are not always mutually exclusive.

For quality links, you want to focus on things like the following:

• The quality of the site linking to you (does it have spammy content or not?)
• The quality of the link profile of the site linking to you (this is where some SEO pros fail: they fail to assess the quality of the linking site’s profile, and as a result, they are associated with a poor site such as a PBN)
• How well-established a site is (note that this is not necessarily the be-all, end-all determination of a quality link)

These are not the only factors to look out for, to be sure, but they will help you in weeding out sites that seek to game Google’s algorithm by way of low-quality links.

The Link Building Process

The link building process usually starts out with some content marketing to create social media buzz for the brand or product and talking about related key concepts. This is followed by outreach campaigns, which include a link request email template used when contacting other websites asking for links.

To find out the opportunities that are available to you, first you must do a competitor analysis. We recommend identifying the top 10 competitors in your niche. Once you have these competitors, you can then do a deeper dive into some of their SEO metrics. Things you want to keep tabs on include their content production schedule, how many links they’re getting, and what kind of links they are building.

Once you find out these three things, you will be ready to proceed with the right link building strategy for you. Finding out the quantity and quality of links your competitor has will allow you to identify and set initial benchmarks for launching your link building campaign.

After you have all of your data and link research, now you can dig into the competitor data and build your links list. This will give you specific link targets you can go after using your strategy. If you plan on using email outreach for link building, this is the part of the process where you will need to go to each domain in your list and find out critical contact information for the website owners. You can do this using a Google Chrome Extension called Hunter.io.

Social Media promotion should also not be neglected. Promoting your content via social media can give you critical traction at a time when your content needs to reach real people. And, tapping into industry influencers is a great way to get your content in front of those who can put that link on their websites.

This is just but one process out of many, but should give you an idea of some of the common parts of the link building process you will likely run into as you begin.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the process of creating content that is specifically created for building links and spreading online awareness about a company or product, with link building being one of its goals.

The goal of content marketing is to increase links as naturally as possible, without the link profile looking like a spammer used an automated program to build them.

The use of processes like link building programs is against Google’s webmaster guidelines, and if abused significantly, can cause you to get into trouble with either an algorithmic or manual penalty.

Link Request Emails

Link request emails are the most common link building tactic for link builders.

They usually send an email with some content and a link to their page, asking them to share or link back to their site in return.

The goal of this type of outreach isn’t just getting links but also establishing relationships that will benefit both parties down the line.

Think about it: as you continue to build your email list, you will end up with dozens, maybe even hundreds of opportunities where you could continue creating links just from sending out an email to those in your list.

That’s a technique that Brian Dean of Backlinko uses and takes advantage of quite consistently.

How Link Building Can Help Your SEO Campaign

Link building can help you with your campaign by increasing your website’s authority and reach. Getting links from authoritative websites will help you rank higher on Google, which can lead to a lot of success for your business overall.

How Link Building Differs Between SEO and Branding Campaigns

In order to differentiate the two types of link building you should be aware that:

In an SEO campaign the goal is typically to increase your link popularity.

In a branding campaign the goal is to create more content opportunities for your business.

Both campaigns differ in that the SEO campaign is exclusively focused on links, and the branding campaign focuses more on links plus your overall company brand.

The branding campaign should be spreading awareness about your brand so people will be more willing to write content for your brand.

In addition, a more positive brand awareness and brand image will lead to people being more willing to engage with your brand online.

Have you ever noticed how companies with a very poor brand image do rather poorly themselves in the social media space?

They are dragged, made fun of, and in general are not the companies you’d want to do business with. Some politicians are experts at having a very poor brand image, for example!

Remember that not all publicity is good publicity. The more good publicity your brand gets, the better its reputation and brand awareness will be.

The Importance of Link Diversity

Link diversity is an important part of modern link building.

Diversity in link building is important because it can lead to a lot of success for your business overall.

The Link Diversity Pyramid: Link Quality, Anchor Text, and Link Velocity

The link diversity pyramid serves as an excellent guide to help you understand how the different types of links interact with one another.

Link Quality

Link quality is a solid foundation of link building that you must pay attention to. Making sure the sites that link to you are of high enough quality is something that Google pays attention to. If you get 1000 low-quality links, you probably are not going to see much sustainable benefit.

However, if you get 500 good-quality links, you may see a sustainable benefit as a result of those links, because of their effects over time.

Link Velocity

How many links you build over time is important.

Link velocity is basically how many links you build over time. It’s important to build a moderate number of links over time because if you build too many, this can lead to issues down the line.

For example, 100 quality links built over time are better than 1000 spammy links built in just one day.

Link Anchor Text

The link anchor text is the visible text on the page. This is the text that takes a visitor from one page to the next.

In essence your anchor text should be telling the user about what they should be expecting on the next page, not the page they are on.

In other words, the anchor text within the link should match what’s on the page.

For example, if you’re linking to a blog post with an anchor link “link building” then your link will say “link building.”

When it comes to increasing the diversity of your anchor text, you want to make sure that you’re not just using the same anchor text over and over again. While it may help you zero in on your anchor text’s focus in your overall link profile, it is not a harbinger of link quality.

How to Think about a Reliable Link Building Framework

Links are not created in a vacuum. Unless you have exact tabs on your specific process, and you have it ironed out to perfection, you’re not going to get links one right after another all at once.

Natural link building is generally done over time, and at a scale that looks more like a random magnet, rather than all at once like a stacked tower.

If you think about link building in this manner, you shouldn’t have any trouble creating a natural framework for your links that Google will love and will continue to achieve sustainable results for your site over time.

White Hat vs. Black Hat vs. Grey Hat Link Building

White hat link building is link building that complies with Google’s guidelines.

Black hat link building is link building that violates the googles’ guidelines and can get your site penalized or de-indexed from google search results.

Grey hat link building is a term sometimes used to describe link building strategies wherein someone tries to find loopholes in Google’s guidelines. These loopholes can be exploited to link build without explicitly violating Google’s guidelines.

You want to be careful when you’re link building, because there are many different forms of link building that can be done ethically or unethically (depending on your definition).

However, you also want to review Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to ensure that you are not building links that are out of compliance with them.

While sometimes you may see fast initial results, if you’re constantly violating their guidelines, you will likely find yourself with an algorithmic or manual penalty.

Toxic Links and Why You Need to be Careful

Toxic links are links that violate Google’s guidelines, and that cause you to be penalized, whether algorithmically or manually.

They are links that will get you into trouble.

It’s important to realize that toxic links will have a negative impact on your rankings and traffic.

Building toxic links instead of quality links could have serious consequences as a result.

While it may seem easy and not quite as challenging, building toxic links could get your site into serious trouble more often than not.

In fact, if you are the unlucky victim of any type of penalty, it’s possible that it could take months or years to recover from the impact of toxic links.

The most successful link building strategies work by focusing on sustainable results, rather than quick and dirty results.

You must use good link building tactics that will stand the test of time, and that won’t cause your site to fall under a penalty.

The following link building strategies are considered toxic and should be avoided:

Link Farms: Link building by posting to or buying links from websites that offer many different webpages. The main purpose of a link farm is to increase the number of backlinks pointing to your website, with the hope of increasing search engine rankings. The problem with link farms is that they are always low-quality, and seldom relevant to your page.

Link Directories: Link building by submitting your site to a link directory. The problem with this is that you’ll only get links from the pages on which you submitted, and these are usually low-quality pages of their own.

Paid Links: You should avoid link building strategies that require you to pay for them. Google has said over and over again “do not pay for links.” Doing so can lead to a penalty.

Exact Match Anchor Text Links: Link building strategies which require you to link your website using anchor text that matches the words in the URL. The problem with this is that if a new page or product has been released, then all of these links will have to be updated again before they can work properly.

Link Bait: Link bait includes articles on your own site constructed for the sole reason of building links. The problem with link bait is that it is usually lower-quality content and works to create an environment of too much of a link velocity – think lower quality, irrelevant links.

Link Wheels: This technique was made popular by the link building extraordinaire Eric Ward. However, it is now considered obsolete and something that could tank your rankings in the process. It was, once upon a time, a circular approach to acquiring links between high PR sites of various types that also link to your website. Many SEO providers tend to try out web 2.0 tiered link wheels with varying degrees of success. However, unless you know what you’re doing, and you are extremely experienced, you can still get on Google’s bad side. This is why we don’t recommend link wheels unless you have either 1. done this before, or 2. have someone who can do this for you who is familiar with every single step of the process.

Guest Blogging: Link building strategy which requires you to blog at another website or company’s domain, with content usually related to their business. This is one of the last few remaining loopholes SEO professionals had in Google’s guidelines, but is quickly becoming obsolete as well. Google’s John Mueller has said on many occasions that guest blogging is spammy, and not to take advantage of it.

While there are SEO professionals who are experiencing great results through guest blogging, if you want to remain competitive, we don’t suggest using this technique as it could become a significantly toxic one in the future.

Private Blog Networks: Private Blog Networks, or PBNs, are essentially a collection of websites created by the owner of one site. These other sites are used primarily for adding links to other sites. They are also generated from expired domains, which can then be repurposed with rewritten content.

There are some SEO professionals who would argue that truly private PBNs are never fully discoverable by Google. The problem is that experienced SEOs can spot many of these PBNs, quite easily as a matter of fact. If experienced SEOs can spot many of them so easily, imagine what Google could do with automated internal programs, and the ability to see your Gmail accounts!

Either way, PBNs are considered unnatural and toxic links. As such, Google continues to pursue and close down these PBNs, especially the paid ones. In fact, they would take down paid PBNs quite publicly in the past, oftentimes naming the networks themselves. The penalties for participating in such PBNs are likely to be severe.

This is not the be-all, end-all list of bad links, but should get you well acquainted so that you’re not building these types of links in the future.

Intermediate Link Building Strategies

In order to get links you need to know how link building works. This section will review different link building strategies and how they work in terms of SEO, social media, and outreach.

Link Building With Quick-Wins

There is a relatively common misconception that all link building is comprehensively challenging, and needs significant resources to see results. This is true in a majority of cases, but there are ways that you can find quick-win opportunities that will help you see results faster.

For example, you can go after low-hanging fruit. These are common links that just about everyone in your particular niche will obtain.

There is one problem with a link building strategy that depends on quick wins: you need to have a realistic mindset when starting out doing this. There are rarely situations where quick-win link building is enough on its own. Most niches are incredibly competitive nowadays, and require robust, comprehensive link building strategies.

Combining low-hanging fruit linking opportunities with more competitive link building is something that will help you more often than not, but you have to make sure that you start out with the right mindset for your niche.

If your niche is not competitive overall, then you may want to focus your efforts on a combination of low-hanging fruit along with some more competitive link building.

However, it’s important to note that quick wins are usually a foundation building activity, rather than a comprehensive strategy on its own.

If you have already obtained the quick win opportunities with your initial links, then you will need to pivot to another, more competitive strategy to see the results you are after.

The goal is to make some aspects of your link building job easier, while also keeping in mind other opportunities to expand it.

Traditional Link Building

Traditional link building relies on manual tactics in order to increase your links. This is probably the best link building you can do. Because it’s manual, you are in full control of the results of your efforts. This is in stark contrast to relying on other individuals like journalists and third parties who may not otherwise place your link on time, or you have to wait for 6 months or more to see that link placed.

It’s important at this juncture to note that, to Google, links are essentially an editorial vote of the quality of your site. Any type of link that’s not editorial in nature is considered spammy or unnatural.

That being said, manual links are usually not bad links, so long as you follow Google’s quality guidelines for link building. Make sure that you take the time to understand any link building tactic that you choose to implement, and that you are well aware of any risks involved.

The other thing you must keep in mind is that anything that’s traditional in nature is easily manipulated by all of your competitors.

If they catch you succeeding with a particular method, there is a high likelihood that everyone and their brother are going to be using the same technique as well in short order.

Link Earning

The absolute, best way to achieve high-quality link building is to always practice link-earning. Link-earning is the process of creating quality content that is of such high quality that people can’t help but link to it.

There are several benefits to using this kind of strategy:

It’s Mostly All-Natural

When you build links in this way, it’s mostly all-natural. This kind of link building lends itself well to gathering editorial links almost like a magnet: the more great content you write, the more you find people who are willing to link to you as an editorial vote.

But, make no mistake, it still requires some promotional activities. You can’t just publish it and forget it. Whether it’s promoting to your social network, or finding ways to get your content out to the right influencers who can link to you in this fashion, your promotional activities need to take place alongside your content writing activities.

You Get to Obtain Links from Industry Influencers

These types of links carry the most value, and are difficult to replicate by your competitors. If you have been in the industry for a while, you have likely forged relationships with industry influencers that are hard to replicate by others.

Using these relationships, you can grab links that your competition cannot. Finding links through your industry influencers is how you can leverage your link building at scale to really get an edge over your competition.

Links Do Not Appear Spammy in Nature

By focusing on a strategy such as this, you can easily scale and achieve higher link velocity without appearing seemingly suspicious or spammy to Google. You also get the opportunity to really build out your link profile randomly, so you can fortify that profile against possible negative SEO attacks.

Creating a strategy that is random, holistic in nature, and scalable allows you to really nail down what works for your niche, and help increase your rankings seemingly on autopilot.

Most Effective Link Building Strategies

Semrush put together an infographic that shows the most effective link building strategies, a survey they put together.

They surveyed approximately 850 SEO professionals who answered the question “what are the most effective link building strategies”?

These are their answers:

In the following order, the most effective link building strategies include:

• Guest Posting
• Replicating Your Competitor’s Backlinks
• Resources and Links List Pages
• Business Directories and Local Citations
• Broken Backlinks
• Adding URL to a post
• Social Media
• Unlinked Mentions
• Public Release and Content Submissions
• Interviews/Product Reviews/Testimonials
• Forum and Blog Comments
• Mentions or Reviews by Opinion Leaders / Bloggers
• Skyscraper Technique
• Reciprocal Links

It’s important to reiterate here that guest posting has been deemed spammy and unnatural by Google themselves.

While we have explained in the past in this post that guest posting is considered spammy, we want to mention this again here in case there is confusion on our recommendation.

We don’t recommend guest blogging at this time, due to Google’s consistent recommendations against doing so.

It could be that they release an algorithm update soon that specifically targets guest blogging. We don’t know for sure, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Link Building Strategies

Many of these link building strategies could be considered as intermediate level.

Let’s take a look at each of these and how they can affect your overall link building results.

Guest Posting

This technique involves finding relevant blogs within your industry, contacting the owner of the blog, and arranging a post where you embed your link in that post.

It can be a hit or miss technique, because it is highly niche-dependent. Some niches are better than others when it comes to how plentiful blogs where you can guest post are.

Replicating Your Competitor’s Backlinks

When you replicate your competitor’s backlink profile, you’re doing research into what links the competitor has in that profile.

This could be effective because you can reverse engineer your competition’s backlinking strategy, and go after most of the same links.

We say most of the same links because nobody can go after all of the same links. Different competitors have different relationships established in the industry.

And some of these links will require special relationships: you have to know someone on the inside in order to even be able to get the link.

Resources and Links List Pages

If you think of resource pages and links list pages, you probably think of those “Alexa” links pages that have hundreds of thousands of links on them.

In this technique, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. Those spammy Alexa pages are the wrong way to do this. They are known as link farms, which are against Google’s webmaster guidelines for links.

Resources and links lists can be done in the right way, they just have to add additional value beyond being an entire page of links.

One way to do this would be to make sure the link itself is actually valuable. If you’re doing the link just for the link, you may have a problem in this area.

If the link is valuable, you shouldn’t have trouble adding value to that area where the link is. Perhaps in the form of a description about the link, what can be found on the link, and other things that can add value.

Business Directories and Local Citations

When it comes to directories and citations, these can benefit local SEO significantly.

There is still value in high-quality business directories along with high-quality citations. What’s the difference between a directory and a citation?

A directory usually results in a link back. A citation is basically a mention of your brand’s physical location.

Both are signals that can help increase your site’s overall local rankings and performance in the local pack.

Broken Backlink Building

This one involves exactly what the name implies: you go around looking for broken links on potential relevant websites, and you write content for the 404 pages that pop up.

Once you write that content, you’re asking the webmaster whether or not you can include the content on their site.

Getting aggressive with this strategy could be a good thing, because it can help you get links and even a mention or a thank you from the brand’s social media account, which can have thousands of followers.

Social Media

Finding influencers on social media to help share your link is a good thing as well. If a link takes off and goes viral, you can find yourself with many thousands of views and several hundred links later.

This is a hit or miss technique unless you’re strong with social media and you know what you’re doing.

Also, the problem with this is not every single niche lends itself well to social media. Some workplaces might not even allow you to be on social media during work hours, which can complicate matters entirely.

Unlinked Mentions

This falls in line with the citations we have mentioned previously. It’s basically the same thing. Unlinked mentions are another signal Google could use to determine your rankings.

Public Release and Content Submissions

Also referred to as press releases. These are news releases that are then picked up by syndication sites. Sometimes, these releases can generate hundreds of links.

When done effectively, you can pretty much put your link building on autopilot as well.

This technique could be abused, though. If you insert exact match anchor text everywhere, this could be considered spammy.

The best way to steer clear of Google’s algorithms on this, use only one naked URL text link at the bottom of the press release.

Interviews/Product Reviews/Testimonials

These are good link building techniques, but your mileage may vary depending on your niche. Some niches just may not lend themselves well to link building via interviews, product reviews, or testimonials.

The techniques do depend on having a high degree of influencers in your niche, and people who are willing to share their techniques and results.

This is not something that is common to all industries.
For example, in the business of law, attorneys are generally hesitant to link out to someone who may be a competitor, so linking opportunities in this vein could be limited.

It’s important to note here that link exchanges, or “Link to me, and I’ll link to you” are prohibited by Google’s guidelines when done excessively.

If they make up the entirety of your link profile, you could eventually wind up with a penalty or other algorithmic devaluation.

Forum and Blog Comments

When you do forum and blog comments at random and en masse`, you run the risk of also diluting the value and quality of your link profile. Imagine this – what would Google find more valuable:

A link profile with many, many links from forums with spammy text.
—or—
A link profile with a few links from high-quality blogs and forum discussions.

Number two would still be better, but you don’t want it to be the entirety of your link profile.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do forum links and blog comments. The right way will help you, while the wrong way—in most cases will be ignored by Google—but doing things over and over again in a spammy way could get you penalized.

Mentions or Reviews by Opinion Leaders/Bloggers

These can drive heavy traffic and rankings, assuming that your link is also included. If you’re part of a niche that has a significant quantity of opinion leaders and bloggers, that’s even better.

Take advantage of it.

Use your social media standing to find a way to get links from these top opinion leaders and bloggers in your industry.

Forge relationships with these influencers so you can easily build links with them back to your site.

Skyscraper Technique

This content / link building technique was popularized by Brian Dean of backlinko.com – The Skyscraper Technique.

While the above link goes to the 2.0 version of the Skyscraper technique, you can read more about the original version of this technique here.

Basically—as an oversimplification—this method involves creating 10x or even 20x content. This means that content for a given SERP will be better by 20x when compared to the competition.

Here is how Brian Dean frames the technique: he explains that the goal of skyscraper 1.0 involves backlinks, first and foremost. The goal of skyscraper technique 2.0 is to satisfy the user intent with better, targeted content that’s more optimized for UX signals.

Reciprocal Links

The idea of reciprocal links is basically this: “You link to me, and I’ll link to you.” This is where getting into the excessive link exchanges part of reciprocal links gets some SEO profesionals in trouble.

Some industries have partner programs for basically every website, where every website links to each other within the industry.

While, in theory it sounds like a good idea, it seldom works out in real life.

Usually, what happens is when Google discovers it (and they will) and if they deem it to be excessive, then you could end up with an algorithmic or manual penalty (depending on how bad it is).

This is why you should practice most link building techniques in moderation, and make sure that you have more than one technique as part of your arsenal.

The variety of your techniques will help you in the long run.

How Do You Plan on Building Links?

With the intermediate link building techniques shown here, they can help you achieve some good rankings and traffic initially.

Once you have this initial foundation, you can continue to build on it and work on varying your link profile.

Don’t hesitate to try different techniques to see what works best for you.

It could be that the idea you have in mind could take on an entirely different approach when you finally put it into practice.

How do you plan on improving your link building next?

Image Credits

Image 1: Semrush / June 2021

Anyone familiar with the world of SEO knows about the importance of high-quality backlinks. Whether they’re from forum posts or reputable publications, links are what make Google (and sites’ SERP rankings) tick.

Unfortunately, though, keeping track of a site’s link profile is easier said than done and tends to be more tedious than efficient. Enter Majestic’s Link Graph, announced on December 15, 2020. With its ability to provide SEO practitioners with a birds-eye view of any site’s backlinks as well as in-depth analytics, this new tool can change how you view backlinks for good.

What Is Link Graph?

As Majestic explained in its announcement, Link Graph can be briefly described as a “visual map of the immediate network that surrounds a website or URL.” In other words, any site’s backlink portfolio will be presented as an easy-to-analyze web rather than as a confusing list of URLs:

But Link Graph can do much more than just help users visualize their backlinks with eye-catching graphics. Majestic claims it’s also capable of helping SEO pros:

• discover how close a site is to link networks, a type of link scheme;
• examining individual linking websites and the specific URLs they use;
• view recently deleted links; and
• see which of a competitor’s second- and third-tier links are delivering the most link equity.

To see how, take a look at some more in-depth examples.

Discover Link Network Proximity

In Majestic’s Link Graph, organic, natural links show up as branches extending outward from a central point and ending in a fan-like shape as shown in the image above.

On the other hand, unnatural link networks—also known as link farms—show up as densely tangled clusters of interconnecting links:

Such link networks are bad news because they signal to search engines that the involved sites’ links have been artificially created, not earned. And unfortunately for ethical SEO practitioners, sites which have never been intentionally part of a link network can still be included.

To learn how, let’s say your site is linked to by another site that appears to be legitimate—we’ll call it site B. However, someone involved with site B is attempting to take ranking shortcuts by participating in a link farm.

Consequently, your site is now just a couple links away from the same link network. If your site links back to site B, it may even be viewed as an active participant of the network.

So, Link Graph’s ability to clearly display any link networks your site is close to makes it easy to sever ties with questionable sites and avoid association with unscrupulous schemes.

Examine Individual Sites and URLs

Majestic’s Link Graph tool is perfect for viewing more granular backlink data, too. By simply zooming in on any portion of the graph, you can see exactly which links belong to which sites and how they relate to one another.

Here, a closer look at a link network reveals nearly a dozen specific URLs, all of which link back to the one at the top (in this case, toplinkjes.com):

This feature is useful for determining the legitimacy of any site’s backlinks, as well as zeroing in on the top-linking sites and their details.

View Recently Deleted Links

Link Graph is capable of showing recently removed links in addition to currently existing ones. SEO expert Bill Hartzer provided a real-world example with his test run of the tool—in this graph for expertinstitute.com, the dotted red line represents a recently deleted link, the dotted black line represents a redirect and the solid black lines represent current links:

This function will allow users to see if their website has recently lost any valuable links and from where. If you’ve been manually keeping track of your backlinks in a spreadsheet, then you already know how much time this can save.

Analyze Competitors’ Best Links

In order to determine which sites are trustworthy and which aren’t, Google evaluates pages not just by their individual authority but by the authority of the sites linking to them, as well as the authority of the sites linking to those sites.

This is known as link equity: If a reputable page (page A) links to another page (page B), some of page A’s authority will be passed on to page B. But getting those types of authoritative links is tricky, especially when you don’t know where your competitors are getting theirs.

Luckily, Link Graph makes it a snap to see which of your competitors’ second- and third-tier links are passing on the most link equity. This can be accomplished with a single click of the tier you wish to view. Here, the second tier is selected via the toggles at the bottom left:

From this graph, we can instantly see that the site’s second-tier links from bt.com, github.com and hubspot.com generate the most link equity. So if this were true of one of your competitors, you’d be wise to seek out backlinks from those same sites.

How Much Does Link Graph Cost?

Given its comprehensive set of functions, it’s not surprising that Link Graph isn’t free: In order to access it, you’ll need to purchase one of Majestic’s paid plans.

There are three plans to choose from at the time of writing:

• Lite, priced at $49.99 per month for one user;
• Pro, priced at $99.99 per month for one users; and
• API, priced at $399.99 per month for five users.

No matter which plan you choose, you’ll get full access to Link Graph and its capabilities. And although Majestic doesn’t offer free trials, if you’re a first-time Lite or Pro plan subscriber then you’ll receive a seven-day money-back guarantee.

Link Graph and the Future of Links

Feel like being one of the first SEO practitioners who gets to wave goodbye to headache-inducing backlink spreadsheets and manual link mapping? Want to explore your and your competitors’ link profiles in a beautiful, intuitive and effective way? Then Link Graph might just be the backlink tool for you.

Long story short, if you choose to add Link Graph to your SEO arsenal, your future link building and analysis efforts are bound to get a whole lot easier.

Image credits

Majestic / December 2020

Bill Hartzer / December 2020

]]> https://iloveseo.com/seo/link-building/majestics-new-link-graph-shows-backlinks-in-a-whole-new-light/feed/ 0 https://iloveseo.com/seo/link-building/trusty-link-building-tips-to-boost-traffic-authority-and-rankings/ https://iloveseo.com/seo/link-building/trusty-link-building-tips-to-boost-traffic-authority-and-rankings/#respond Mon, 26 Oct 2020 13:12:24 +0000 https://iloveseo.com/?p=360 Trusty Link Building Tips to Boost Traffic, Authority and Rankings on iloveseo.com by Carrie Powers

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