You simply cannot disregard the necessity of developing a sound plan to acquire a healthy link profile as it continues to be one of Google’s top three ranking factors. The truth is that you won’t score highly for competitive keywords and search queries without constructing high-quality links.
But – links are not created equal. In reality, the wrong kind of links can be toxic for your website and have a negative impact on your rankings, which can then affect organic visitors and revenue.
To find new opportunities to build links that will help increase your organic visibility, to spot any problems that might be impeding your site’s performance, and to figure out the best course of action to take to address these, you should regularly analyse your link profile and those of your competitors.
Backlink Analysis
If you don’t currently analyse your link profile on a regular basis, you should start. The more insights you have on both your and your competitors’ link profiles, the better chance you have to leverage this knowledge to improve your strategy and SEO efforts.
Identifying A Link Gap
You can better understand the link gap between you and your main competitors by performing a link analysis. You may determine how well you rank in comparison to others and how challenging it will be to outrank your rivals by evaluating the quality of your own link profile and those of your competitors. This implies that you can create a plan of action to close the link gap and provide you a competitive edge.
You will be operating blindly if you don’t have knowledge of the link profiles of the websites you are competing with. The better your plan may be, the simpler it will be to identify possibilities to develop links that will aid your rankings, the more you will grasp how you compare to your rivals.
Identifying Bad Links and Protecting Your Rankings
Running a link audit is the most efficient way to proactively uncover these issues and areas of concern so you can take action to safeguard your rankings. The wrong type of links (commonly referred to as poor links, toxic links, spammy links, or unnatural links) can impair your site’s organic performance.
You will need to do an analysis to correct the problem and reclaim your lost ranks if you were unfortunate enough to have noticed a negative effect as a result of faulty links.
Earn Backlinks from Quality Sites
Google explicitly states that the greatest approach to get other websites to link to yours is to generate original, pertinent content that can spread naturally throughout the online community. It pays to provide quality content because links are often editorial endorsements made voluntarily, and the more beneficial your content is, the more likely it is that someone else will find it worthwhile for their audience and link to it. But you can make this simpler. High-quality links, like HARO backlinks or PR links from an agency – are those that have been placed editorially as a result of someone selecting to link to your material because they think it is worthwhile.
What do quality links look like
A top-notch link has the capacity to drive referral traffic. There is a fair possibility that the reason you would still desire a link if Google didn’t exist is because you have the chance or the potential to generate targeted referral traffic. Remember that links are mostly used for navigation; therefore, if a link has the potential to bring relevant traffic to your website, it is probably a good one. Few things are more out of the ordinary than linkages between two completely unrelated pieces of text. Quality links come from websites that address a related subject to your own.
What Is a “Toxic” Backlink?
Links that Google views to be an attempt to manipulate your search engine results are prohibited by their Webmaster Guidelines. What specifically are manipulative links, though? In a very simplified way, those that an SEO has actively placed with the main goal of improving search ranks but which were not editorially placed. Toxic backlinks frequently exhibit indicators of poor quality or an effort to influence results, including:
- originating from websites created solely for the purpose of linking out
- originating from websites and materials that are not topically related
- originating from websites that Google hasn’t indexed
- being pushed into blog comments
- being obscured in the website footer
- existing on every page on a website
How Can Toxic Backlinks Affect Your Organic Performance and Search Rankings?
In the past, manipulative links were frequently used and had a significant effect on a website’s ranks. The recent evolution of Google’s algorithms and the company’s efforts to combat web spam, which includes artificial links, have been well publicised.
Spam Comments on Blogs and Forums
Comment spam is another traditional link-building strategy that is connected to harmful connections. These comments are frequently automated utilising software that floods blogs with tonnes of pointless comments (again, often using exact match anchor text). The objective is to simply attempt and place as many links as you can in comments, with the hope that some will go through without moderation.
As you can see there’s a lot that goes into building a healthy link profile, from choosing the right keywords and creating content to getting your links from the right places. But the effort is certainly rewarded when you get the balance right. At Niche Inbound, we’re specialists in this field and we can help you build an effective link building strategy that’s tailored around your industry and your business goals – get in touch with us today to learn more.