How do we get Backlinks?
- Thread starter 4leggedtrends
- Start date
Oh ... you're talking about link juice!
Most of the articles you'll find about link juice were written in 2014 ..... which is where they belong.
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Ah - the old backlinks question. The one where there's no 'correct' answer but plenty of incorrect ones. The question where @fisicx and @antropy can hold opposing views but both be right, depending on circumstances.
The value of backlinks comes up on UKBF a lot. Often because a member wants a quick and easy way to rank their website and have read, or been sold on the idea, that backlinks is the way to do it. So you get suggestions like article directories, guest blogging, PR releases etc that were discounted years ago.
Both John Mueller and Gary Illyes of Google are quoted as saying that links don't even come in the top three factors of the ranking algorithms. Neither said that links don't count at all, or can't be important in the right circumstances, with the key considerations being quality and relevance.
For example, if my cosmology website publishes a research article that is referred to and linked to from the publication 'Nature' that's a really strong signal. If the same article is linked to from a recipe site - less so. If the same article is published on my jewellery site and linked to from the recipe site - even less so, possibly of no value at all. Horses for courses.
And to @4leggedtrends ...
1. Sorry, but far from your site being "100% SEO" it doesn't even cover the basics.
2. Get it redesigned - it's shockingly bad.
3. Although not personally a doggy-lover, I suspect there's lots of opportunity to include content of interest to other dog owners/websites and (being a niche market) might get you some easy and relevant links. Off the top of the head.....
The value of backlinks comes up on UKBF a lot. Often because a member wants a quick and easy way to rank their website and have read, or been sold on the idea, that backlinks is the way to do it. So you get suggestions like article directories, guest blogging, PR releases etc that were discounted years ago.
Both John Mueller and Gary Illyes of Google are quoted as saying that links don't even come in the top three factors of the ranking algorithms. Neither said that links don't count at all, or can't be important in the right circumstances, with the key considerations being quality and relevance.
For example, if my cosmology website publishes a research article that is referred to and linked to from the publication 'Nature' that's a really strong signal. If the same article is linked to from a recipe site - less so. If the same article is published on my jewellery site and linked to from the recipe site - even less so, possibly of no value at all. Horses for courses.
And to @4leggedtrends ...
1. Sorry, but far from your site being "100% SEO" it doesn't even cover the basics.
2. Get it redesigned - it's shockingly bad.
3. Although not personally a doggy-lover, I suspect there's lots of opportunity to include content of interest to other dog owners/websites and (being a niche market) might get you some easy and relevant links. Off the top of the head.....
- Inside the mind of a judge (show judge)
- An interview with (dog-owner)
- Report on (dog show)
- 10 top tips for preparing your dog
- And so on
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I think the term 'natural backlink profile' gets confused by people who think that creating a relevant post with a link, on a site with good serp position is 'natural'. It isn't. And Google knows it isn't.
The reason Google knows it isn't (for reasoning purposes only):
Why would The Kennel Club (#1 for the search term 'dog shows') and obvious experts in the niche, which follows the EEAT quality guidelines, link out to a site which doesn't rank and doesn't know what Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are? That's not natural and would be ignored.
It's far more 'natural' if one of the regular contributors on The Kennel Club, was writing an article about 'Finding the right dog for you' and found an up to date site or article which listed the benefits of various breeds for different demographics with the authority of an expert .... and linked out to that site or article for further reading. That is 'natural'.
Write creative articles using the EEAT guidelines, focusing your titles & content on keyword researched, long-tail search terms .... and if you are relevant, you will be found and you will be linked to.
But don't stop there. Keep writing articles which are relevant to the same topic and link them. The more expert articles you write, the better the SEO benefit.
Don't go looking for backlinks, let them come to you.
The reason Google knows it isn't (for reasoning purposes only):
Why would The Kennel Club (#1 for the search term 'dog shows') and obvious experts in the niche, which follows the EEAT quality guidelines, link out to a site which doesn't rank and doesn't know what Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are? That's not natural and would be ignored.
It's far more 'natural' if one of the regular contributors on The Kennel Club, was writing an article about 'Finding the right dog for you' and found an up to date site or article which listed the benefits of various breeds for different demographics with the authority of an expert .... and linked out to that site or article for further reading. That is 'natural'.
Write creative articles using the EEAT guidelines, focusing your titles & content on keyword researched, long-tail search terms .... and if you are relevant, you will be found and you will be linked to.
But don't stop there. Keep writing articles which are relevant to the same topic and link them. The more expert articles you write, the better the SEO benefit.
Don't go looking for backlinks, let them come to you.
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As I said above: "examples of competitive keywords you've ranked without any inbound links?"
Paul.
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Can't do that because every site generates inbound links. Good sites will generate valuable links (I know mine has).
If you feel your link building has worked to your benefit that's great. But you may well have found the site ranks without linkbuilding. That's the only point I've been trying to make.
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That's my point. I don’t. Same as most businesses.
We aren’t ever going to agree on this topic.
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In that case you can show me an example of a site you've ranked for a competitive keyword?
Paul.
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No. Sorry Paul but this thread has got way off topic and it would serve no purpose for me to start dropping links of random sites. You would check the inbound links, see there are any number of them and then suggests it’s the links that ranked the site. As I and others have said, an authoritative site will generate links without any link building activities. These links may have value and increase the authority. They may not. It doesn’t prove anything one way or the other. You will never know exactly why one site ranks and another doesn’t.
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It hasn't at all, we're exactly on topic. You just don't like that you made a controversial statement and I'm not asking you to back it up and you can't.
Anyway, if unsolicited backlinks help, then do you accept that the right, high quality, solicited backlinks would also help?
And if you do then you must accept that link building, if high quality, is worth doing?
Paul.
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They may help. They may not.
My statement came from Google. They have said on many occasions that most links have no value. More recently they have said referrals and citations from authoritative sites add support to your site. The difference is subtle but very clear. It’s not the links you build that add value. It’s the links other people create that give value.
Which means if a data centre states antropy is a great company to host a website or a major UK brand endorses your hosting service then those links may increase your authority of your site itself is worthy of such praise.
If however the data centre just lists antropy as one of their customers then the link has almost zero value despite the authority of the data centre.
The site at the opening of this statement is very poorly optimised. Any links they generate will have no value because the authority of the target site is low.
To summarise: you first need an authoritative and trustworthy site that adds value. Inbound links can endorse the authority.
But most sites these day will rank without linkbuilding. Google has been working towards this goal for many years.
My statement came from Google. They have said on many occasions that most links have no value. More recently they have said referrals and citations from authoritative sites add support to your site. The difference is subtle but very clear. It’s not the links you build that add value. It’s the links other people create that give value.
Which means if a data centre states antropy is a great company to host a website or a major UK brand endorses your hosting service then those links may increase your authority of your site itself is worthy of such praise.
If however the data centre just lists antropy as one of their customers then the link has almost zero value despite the authority of the data centre.
The site at the opening of this statement is very poorly optimised. Any links they generate will have no value because the authority of the target site is low.
To summarise: you first need an authoritative and trustworthy site that adds value. Inbound links can endorse the authority.
But most sites these day will rank without linkbuilding. Google has been working towards this goal for many years.
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Which is what I said right at the beginning.
It’s all covered in the quality rates guidelines published by Google.
Ranking comes from your site. If you get the right endorsements your ranking can improve. It’s not the link itself that gives you the boost, it’s the endorsement.
Your site site first needs to be worthy of the rank you hope to achieve.
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It begins with the content of the page and its authority within the whole site. The relevance of source and target is important as is the reason for the link to exist.
It’s not the link itself that matters, more the reason for the link and its relevance to the target page.
Google’s quality raters guidelines are well worth the read. All 100+ pages.
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Hi @4leggedtrends - I don't/wouldn't normally bother responding to threads like these and don't come in here much in general, but some of this info in this thread is BS because you need links.
As mentioned, good content that meets user intent and is interlinked properly is a great start, but it can only get you so far.
If you want to rank in the top 3 for anything competitive - links win and always will.
However, there are some points I'd like to cover.
Firstly, anyone drinking from the google PR fire-hydrant needs to give themselves a slap - they've been proven to spout the very opposite of what's actually working over and over. EEAT for example is complete nonsense.
For example, it's been super easy to make really good money with parasite SEO. And in case you don't know what that is, it's using the power of an established domain such as the Telegraph, who I've worked with recently, to promote an affiliate offer.
In nearly every instance, the page I buy that has an affiliate offer in it will sit in the top spots within a week, purely because it's on a powerful domain.
Where does it get that power from? You guessed it, backlinks.
Google trusts it and it has power from years of link building.
You can pick any number of established sites like CNET etc and you'll find them ranking for search terms way outside their wheelhouse.
As we speak google is rolling out the 'site reputation abuse' update that is targeting this type of thing - where it'll stop, I've no idea, but the point is, powerful sites = rankings.
Secondly, google DOES NOT READ IN THE WAY everyone thinks they do. They're still calculating everything using maths. They aren't reading like we do - they can't, and even if they could, it'd cost them too much money.
You absolutely should optimise your content - InLinks and Clearscope are hands down the best tools here - especially in combination, but as mentioned, that will only get you so far in competitive niches.
Thirdly, proper schema is a must. I don't mean the crap that Yoast churns out, but researched, detailed and hand written schema.
I implement this on all key pages. It's not quick and easy, but it works, especially in conjunction with the right content and links.
Fourthly, links (obviously). I'm purposely leaving this till last because they're just as important as they've always been until you get to the authority site stage of a sites life - which in 99.8% of cases is never.
If you don't have links in a competitive niche, you'll either never rank anywhere near page 1 or be a sitting duck for sites that do build links.
Just be careful with anchor text. If you have a weak site and use exact match you'll eventually get slapped (unless you're lucky).
Tiered link building is also key - not just a couple of links pointing to your guest posts, but 4 or 5 tiers of sheer, unadulterated authority - anyone who tells you this doesn't work has either never done it or doesn't know how to do it properly.
This is by far the best thing the majority of site owners can do.
Google DOES look at the text surrounding your anchor text and the anchor text of the tiers pointing to your guest post and will understand and rank you for those search terms/synonyms.
And for reference @4leggedtrends so you're clear - I am a link builder.
I started off in eCom (still am, in some of the most competitive niches), was a beta tester for @Tin and his course for around a year back around 2013, and now after 11+ years focus 80% of my time on link building, both as a service and for my non-public sites.
I (and a number of affiliate marketers) test everything, and links and schema are the most misunderstood and underutilised part of SEO.
Yes, there are some shocking services our there that focus on noddy metrics like DR and referring domains etc - No, I'm not trying to sell you my service.
As mentioned, good content that meets user intent and is interlinked properly is a great start, but it can only get you so far.
If you want to rank in the top 3 for anything competitive - links win and always will.
However, there are some points I'd like to cover.
Firstly, anyone drinking from the google PR fire-hydrant needs to give themselves a slap - they've been proven to spout the very opposite of what's actually working over and over. EEAT for example is complete nonsense.
For example, it's been super easy to make really good money with parasite SEO. And in case you don't know what that is, it's using the power of an established domain such as the Telegraph, who I've worked with recently, to promote an affiliate offer.
In nearly every instance, the page I buy that has an affiliate offer in it will sit in the top spots within a week, purely because it's on a powerful domain.
Where does it get that power from? You guessed it, backlinks.
Google trusts it and it has power from years of link building.
You can pick any number of established sites like CNET etc and you'll find them ranking for search terms way outside their wheelhouse.
As we speak google is rolling out the 'site reputation abuse' update that is targeting this type of thing - where it'll stop, I've no idea, but the point is, powerful sites = rankings.
Secondly, google DOES NOT READ IN THE WAY everyone thinks they do. They're still calculating everything using maths. They aren't reading like we do - they can't, and even if they could, it'd cost them too much money.
You absolutely should optimise your content - InLinks and Clearscope are hands down the best tools here - especially in combination, but as mentioned, that will only get you so far in competitive niches.
Thirdly, proper schema is a must. I don't mean the crap that Yoast churns out, but researched, detailed and hand written schema.
I implement this on all key pages. It's not quick and easy, but it works, especially in conjunction with the right content and links.
Fourthly, links (obviously). I'm purposely leaving this till last because they're just as important as they've always been until you get to the authority site stage of a sites life - which in 99.8% of cases is never.
If you don't have links in a competitive niche, you'll either never rank anywhere near page 1 or be a sitting duck for sites that do build links.
Just be careful with anchor text. If you have a weak site and use exact match you'll eventually get slapped (unless you're lucky).
Tiered link building is also key - not just a couple of links pointing to your guest posts, but 4 or 5 tiers of sheer, unadulterated authority - anyone who tells you this doesn't work has either never done it or doesn't know how to do it properly.
This is by far the best thing the majority of site owners can do.
Google DOES look at the text surrounding your anchor text and the anchor text of the tiers pointing to your guest post and will understand and rank you for those search terms/synonyms.
And for reference @4leggedtrends so you're clear - I am a link builder.
I started off in eCom (still am, in some of the most competitive niches), was a beta tester for @Tin and his course for around a year back around 2013, and now after 11+ years focus 80% of my time on link building, both as a service and for my non-public sites.
I (and a number of affiliate marketers) test everything, and links and schema are the most misunderstood and underutilised part of SEO.
Yes, there are some shocking services our there that focus on noddy metrics like DR and referring domains etc - No, I'm not trying to sell you my service.
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Great post @1977 one of the key things you said was Google trusts the site. You get this trust from link building but you also said (I think) that these links are from authoritative sites. The link adds value. Unless I’ve got it all wrong.
For non-competitive things links aren’t so important. Find a niche and you can dominate without too much effort.
For non-competitive things links aren’t so important. Find a niche and you can dominate without too much effort.
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There's a way to scale called avalanche theory from someone who owns an SEO tool whose name escapes me. The premise is that you stay in your lane and earn trust by ranking for "reachable" search terms.
When google trusts you with that level of search traffic they're likely going to trust you with more competitive search terms.
Check it out here
There are 2 major caveats here though with this approach:
- This is a (very) long-term play - in part due to the ease in which any site owner can mass-produce content.
- April saw an update that shook the SERPs and bludgeoned sites in the same way Penguin did - so understand that if you don't have links to back up your content, you will run the risk of losing most/all if you ignore links
So it's imperative for everyone to understand that google will need to continually cull the amount of URLs that will be flooding the web on a daily basis.
Therefore, IMO backlinks will be even more of a deciding factor, otherwise a site can bang out 1000 new pages per month and it'll cost them a fortune to index them - ain't gonna happen.
On point 2 - there are some nasty neg SEO tactics going on and the number of sites that have been smacked into oblivion is off the charts. And the overwhelming majority have 1 thing in common - they all have scrapper sites linking heavily to their images.
I've now gone through and cleaned up the links on a number of sites that have these links, disavowed them and most importantly got those offending links crawled (NEVER rely on google to crawl them on their own - force them) and the sites are coming back to life.
It's not a cheap process as it's not as simple as looking at SEMrush etc, but it works - it's a ratio thing as much as anything. Google doesn't ignore these links.
An example of 1 of these URLs to look for is if you have a link pointing to an image ending with k.html
And you're right @fisicx - look for gaps, they're out there
I hope this doesn't come across as too preachy, I don't mean it to.
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Of course.
I can't insert an image from SEMrush for some reason, but if you check out best online casino from google.com (best if you can look directly at the American SERPs, but even google.co.uk is showing sites like the Independent and City A.M) you'll see the top results are nothing to do with casinos/betting
Sports Illustrated, Reddit and USA Today aren't authorities on this the last time I checked - google is easy to game if you have the budget.
But PROPPER link building will always win
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UK page search traffic and SERP position for 'best online casino' (search volume UK 8,100)
The Independent #4
Search traffic (uk): 530/mo (website: 27.13M/mo)
The Sun #6
Search traffic (uk): 0/mo (website: 10.30M/mo)
City AM #7
Search traffic (uk): -/mo (website: 133.30K/mo)
Not exactly earth-shattering traffic volume. The top 3 results get all the traffic.
#1 gambling dotcom
#2 olbg dotcom
#3 32red dotcom
The Independent #4
Search traffic (uk): 530/mo (website: 27.13M/mo)
The Sun #6
Search traffic (uk): 0/mo (website: 10.30M/mo)
City AM #7
Search traffic (uk): -/mo (website: 133.30K/mo)
Not exactly earth-shattering traffic volume. The top 3 results get all the traffic.
Incognito search:
#1 gambling dotcom
#2 olbg dotcom
#3 32red dotcom
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Incognito isn't a good way to look at it, and I'm not sure where you're getting those figures from.
If it's keywords everywhere you should probably ignore it for 75% of searches, their data is pants.
According to SEMrush (which is likely underestimating the numbers but is better than most), this is the search traffic these URLs are getting each month.
UK
#1: City AM - 5.9k/month
#4: Independent - 12k/month
#6: The Sun - 5k/month
USA
#1: Sports Illustrated - 21.7K/month
#2: Reddit (completely free for the owner of the subreddit) - 2.1k/month
#3: USA Today - 13k/month
This is just 1 of countless searches with high buying intent that affiliates are making good money on (especially as they'll be getting a ton of repeat business as well), using sites that aren't related to the niche it's promoting.
Purely because of the power of the site, through links. Which is my point.
As a point of interest, the CPC for the term "best online casino" is ~$11, so to get the traffic numbers Sports Illustrated are getting would cost them over $226k per month (according to SEMrush).
SEO is cheap and has the best ROI when done right
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On the other hand, most people on UKBF aren’t targeting high competition keywords or doing affiliate marketing. They are in general local or niche businesses which don’t need to worry so much about links.
As an example, I only need two leads per week for the business to be viable. And those are easy to get with some simple on-site SEO.
As an example, I only need two leads per week for the business to be viable. And those are easy to get with some simple on-site SEO.
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It's didn't go well
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/29...-thanks-to-laziness-greed-and-half-cooked-ai/
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/24...-the-ugly-ongoing-collapse-of-u-s-journalism/
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/01...-was-****-canning-all-its-actual-journalists/ You need to replace the **** with a four letter word for bodily waste
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/25...nalism-despite-being-a-hollowed-out-husk-now/
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Link building is valuable but creating high quality authoritative content is more essential. As a two birds one stone situation, you may naturally attract backlinks by the relevant and engaging content you create. I think engaging in guest posts is a great idea as that provides opportunity but a well-rounded SEO strategy that focuses on content is the best way to go about things.
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so what if the page your trying rank is better than your competitors with onpage content etc but. They still seem to be outranking you and you know that they have thousands of backlinks compared to your hundreds,
What would you do? Do a backlink campaign to see if this solves the issues or look at other Technical SEO solutions?
What would you do? Do a backlink campaign to see if this solves the issues or look at other Technical SEO solutions?
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Thousands of backlinks means nothing. It’s possible only a few of them have any value.
The problem with your site is the lack of indexable content, poor internal linking, weak page titles and much much more.
As an example, you have pages with images that have item numbers but the part list doesn’t have the item numbers. And every part seems to need me to contact you.
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