Backlinks can make or break your SEO!

Before we get too far down the rabbit hole of backlinks, lets talk very quickly about SEO in general.  If you want to know more, of course check out the videos on the small business minute page.

Search Engine Optimization is not just about your website or backlinks, or content, or videos or images, it is all of those things combined.

Congruence Matters

The biggest mistake I see when I first meet with a client about thier SEO program is that they aren’t congruent.  The backlinked articles are on completely unrelated sites.  They have cat and dog videos on their business Instagram and don’t have a regular content posting program.

If you watch the Big Bang Theory, think of Search Engines as a super Sheldon.  Totally logical, and anything out of the logical area doesn’t make sense.  When something doesn’t make sense it can actually work against you.

Pizza, Beer and …

I’ll use a ficticious pizza restaurnt as my example, since outside of business, pizza is my next favorite topic.  Cars and wine follow close behind though.

So for our Pizza place, lets go through how to start and run a back linking campaign.  First things first is to find a segment within the world of Pizza and go for some long tail keywords.  Is our place “The Best Gourmet Pizza” Is it the “Best Live Music and Pizza” joint?  Is it the “Best Pizza and Beer around”?

For our example, we’ll use a company we are in the process of building now, Three Blades.  We want to become the number one website in the long tail keyword of “Best Gourmet Pizza and Wine”  We could even go further and say “Best Gourmet French Pizza and Fine Wine”.  

White Hat V Black Hat

Backlinks are getting a link on someone elses website that links to your website.  For instance if I hyperlink BeachStreetNews.com right here I just gave Beach Street News a backlink.  Since there is a section on Food and wine on Beach Street News, It is a good target for Three Blades to try and land a back link.  

Using this method, being congruent and specific to our niche is what the search engines want.   If you go to any of the freelance seo websites, they will offer hundreds of high DA backlinks for a small fee.  The problem is that these backlinks are on sites without a strong content library for Pizza and Wine.  In most cases they don’t even have good content about food.  This too can cause confusion for search engines.

Content Is King

Everything we write, post and try and link related to Three Blades is about Gourmet Pizza and wine.  When we comment as Three Blades on social media sites, those sites must have a strong content library of food or wine or both.  

Even celebrity posts can draw traffic, but they won’t help the SEO as much as you would like.  Think of those posts as short term ads, not long term marketing and SEO strategies.

The Importance of Backlinks

The importance of backlinks depends on the nature of the content and the industry you operate in. It is critical to have backlinks pointing to your website and be sure to include it as part of your marketing strategy. Backlinks are like building blocks, and having more of them will help you get better search engine rankings, higher visibility, and more business. Here are some tips to help you create backlinks:

Participate in discussion forums. You can build your industry authority by participating in forums and answering questions on a variety of topics. These backlinks help drive traffic to your site. In addition to forums, try out Quora, a question and answer platform. You can also try out video marketing – you can embed videos in your content. Using video can help you get backlinks and increase your visibility. And don’t forget about social media – these channels are great for building backlinks, but they aren’t the best way to get them.

Make sure the backlinks look natural. Don’t ask webmasters to link to you, as this creates a pattern that may be noticed by search engines. Avoid asking webmasters to add your link to their footer, as this can lead to a Penguin penalty. Instead, look for niche communities that provide useful backlinks. It’s important to remember that there is no single backlink that will bring you high rankings.

If it were easy…

I know this sounds like a lot of work and research.  You are right about that, otherwise everyone would do it and we wouldn’t have a business.  If you need some SEO help, give us a call.