How Can an SEO Consultant Add Links to Your Website?

There are a lot of details to consider when you take on the process of improving your backlink profile. I’ve laid them out here in this post.

I highly recommend that you avoid any cookie cutter link building solutions.

You have to always keep in mind that the industry you are in, your business model, and your existing content provide unique opportunities to add links to your site. These opportunities will be uncovered by an SEO specialist who puts in the time learning about your products, competitors and existing pages / posts.

What steps do SEO marketers take to add links to a website?

If you plan on working with an SEO marketing consultant to improve your backlink profile, you should know some of the basic, white-hat tactics they will use.

1. Content Creation: Quality content is one of the most effective ways to attract backlinks. SEO experts can help create engaging, shareable content that other websites will want to link to.
2. Guest Posting: Guest posting on relevant blogs and websites is a tried and tested way to build backlinks. An SEO expert can identify the right platforms, create appropriate content, and secure guest posting opportunities.
3. Relationship Building: An important part of link building is networking and building relationships with bloggers, influencers, and other business owners who can link to your website. SEO experts can facilitate this networking process.
4. Directory Submissions: Submitting your website to reputable online directories can also generate backlinks. An SEO expert can help you identify the most valuable directories for your industry.
5. Social Media Promotion: Promoting your content on social media can lead to natural backlinks as people share it. An SEO expert can help you with social media strategies that can boost your online presence and lead to more backlinks.
6. Analysis of Competitors’ Backlinks: SEO experts can use tools to analyze the backlinks of your competitors. By understanding where they are getting their backlinks from, you can target those same sources.
7. Broken Link Building: SEO experts can find relevant broken links on other websites and suggest your website as a replacement.

How can you monitor your backlink profile?

Monitoring and analyzing a website’s SEO backlink profile involves several steps:

1. Identify All Backlinks: The first step is to identify all the backlinks to your website. This can be done using various SEO tools such as Google Search Console, SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz’s Link Explorer, etc.
2. Backlink Quality Assessment: Once you have identified all the backlinks, the next step is to assess their quality. You want to make sure the backlinks come from reputable, high-authority websites. Look at metrics like Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) to gauge this. Backlinks from low-quality or spammy websites can hurt your search engine rankings.
3. Relevance: Analyze the relevance of the linking website to your own. Backlinks from websites in a related industry or niche are generally more valuable than those from unrelated sites.
4. Anchor Text Analysis: Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. SEO best practices suggest that anchor text be relevant to the page you’re linking to. Analyze the anchor text of your backlinks to ensure they are appropriate and diversified. Too many backlinks with the same anchor text can appear spammy to search engines.
5. Link Type: Links can be do-follow or no-follow. Do-follow links pass on link equity, while no-follow links do not. While no-follow links don’t contribute directly to your rankings, they do play a role in your overall link profile, and having a mix is healthy.
6. Link Location: A backlink from the main content of a page is usually more valuable than one from the comments, footer, or sidebar.
7. Traffic: High-quality backlinks should bring traffic to your website. Analyzing referral traffic from your backlinks helps you understand which ones are driving visitors to your site.
8. Link Velocity: This refers to the speed at which your website gains backlinks. A sudden surge of backlinks could appear suspicious to search engines and may lead to penalties.
9. Competitor Backlink Analysis: By examining the backlink profiles of your competitors, you can identify potential opportunities for your own link-building efforts.

Monitoring and analyzing your backlink profile should be an ongoing process. It’s important to regularly check for and remove or disavow bad or toxic backlinks. This helps to maintain the health of your backlink profile and the overall SEO of your website. SEO tools can automate much of this process, but they require human oversight and analysis to ensure accuracy and efficacy.

Measuring success

On top of the following, you should see a steady increase in clicks and impressions from searchers. This data will be stored in your Google Search Console account.

1. Backlink Quantity: The total number of backlinks pointing to your website. An increase in this number over time often indicates successful SEO efforts.
2. Backlink Quality: It’s not just about quantity; the quality of the backlinks is equally important. High-quality backlinks are those from trusted, authoritative websites. SEO tools often provide a score to gauge the quality of a site (like Domain Authority in Moz or Domain Rating in Ahrefs).
3. Link Diversity: A healthy backlink profile has a diverse range of links. This includes diversity in the types of sites linking to you, the location on the page where the link is located (body text, footer, etc.), and the anchor text used.
4. Referral Traffic: A successful backlink not only boosts SEO but also drives traffic to your site. Using Google Analytics or a similar tool, you can see how many visitors each backlink brings to your website.
5. Rankings: Ultimately, the goal of improving your backlink profile is to improve your rankings for your targeted keywords. Tracking how your keyword rankings change over time is a crucial measure of success.
6. Domain Authority or Domain Rating: Tools like Moz and Ahrefs assign a Domain Authority or Domain Rating score to indicate the credibility and ranking potential of your site. An increase in these scores can indicate a successful link-building campaign.

Remember that SEO and link building are long-term strategies, and it can take several months to see significant changes in these metrics. Consistency and quality over time are key to a successful SEO campaign.

To develop a custom link building plan for your site, contact me at cort@bayareaseosolutions.com.