Why is a good backlink strategy crucial for your business’s success?

Published On - April 15, 2021

Ankit Tiwari
illustration of various online platforms interconnected through link building

A link (or hyperlink) is a clickable reference from one web page to another, and we refer to the link that points from one website to another as a backlink. As a website owner or a blogger, acquiring backlinks is one of the biggest tools you can have at your disposal. Links form the backbone of the web, which is built on the connections between websites, web pages, and other resources. From an SEO perspective, these connections are the “pathways” search engines use to crawl and discover content.

Backlinks remains one of the major ranking signals and a sustained strategy for acquiring them should be an essential part of your ongoing SEO strategy.

When determining the quality and trustworthiness of your pages, Google looks beyond the limited on-page content. It also analyses the number of links pointing to that page from external sources, as well as the quality of those sites. Simply put, the more high-quality sites that link to your site, the more potential you have to rank well in the SERPs (search engine result pages). Nowadays, Google uses numerous algorithms to help determine the quality of these links.

What are the benefits of link building via a good backlink strategy?

backlink strategy

Building links can have a great impact on your website’s online presence:

  1. Page Discovery
    Links remain the primary way Google finds your pages in the first place. In fact, if you’ve created a fresh website or a blog, one of the best ways to get it indexed quickly is to have links pointing to your website.
  2. Page Rankings
    Backlinks remain one of the most significant ranking signals search engines consider and acquiring them should be an essential part of any SEO strategy.

That said, link building is often a time-consuming and complex process. If you get it right, you can easily outshine your competitors. If you get it wrong, it can set your SEO strategy back by months if not weeks. While a lot of the techniques have changed and goalposts shifted over the years, the need for a relevant and authoritative backlink profile remains the same. If anything, it has gained even more prominence.

What should a good link building strategy include?

A good link building strategy would normally include multiple campaigns that are set out over time to actively increase links to your website.  

Your link building strategy should be geared towards making the most out of your existing content and resources to gain links, as well as creating fresh content to actively target further opportunities.

There are two broad phases your backlink strategy should have:

  1. Link Research

In the research phase, your primary focus should be on compiling a list of high-quality opportunities. You can use various online tools to identify opportunities arising from sources such as your competitor profiles, news sites, and even your existing link base.

  1. Link Building

The link building phase is where you put your plan in action. Build relationships, reach out to website owners, and generate quality backlinks around your resources (more on this later).

Build your backlink strategy around your resources

EARN your backlinks. Remember, at the heart of your link building strategy should be a resource valuable for the users. If your web pages have very little value on offer, chances are most of the “quality” sites won’t link to you. So, get this part right in order to gain the maximum out of your link building strategy.

Every business is unique and will have its own USPs that can create opportunities for link building. You can start by identifying what those USPs are and how your resources can help attract quality links. Take stock of what you already have: content, data, people, products, tools, services, etc.

Once you have a clear idea of what your USPs are, you will be able to plan and create content that can attract high-quality links to your site. Once again, make sure that the USPs you identify are relatable to your audience for maximum impact.

Your backlink strategies should also be aligned with your SEO and business goals. Ensure you’re building links to your:

  • Homepage
  • Core landing pages (products, services, category pages, etc)
  • Keyword-rich content on your site (blogs, advice, FAQs, etc)

Where to start

As we’ve mentioned earlier, the quality of backlink matters a lot in ranking pages. Google prefers sites that have backlinks from sources that are authoritative and relevant. It is important as a website owner or blogger to dedicate time and effort towards building a strong link building strategy that lays special emphasis on acquiring links from high-quality sources. But before you start building your strategy, it is crucial to understand your competitors and what it takes to overtake them.

You can start by preparing a detailed analysis of your site’s existing profile vs your top five competitors. There are several online tools (free and paid) such as Ahrefs that can help benchmark your backlink profile against your competitors. Once you have the benchmark report ready, you’ll get a sense of the strategy used by your competitors and the number of links you will need to overtake them on the SERPs. Similarly, if you are not ranking well for a specific keyword but have a well-targeted page, you can easily analyze the volume of links you need to build to rank better for that keyword.

What else should you consider in your backlink strategy?

Setting clear goals

As with everything successful, always track your progress. Tracking your progress is a good way to ensure you stay on the right track and identify what works in your specific domain. Setting key performance indicators will allow you to stay focused on regular improvement. Link building can often seem like a monotonous job, which is more often than not sidelined over time. A realistic monthly goal will ensure you never lose track of it and stay focused on achieving the desired goal.

Remember, your goals should be relevant to the requirements of your site. Having a goal of acquiring “6 average links per month” may not help your website much if your competitors are gaining 20 or even 30 high-quality links a month. Therefore, it is crucial to run a thorough analysis of your competitors and gauge what you need to do to outperform them. 

And finally, be realistic

We can’t stress enough the importance and relevance of backlinks on a website. But you should also remember that link building can often take time to have an actual impact on your website’s SERPs. Other SEO changes such as content updates, for instance, can deliver quick results. Backlinks are not a piece of cake, and it can take a long time before Google crawls and recognizes the new links you acquired. This means it can be hard to show immediate results arising out of your backlinks strategy, even if you end up achieving your desired goals.

Instead, your focus should be more on long-term improvements and sustainable link-building strategies rather than quick wins. Remember, good things come to those who wait!

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