Backlinks are used by search engines as a measure of authority. This is determined by the quantity and quality of websites linking to your domain, as well as a handful of supporting signals.
One of the most debated and controversial topics in the SEO industry is how valuable backlinks are, and my stance will always be the same. Focus on your target audience.
I came into the SEO industry in 2012 and just ahead of Google’s Penguin update rolling out, which targeted link spam and manipulative link building practices. I saw businesses disappear overnight, including well-established brands, because of their previous tactics and I had to spend a lot of time auditing backlink profiles, submitting disavows, and trying to get penalties removed. Although this was 12 years ago, the industry is still rife with poor and shoddy link building tactics, but rather than penalties from Google, today it’s most likely to just be a waste of your time of money.
I can proudly say that I’ve never used any “black hat” tactics or paid for a single backlink. This is partly down to the timing of when I started in SEO, but mostly because my background in journalism meant I had the skills to be at the forefront of the industry as link building changed and developed into the more common practices of today.
Understanding the importance of backlinks, how to acquire them in the right way, the impact of great content, and actually growing your business’ brand in the eyes of your target audiences and Google is where I can provide help and guidance.
Backlink Audits
When all factors are equal between your business and competitors, backlinks are typically a deciding vote for Google. Auditing and understanding the gap between you and these competitors will help you to get ahead in the rankings.
Digital PR
One of the most effective and efficient ways to acquire backlinks is digital PR. This uses all the same tactics and approaches as traditional PR, but a key difference is that as well as reaching target audiences, you get backlinks too.
Content Marketing
Creating and distributing relevant content for your target audience has lots of benefits in marketing, and the most crucial for SEO is that it can help to acquire backlinks to your website naturally and organically.
Frequently asked backlink questions
What strategies do you use to acquire high-quality backlinks?
Backlink acquisition strategies are only successful if you focus on the highest quality and most relevant domains for your business or industry. It’s a case of prioritising efforts and using the right tactics to acquire these, rather than mass approaches that result in lots of backlinks, but are unlikely to have an impact.
How do you ensure the backlinks you acquire are from reputable and relevant sites?
As part of a backlink audit, I spend time reviewing the links that you already have and those that similar businesses or competitors have acquired, using third-party tools and manually sifting through to remove anything that is irrelevant or low quality, leaving reputable and relevant websites to focus on.
Can you explain your approach to outreach for backlink acquisition?
Outreach is quite a broad term that refers to the work you need to do to acquire backlinks, but usually means reaching out to publications and journalists. Again, a mass approach is not something I recommend to clients, so knowing the publications that you want to gain backlinks from, and approaching the specific journalists or writers of those publications, means your efforts are rewarded. There are many outreach methods that can be effective.
How do you identify and recover from potentially harmful backlinks?
Search engines like Google have changed a lot in recent years to ignore and filter out potentially harmful or low quality backlinks. A manual penalty is pretty rare these days, unless you have been engaging in seriously negative or manipulative tactics, when a disavow file might actually be required. Otherwise, the focus should be on building high-quality links to reverse Google’s perception of your link profile.
What are your strategies for maintaining a natural and diverse backlink profile?
This should be the ultimate aim for any business, and even outreach or digital PR services can bring unnatural backlinks. Creating high-quality and relevant content for your customers or niche should be the focus to attract organic links and make the overall process much easier.
