It is unlikely you will find a website high on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) for which the person or team responsible for that placement has not done the necessary competitive research. Effective research requires that you know the sites to target, define their value, and then formulate an inbound linking strategy.
For those new to the term: Backlinks are inbound link building (websites that link to your site) gained it’s prominence in the realm of SEO when Google started using PageRank as part of its algorithm to determine which pages ranked highly in the natural search results (as opposed to paid results). Google PageRank, in part, measures a site’s importance based upon the quantity and quality of backlinks pointed to a given site.
When looking at backlink prospecting first we must understand what is meant by the term “link popularity”. Link popularity is a measure of the quality and quantity of links pointing to a Web page by the search engines. Many variables define the link popularity of a website, but the primary consideration is how its external sites are trusted by the search engines which is generally defined by the relevance and environment of those links. And what gets trust? Well, chiefly the quality/relevance of the page content.
Factors to Keep in Mind
- The best backlinks come from trusted, authoritative websites
- The links should include your target keyword in the link’s anchor text
- The site and page linking to you needs to be topically related to your site
- The best link is from a domain that hasn’t linked to you before
- The link is a “dofollow” link. You can learn more here.
Anchor text is the actual text that is hyperlinked to your website. For example, a link from a website with the anchor text “ecurtisdesigns” is not as valuable in terms of search engine rankings as a link with the anchor text “Sacramento website design agency”. It’s important to note that the over use of keywords in anchor text may lower one’s ranking since it can be viewed as “spammy”. In fact, Google Penguin was specifically created to check for link schemes and keyword stuffing.
How to Acquire Quality Backlinks
Create linkable assets: If you want people to link to you, you need something on your site worth linking to. A linkable asset could be a blog post, a video, free software, a quiz or survey, resource content, infographics, an e-book, or anything else of value to others. No link was ever built without leveraging one of your assets — typically creative and content assets. For example, if your are an “expert” and are willing to create content for an industry blog, or have taken the time to build relationships through social media you will be considered a link inventory asset — something you can leverage to acquire a backlink.
Locate your competitor’s links: When you search a competitor’s site by typing in their business name you’ll find the sites that link to them. From this you find the pages, blog posts, directories, podcasts, social pages, and other sources that has linked to them. These are the best places to start your link building strategy. There are also a variety of quality link building tools, for which Ahrefs and Moz Link Explorer are a couple the best, though both are a bit on the pricey side. With a bit of searching you’ll find a lot of link building advice online, many which include guides on what to say when you email a request for a link.
Assign value: Search engines apply very sophisticated algorithms when determining link quality. You can effectively get a handle on this by assigning and understanding some of the fundamental considerations. For example, how relevant is the site — are there keywords in the title, body text or heading tags? What sort of value can this site provide — does it have high visitor traffic, established Page Rank? These metrics and others tell us much about the “value” a site’s link will provide our own.
Focus on the optimal opportunities: Note the most relevant results, the number of total results, and identify those URLs which repeatedly appear within the first page of search results. This will provide a meaningful view into the optimal opportunities for building links.
Be professional: It is necessary to have the right contact information on hand. Data collected should begin with the targeted page from which you desire to obtain a link and the contact’s name and email address. After contact has been made, note the date of contact, follow-up date, information on whether the link was ever placed (and if so, where), the date of the link placement, the URL to which the link arrives (on your website) and the anchor text used. When requesting links via email, note the subject line used, opening line and any offers you made to help acquire the link. This will help determine the most effective approaches.
In the end, only by understanding the competition, assigning value to the sites and pages you find, focusing on the optimal categories and reaching out directly to those that matter most will ensure that your SEO efforts are used wisely. And finally, now that you know more, you can check your SERP rating at https://whatsmyserp.com/serp-check
