Gaining ranking for desired keywords from Google and other search engines involves multiple criteria, one of which is undoubtedly backlinks.
In this article, I will explain how to create a beneficial backlink strategy for your site.
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is a link coming to the main or subpage of your website from the main or subpage of another website. This link can be in the form of text or an image.
Backlinks can cause websites to rank higher or lower. In this article, I will talk about the quality of backlinks that will add value to your site.
Steps to Create a Backlink Strategy
Be a Site Worth Linking To
Let's face it, as explained in Google's quality guidelines, gaining links naturally (excluding partnerships) is quite difficult and time-consuming. Therefore, most individuals or institutions usually opt for paid backlink strategies.
So, what is required for a site to gain links naturally, as Google desires?
The answer to this question can fundamentally be summarized under 3 main headings:
- Quality content (informative, problem-solving, guiding, leading to purchase, etc.)
- Site speed
- Mobile compatibility
In other words, before gaining paid backlinks, you need to deserve it. After performing on-site optimizations, you can transition to off-site work.
This approach yields two gains:
- You create a quality site.
- You avoid penalties given by Google to sites that don't deserve backlinks.
Work with Relevant Sites
Pay attention to gaining backlinks from sites or blogs relevant to the topic, information, or product sales you provide.
Particularly, gaining links from sites (authoritative sites) that rank better than yours will be beneficial.
For example, if you have a website selling airplane tickets and you want to rank for searches like 'airplane ticket,' 'cheap airplane ticket,' 'most affordable airplane ticket,' you should initially work with travel blogs.
Gaining a backlink from the related subpage of Yoldaolmak.com, which appears in the search for 'How to buy cheap airplane tickets?' will significantly contribute.
Don't Always Get the Same Type of Backlinks
When purchasing backlinks (paid), an intention reading is actually performed. That is, instead of the likely linkers or institutions giving the link, you perform this process internally.
As you're putting yourself in place of multiple people or institutions, capturing diversity is up to you. Yes, most people give a link from within a text or use sidebar, footer. However, it's beneficial not to forget the minority types of backlinks.
Since our goal is to create a natural backlink building, don't forget to get links from images, videos, comments, and forums to your site.
Capture Keyword Diversity
One of the most common mistakes and reasons for receiving penalties is getting backlinks only with the same keyword.
When acquiring backlinks, don't forget to get links from other side keywords along with the main keyword.
Recommendation: Distribute backlinks with 70% main keyword and 30% side keywords.
Pay Attention to the Nofollow and Dofollow Ratio
The care we show for keyword diversity should also be shown for Nofollow and Dofollow.
In your work with partners, having 80% of the backlinks as Dofollow and 20% as Nofollow will not pose any problems. On the contrary, Nofollow backlinks will be an indication of naturalness.
Spread the Backlink Strategy Over Time
Gaining a large number of backlinks suddenly or in a very short period is a likely cause for penalties.
Determining a time period according to the number of links planned to be gained within the allocated budget will be beneficial.
Work with Quality Sites
What is meant by quality sites? Of course, I'm talking about partners that will have a positive impact.
The point to pay attention to here is more technical data. Applying the following steps to the sites you're considering working with will add value to your strategy:
- Perform Site:example.com Audit: You wouldn't want to get a backlink from a site that has been penalized by Google, right?
- Work with Updated Sites: Stay away from blogs and sites established to provide paid links and that do not add value to visitors.
- What are the Trust Flow / Citation Flow Ratios?: Trust and Citation Flow, data provided by Majestic.com, show the quality of the backlinks coming to a site and the density of quality.
- Look at DA and PA Values: Check the domain and page authorities offered by Moz. Gaining links from sites with values close to or higher than your website's values will be beneficial.
Perform Backlink Competitor Analysis
As in every study, performing competitor analysis while creating a backlink strategy will illuminate the right path for us.
Perform backlink analysis of the top 5 sites in the sector you're trying to place yourself in. Based on these analyses, you can take the right steps by identifying your shortcomings and mistakes.
Tip: You can perform this analysis using tools like Majestic.com, Open Site Explorer, ahrefs, Linkody, and SemRush.
Pay Attention to Backlink Control
Don't spend your time just obtaining backlinks and performing competitor analysis.
There are 2 important points for backlinks:
- They may not always be under your control. That is, your site won't only gain backlinks suitable for your strategy. You may have thousands of backlinks you're unaware of. Most likely, most of these backlinks are of low quality.
- Backlinks don't always create a positive impact. Low-quality backlinks (spam, adult, etc.) can cause you to lose rankings.
For these reasons, regularly check the links coming to your site. After the check, use Google's tool to reject backlinks that are likely to have a negative impact.
Backlink Creation Steps
We can list the steps to create a backlink buildig for gaining ranking and traffic in Google organic search results as follows:
- Perform backlink-focused competitor analysis
- Be a site worth linking to
- Partner with sites relevant to your site
- Don't always get the same type of backlink, capture diversity (text - image, etc.)
- Pay attention to keyword diversity
- Don't overlook the Nofollow & Dofollow ratio
- Spread the backlink network creation over time
- Work with quality and current sites
- Pay attention to backlink control
Conclusion
We have a long to-do list to gain rankings in search engines.
Among these, one of the most important to pay attention to is backlinks. After reading and understanding this content, you can create a healthier and less risky strategy.
No matter how good your backlink strategy is, it won't be sufficient to gain rankings alone. Don't forget to base your site's optimization on adding value to the visitor.