Backlinks are incoming links from other websites that link to your website. They are vital to improving your website’s performance and organic ranking on search engines. Websites with backlinks attract search engine bots or crawlers to ‘crawl’ your site effectively increasing your website’s indexing on search engines.
Websites with a lot of credible backlinks rank better on Google as it serves as a verification or recommendation of your page. Credible backlinks are those that are relevant to your context and come from websites that are already ranking well or authority websites.
How To Get Backlinks
1. Write in depth articles that teach or inform
The easiest way to get people to link back to your page is to give them articles that are interesting, relevant and shareable! People love to share smart ideas or useful tips. Think of producing tutorial-type of articles with in depth guidance and how-to’s as these are more likely to get people excited and shared widely. When you write articles, remember to share the links on your own social media pages. An article that stays on your blog or website won’t do much good for your backlinking strategy!
2. Leave thoughtful comments
Leave thoughtful and value-added comments on other websites, videos, social media platforms, groups or blogs that have similar topics or content. This gets you backlinks and helps to draw more traffic to your website and improve your online visibility.
3. Give testimonials
Just as leaving comments leave a trail back to your website, giving testimonials for products and services that you use to support your business can also improve your online presence. Most sites would even add your website link to prove authenticity. If you’ve given someone a testimonial, ensure that your website link is also added when they feature your testimonial on their website. Most website owners don’t know this tip helps with backlinking (and it’s also good for their online visibility) so gently nudge them to include your website link.
4. Get blogger reviews
Look up bloggers or social media influencers who specialise in your niche and ask if they would like to review your products. They would automatically include a link to your website if they do say yes and write a review on their blogs or websites. If you are not sure where to find bloggers, search for them on Facebook. Most social media influencers and bloggers have their own private groups on social media.
5. Reclaim your link
Have you come across mentions of your site, products or services on a page but without a link back to your website? Send them a polite email asking for the link to be added. (How do you track mentions of your brand? Use Google Alerts and here’s a great how-to Google Alert article.)
What NOT To Do for Backlinks
What NOT To Do for Backlinks- Buying backlinks are in violation of Google’s guidelines so be sure to stay clear of sites that ask you to pay for backlinks. Engage in genuine backlinking as search engines today are clever enough to detect ‘fake’ backlinks from paid services. Your website might end up getting penalised!
- Link exchange is another no-no as this reduces credibility and merit of your website. You must qualify websites before you add their links to your own website. You don’t want your website to be “brought down” by a low-quality website link!
- Don’t spam other people’s blogs with lots of comments while sneakily adding your website link in every other sentence of your comment. This also creates a negative perception of your business when others come across your comments.
This article is contributed by Krista Goon of Redbox Studio, a web design and marketing firm in Penang. Redbox Studio’s speciality is in creating websites with marketing strategy to help business owners increase their online visibility, credibility and profitability.
