As someone who is still learning SEO, you are probably already aware of the importance of creating quality backlinks. Backlinks are essentially hyperlinks that lead to your site's pages and posts. Sites do not just give away backlinks. Instead, webmasters only ever link to other sites when they feel that doing so would benefit them.
Meaning, your site has to be an authoritative reference before people naturally want to link to you. Assuming that you want to try your hand in creating quality backlinks, where do you start? How do you know if you are posting links in the right places? These are some of the questions that we will tackle in today's lesson on quality backlinks.
A backlink is essentially a professional recommendation. If a blogger or anyone else in your industry or market recommends any of your site pages, they must believe it's fantastic and a good source of credible information.
Google assigns an E-A-T score to resulting pages based on their relevancy and link popularity, and also their expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Google has to know that other people think a page's content is valuable to rank it highly, and it does so by looking at how many people link to your website, among other factors.
If a lot of individuals are referring users to your business, you're "worthy of amplification," according to organic search specialists.
To boost your site's position in search results, it's critical to evaluate backlinks and create an effective process for creating them or attracting inbound links from authoritative websites.
Where to Get Quality Backlinks
There are several methods of getting backlinks or citations that aren't complicated at all.
Local Citations
Fiverr is a great place to start. Fiverr is an online marketplace that features service providers of various expertise.
Hafeez1234 is one such SEO service provider that specializes in submitting to directories and other quality sites. Fiverr is a low-cost marketplace that can help boost the number of backlinks of your site.
Also, check out my backlinks post on citation sources. I've added several criteria to this list, including Moz DA, Moz PA, MozRank, and several external links. If you don't mind grinding a little to start increasing your site's rank, there's no harm in setting aside a few hours per day for quality link building.
Niche Citations
This feature from CAD Crowd illustrates how niche citations work and why they're essential for building backlinks that will impact your SEO efforts. This is when your local citation technique starts to get more specific/exclusive.
Niche citations are created on websites that are highly tailored to your industry or market. But, of course, we're talking about exclusivity, and with exclusivity comes a higher concentration of users interested in a handful of things. For example, your Yelp or Grubhub profile can be regarded as a specialty or niche citation source if you own a diner or take-out shack.
Search engines use niche citations to identify your company with specific sectors.
When you build your citations on high-authority platforms or pages, you can also improve your site's SEO status. The availability of niche citation platforms is entirely dependent on your sector, which is why they can be plentiful or uncommon.
You must do your homework or hire a specialist to assist you in locating platforms for your specialized citations.
Blog Comments
Posting genuine comments on related blogs can help with backlinking, too. While directly posting links on other people's blogs (especially on business blogs) may not be allowed, you can start building relationships with business owners or webmasters this way. In addition, blog comments can pave the way for guest posts. Also, your WordPress profile should have a link back to your site. Alternatively, you can promote specific posts via blog comments if the information you have on your site is useful.
Authority Guest Posts
There are two ways to obtain guest posts. First is manually pitching topics to webmasters, until you get accepted. In return, you can link to your site either on the post or on the signature area of the post, where the author is introduced. The second method is hiring SEO professionals like seobrightart to help you get posted on sites with high domain authority.
Press Releases
Submitting press releases can significantly improve your site's optimization. As for the backlink, make sure that the inbound link is placed naturally in the content. Put the link where it should logically be, so the information presented makes sense to the reader.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is essentially posting a link so users can get back to them later. Intensely popular social bookmarking sites include Digg, Reddit, and Pinterest. The interactive nature of these platforms allows others to bookmark existing links on profiles. Be sure to add value to posts to encourage others to bookmark, too.
Forums
Forums are the oldest places to get quality backlinks. While the use of forums has declined in recent years due to social media, forums still functioning can still be used for getting good backlinks.
Profile Links
Profile links on places like Quora, Twitter, and Reddit are also good sources of backlinks. Quora, in particular, has high domain authority and Quora threads regularly appear on Google queries.
Media Submissions
Newspapers, online magazines, and similar publications accept stories, art, and other media for posting. If you are an expert (everyone is an expert at something, by the way), you can look for publications that are likely to publish your content based on your qualifications. You can then ask for a link back to your site or page.
Social Media Posts (Including Google My Business)
There is a misconception that you can't rely on social media posts as sources of quality backlinks. This is untrue – Google ranks content that is regularly shared and liked on social media. In addition, search engines know that content on social media is directly presented to audiences, so it makes sense to measure the relevance of content based on its social media shares.
