How do we get Backlinks?
- Thread starter 4leggedtrends
- Start date
No you don't. Just make sure your content is relevent, and promote your site within your niche community.
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Are you sure guys? Because every book, article, and guide I've ever read about SEO says you do.
Paul.
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Probably because they sell backlinking services.
Times have changed. Google puts far more emphasis on the site content and authority than it does on links.
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It depends. If you're ranking for local searches and services, or for a relatively long tail and not very competitive search terms it's very different. Then the quality of the copy/content, technical SEO setup, and relevance to the search term locally mean you can rank well purely based on content.
If there's any serious level of competition, or you need to rank regionally or nationally for a competitive search term, then content quality alone won't cut it. It needs to be great to have any change of ranking, but you'll be up against aged sites with lots of quality backlinks and you'll need them too to have any chance of ranking well.
We are not talking about the rubbish you get on Fiver. This is well written content, on relevant websites with real traffic and customers, that link back to you in a relevant way to your brand/services etc, without looking like spam or sponsored content.
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Indeed. That's one reason we pay to be on this forum - high quality backlinks in our signature and posts.That’s what we’ve read and looked into. Our seo is almost 100% but need these backlinks- according to google
Paul.
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No, your SEO is very poor. Not sure who has been helping you but they have missed almost all the key ranking signals.That’s what we’ve read and looked into. Our seo is almost 100% but need these backlinks- according to google
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Hmm we might cancel our membership then.
Just kidding, Google still gives them weight.
Paul.
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Backlinks on relevent sites are great for driving traffic to your site, but not via SEO.
But most of what Sanjay from Calcutta will sell you are blackhat links and are worthless which is probably why Google gives backlinks almost no weight these days.
In a sense, they are important for SEO but indirectly. If the backlink is within a well written relevant article, searchers will find the article and go to your site from it. The best articles for me are independent product reviews on sites of interest to my customer base.
But most of what Sanjay from Calcutta will sell you are blackhat links and are worthless which is probably why Google gives backlinks almost no weight these days.
In a sense, they are important for SEO but indirectly. If the backlink is within a well written relevant article, searchers will find the article and go to your site from it. The best articles for me are independent product reviews on sites of interest to my customer base.
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Isn't Google's entire algorithm based on quality backlinks?
We rank #1 for a lot of competitive OpenCart-related terms, and getting high profile backlinks has been a big part of our strategy.
Paul.
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You do have a lot of relevant content on your site though, and it's around for a while. AFAIK, it's not entirely discounted but the weighting has dropped. I think what Google are looking for are "natural" backlinks, not paid-for ones or mutual exchange backlinks. I imagine at lot of yours are natural.
We still see it - on other forums where I'm a mod, we get a lot of spam with people posting spam backlinks, even though all the posts are nofollow.
The consensus I've seen from people who actually do this is that internal linking is much more important than backlinks.
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No.
And hasn’t been so for years.
The links that have value are independent citations, referrals and reviews
And as @japancool says, internal linking has a massive effect on ranking.
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Oh yes of course, we wouldn't recommend paying for links from link farms, or link exchanges etc.
But there are places where you can legitimately put a backlink like forums, directories, even social media posts are indexed sometimes depending on their settings.
If your company is big/important enough you can even get links from wikipedia, but they generally remove them if they don't think your company is notable.
Paul.
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But far less so than your content. It’s your content that is important and is what gets you ranked. The citation gives authority to your content.
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All of which are a complete waste of time and effort. Unless they bring traffic to your site. The SEO value is negligible.
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So you're saying that Google is now able to judge the importance of a site based on the value of its content pretty much exclusively and ignores links from high value sites?
That goes against everything I've ever learnt about SEO.
That being the case, can you back up these claims with examples of competitive keywords you've ranked without any inbound links?
Paul.
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Many of my products are 1st page rankers without inbound links. Admittedly (as you know), I'm in a very niche market, so it's a lot easier to rank them.
The site in general also ranks in the top 5 or so for the word "gunpla", which is the generic term for the product range.
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Could that be due to lack of competition then perhaps?
I'm not trying to be argumentative with young @fisicx, just this goes against everything I've ever learnt about SEO.
I'll be the first to admit I'm not an SEO expert, just that I've been in this industry about 20 years and have always kept an eye on SEO, with development being my primary focus.
Paul.
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Possibly, although there are a lot more of us around these days. There are also the international companies based in the US and Japan to compete with.
I've noticed that the sites above me all run Google Shopping campaigns, not sure if that has an effect.
All these Johnny-come-latelies trying to steal a piece of my pie *mutter mutter mutter*
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A long time ago Google only looked at links, the original page rank (the whole logic behaved like an academic review & saw all links purely as citations), it could not really judge content, but this led to people ranking rubbish with hundreds of spammy links.
Google then moved to a more advanced page rank, follow/nofollow etc and layered on other factors. Some of these are fully deprecated; but page rank is still a thing, though not really for local searches! Then Google got better at keywords, but not intent, so people started using exact match domains (EMDs). Then Penguin came along and almost killed off link spam totally.
Google then got better at the relevance of links and longer tail searches. At this point they introduced EMD penalties for spammy EMD sites. They were still poor at semantic and intent for searches, but rankbrain and AI started to change this. At that point someone in Google said that links are dead... later they said; actually links are still a factor.
Google then started adding https, speed, UX, mobile friendliness into the mix, location of searcher, business, websites etc, and talking about EEAT (EAAT is a guideline, not a ranking factor).
The Yandex ranking algorithm was leaked online in 2023 and there were nearly 700 hundred ranking factors, many driven by AI and forks in code. Google is rumoured to be much more advanced and may have 2,000+ AI driven factors.
Google can very well determine the quality of content on page, now including images, video JS etc. It still takes a lot of ranking signals from links; both internal and external, especially early on when a new page goes up or for competitive terms.
TLDR - A potted history; this is one of the better articles on how we think the Google ranking algorithms and metrics work, but very few people know for sure: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/top-ranking-factors/
However, backlinks are not as important as they once used to be, but they are important, definitely not ignored, and page rank is still passed as a signal in follow links from one site to another. We work with clients in competitive niches, where Google is very picky about quality; e.g. finance, and have seen this in action.
We've created very high quality content, but it's never ranked really well (not top 3 or 5 of page 1) until we've got high quality relevant links. As these have built we've outranked bigger budget competitors. One of our clients stopped this, and despite the industry content not really changing, their rankings have slid as the best competitors continued their efforts with link building.
In summary - link building - it depends on what you are trying to rank for, and whether it's a local search or not. Research and analysis is needed to determine this.
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I'm guessing it varies a lot sector-by-sector. Mine is very niche, so backlinks don't seem to matter quite so much. I have very few incoming quality backlinks, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference (compared to a previous version of the site that had a lot).
One of our best drivers of traffic is a reddit link for a service that we don't (and have never) offered!
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This from Search Engine Journal
Patrick Stox tweeted about what he heard at the search conference:
What Did Gary Illyes Say About Links In 2024?
At a recent search conference in Bulgaria, Google’s Gary Illyes made a comment about how Google doesn’t really need that many links and how Google has made links less important.Patrick Stox tweeted about what he heard at the search conference:
Google’s Gary Illyes tweeted a confirmation of that statement:
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Not disappeared just been busy.
Most sites can rank without link building. If you are local or niche then the relevance of your content to the search is sufficient. Where there is more competition then Google looks for authority. This comes from citations and referrals. It's other people linking to your site. It's not links you create. This is a decent summary of the general concepts:
www.google.com
Another really good source of information about how Google ranks pages are the quality rater's guidelines.
Links can help ranking but the relevance and authority of the content comes first.
But as you move into more competitive keywords links may have more importance because your competitors have content that is a good as yours so Google needs a differentiator. Which means more referrals and citations from relevant (it's that word again), trustworthy and authoritative sites.
There is no single source of information about ranking signals. It's an aggreagate of many documents Google has published over the years. It may be @antropy that your links have help your site in a competitive area but it's the content that is the primary driver.
Most sites can rank without link building. If you are local or niche then the relevance of your content to the search is sufficient. Where there is more competition then Google looks for authority. This comes from citations and referrals. It's other people linking to your site. It's not links you create. This is a decent summary of the general concepts:
Ranking results – How Google Search works
With the vast amount of information available, finding what you need would be nearly impossible without some help sorting through it. Google’s ranking systems are designed to do just that: sort through hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in our Search index to present the most...
www.google.com
Another really good source of information about how Google ranks pages are the quality rater's guidelines.
Links can help ranking but the relevance and authority of the content comes first.
But as you move into more competitive keywords links may have more importance because your competitors have content that is a good as yours so Google needs a differentiator. Which means more referrals and citations from relevant (it's that word again), trustworthy and authoritative sites.
There is no single source of information about ranking signals. It's an aggreagate of many documents Google has published over the years. It may be @antropy that your links have help your site in a competitive area but it's the content that is the primary driver.
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Which brings us back to @4leggedtrends - your site has almost no indexable content. Everything is hidden behind the paywall. Which means Google will struggle rank you for your chosen keywords.
Not sure what GA has to do with ranking. Just because a report is green doesn't mean everything is OK. It usually just means there are no technical errors.Oh no! I hope not - I have been shown the google analytics- they look all in the green? What bits have been missed!?? I’m a bit concerned now
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Not just backlinks, relevant niche edits or editorial links,That’s what we’ve read and looked into. Our seo is almost 100% but need these backlinks- according to google
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I'm glad you now admit that inbound links do matter
I was never talking about low quality link-building services.
Paul.
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No, they may matter for some websites. They are not needed for most. You can rank a site for all sort of competitive keywords without backlinks. If you had taken @Tin’s course he explains how.
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Examples of what?
My point in this thread was to point out that @4leggedtrends doesn’t need backlinks. If they fixed the site ranking would ensue. Focusing on backlinks is the wrong way to do SEO. Start with the site and then solicit referrals and citations if needed.
My point in this thread was to point out that @4leggedtrends doesn’t need backlinks. If they fixed the site ranking would ensue. Focusing on backlinks is the wrong way to do SEO. Start with the site and then solicit referrals and citations if needed.
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Creating backlinks is an effective way to gain visibility on search engines. Also, links from other domains to your domain are indirect signals to search engines for authoritative and recommended content.
Creating backlinks for your website is recommended, but the OP's question is How?
Our members are saying you need valuable content to rank on Google. But, Valuable content + backlinks, is the most recommended way to acquire a good position on Google.
@4leggedtrends The simple answer to your question is;
Look for online publications, forums, or influencer blogs in your niche market. Reach out to them and offer guest posts with valuable insights for their audience. Ensure your guest post provides a clear call to action and don't forget to add a backlink to your website.
Creating backlinks for your website is recommended, but the OP's question is How?
Our members are saying you need valuable content to rank on Google. But, Valuable content + backlinks, is the most recommended way to acquire a good position on Google.
@4leggedtrends The simple answer to your question is;
Look for online publications, forums, or influencer blogs in your niche market. Reach out to them and offer guest posts with valuable insights for their audience. Ensure your guest post provides a clear call to action and don't forget to add a backlink to your website.
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