Blogging, as you’ve probably gathered, is huge for a website’s popularity. Blogs are an essential piece of a site’s SEO platform, and hold the opportunity for a large amount of success.
This is because a lot of the pieces of SEO are contained within a blog. Keyword research, optimization, freshness, and backlinks. We’re going to focus primarily on backlinks today.
What are they, how do they work, and how to get backlinks. We’ll have to do a little unpacking of SEO before that, though.
How Do SEO, Blogging, and SEO Fit Together?
You’re probably really familiar with search engine optimization, but it’ll backlinking will make a lot more sense if you have a little refresher. We’ll keep it extremely short and sweet.
Search engine optimization is the process of tailoring your website and content to the preferences of the search engine algorithm. Doing so gives you a great deal of visibility, and it’s highly sought-after to rank at the top of search engine results pages.
Search engine algorithms are tricky and utilize a lot of site elements to determine which pages are most relevant to a user’s keyword search. Most of the important SEO elements have to do with a site’s relevance, credibility, and in the case of backlinks, social support.
Things like positive business reviews on Google and other user feedback are highly important. Backlinks come into play, though, when other sites on the web value your site enough to link to you on their page.
A good example of the value of backlinks is that they’re similar to a democracy. Well, a slightly skewed democracy. A backlink to your site is similar to a vote in your favor.
When the link comes from a large, popular site, the link will have more value to search engines.
Similarly, a link from a site in your niche will have more value than one that’s outside of your niche.
How to Get Backlinks
There are a few ways to get valuable backlinks.
You may be thinking that backlinks are as simple as setting up a few social media pages and linking back to your site through them. Unfortunately for site owners, social media links and similar brand links don’t have as much value.
The links you want are those that are embedded in the web pages or blog content of legitimate sites separate from your brand. This can be kind of difficult, though.
The first method is to reach out to other sites.
“Cold Calling” for Backlinks
Reaching out to specific sites in an attempt to have them link to you might seem a little hacky. It’s similar to asking someone on the street to do you a favor. Sure, some good samaritans might help you jump your car or lift a mattress up a flight of stairs, but 99 percent of people will move on by.
You need to offer some value to get a site to link to you. The first thing you could consider is to offer a backlink to the site in exchange for a backlink to your own. This is a straightforward method.
At the same time, larger sites won’t have much use for a backlink from a lesser-known site. If your link offers less value than theirs, you might have to sweeten the pot.
Think about the perspective of the website– do you have content that will enrich the experience of its users? Think about the value that you believe your site offers to users. More specifically, what does the page that you’re trying to have backlinked offer to users?
Seek out sites online that offer similar products and services to you, and those that might have a spot in their content for the specific content you’re trying to have linked to.
If you can’t find sites that fit perfectly with your content, there’s another common option.
Creating Content for Sites
You’ll have more luck with your backlinking offer if you create content for the site you’re trying to contact. Blog posts are an excellent option here.
If you can write up a relevant, well-written blog post for a site of your choice, the site would value that. The more decent content the better, and most sites won’t turn their head at an offer to have free content created for them.
In a lot of cases, depending on the word count, high-end sites will pay a lot of money for a single blog post. You can insert yourself here by saying that you’ll write the free content given that you can embed a link or two back to your site.
Hire an Agency
You also have the option of hiring a digital marketing agency to do all the heavy lifting for you. These are people who have worked a number of SEO platforms, cultivated backlinks, and optimized sites before.
It can be really time-consuming to reach out to a lot of websites in hopes for backlinks when you’re just starting out. Not only do you have to reach out, but you might have to create a blog or two for each person that agrees to work with you.
An analysis of the cost of your time and the value of a backlink might not add up, and it could very well make a lot more sense for you to outsource your SEO efforts to a digital marketing agency like Kaladan Marketing.
This might sound a little intimidating. Backlinks, keyword research, content creation, and the finer points of optimizing a site on the back end all require time and skill.
When it comes to social reviews like backlinking and Google business reviews, it gets a lot easier when you have traffic coming in. After a while, sites will be linking to you because you’re the first thing that comes up when they make a search.
Interested in Learning More About SEO?
Figuring out how to get backlinks and optimize your site is pretty difficult. It can help greatly to read up on a few more pieces of SEO information before you really get started.
Visit our site to learn more about SEO, in addition to a number of other business ideas that you may find useful.