Off-Site SEO
- debbie.m (Unlicensed)
- Tom Mulhern (Deactivated)
Link Building
What is a backlink?
A backlink is a link that comes from an external source i.e., another webpage) that links back to your website. Google looks favorably on backlinks and measures the quantity and quality of each one by its popularity.
If you create links that are not legitimate, you may get penalized by Google for creating a fake link.
Why are backlinks important?
As a brokerage or insurer, it’s your aim to generate quality links, not just any links. While getting backlinks, also called link building, can be difficult it should be a critical part of your SEO strategy. Backlinking will pay off with higher rankings if done properly. Outreach and guest postings are two strategies to rein in links to your website.
Link building is an effective SEO practice that will help you rank your website and gives a thumbs up to search engines and users that your site has great, unique content.
Most importantly, backlinks are one of the top 10 ranking factors in Google’s organic ranking algorithm. There are more than 200 ranking factors in Google’s algorithms.
White Hat vs Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is a practice of tricking the search engine algorithms to rank your website using techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, and purchasing links. Cloaking is hiding keywords in the coding of your site – this activity may result in a website penalty.
Penguin update
Google’s 2012 Penguin update focused on reviewing the legitimacy of a website’s backlinks to discover whether the links were genuine. This update was set up to discourage people from buying links to boost their ranking. The update, which assigned negative and positive values to actions companies took on link building, was added to the core algorithm in 2016.
Risks of black hat link building - manual penalty
JC Penny was penalized for incorporating black hat practices, including buying links. The retail giant’s activities resulted in a significant lowering of their rankings on Google. This is an example of a manual penalty that costs a company their top-level ranking.
Note that some penalties are a result of not taking time or not knowing when to follow SEO best practices. It’s key to keep abreast of the latest Google algorithms updates for this reason.
The Difference between Good and Bad Backlinks
If you have spammy backlinks pointing to your website, you could get a penalty from Google. As a brokerage, you must stay on top of your backlinks or what you’ve been working for (ranking via SEO) will get squashed. Link exchanges, buying and selling links, and unnatural links are a few spammy practices that you should avoid at all costs.
Good Backlinks
Why does Google mark your links as good or bad? The search engine wants to know if your content is helping readers with relevant information.
A good backlink is a useful outbound link to a trusted and approved website.
Explain the difference between dofollow and nofollow Links
Nofollow, used in the HTML source code, is an attribute that indicates to a search engine not to follow an outbound link that is tagged. While nofollow can prevent manual actions from Google, they can also be seen as a hint that sites are using ad-related or sponsored links.
Nofollow was introduced in 2005 to help fight comment spam, according to Google.
SEMrush’s example below of a nofollow link:
<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text</a>
Dofollow links are links that point back to your website or blog through a search engine, like Google. Dofollow links can pass on link authority, or what some people call “link juice.” Why is it important? Quality links that point back to your website or blog bring in more traffic and move up your page in search results.
SEMrush’s example of a dofollow link:
<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text</a>
In 2019, Google introduced two link attributes: sponsored (rel=”sponsored”) and user-generated (rel=”UGC”) links.
According to Google, “All the link attributes—sponsored, ugc, and nofollow—are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within our search algorithms.”
More information on new ways to identify the nature of links can be found here.
Backlinks tools
Ahrefs and SEMrush both have excellent backlink tools to help your brokerage with a health audit to a competitor analysis.
Backlink health audit
The backlink audit’s purpose is to find and disavow bad backlinks. A typical audit provides an overview and a more detailed report on the number of backlinks that lead to a website, referring domains, identifying link spikes, discovering wasted backlinks, anchor text spam, and more.
Competitor backlink analysis
The SEMrush backlinks tool can provide you information on your competitor’s backlink strategy, including common backlinks, competitor’s best/most linked to content, referring domains (authority score), and more.
See what backlinks your competitors are using.
Collect information about your competitor’s backlinks so you can develop your own backlink strategy.
Use the SEMrush Authority Score tool to see which links your competitors have incorporated for authority and search engine optimization.
How to gain high-quality backlinks
There are a few strategies to create high-quality backlinks but why is it important?
The first one is creating awesome content on your website that other websites want to link to.
Producing high-quality content
If your website is seen as an authority and trusted source to go for awesome content, then more sites will link to your pages.
7 ways to get people to read your content:
Do your research and create original content. Fresh content backed by data will help develop backlinks that will help your SEO strategy.
Resources, such as guides and checklists, are a great resource for other people to link to, serving as another great way for your brokerage to create high-quality backlinks.
Format your blog posts as lists. People love easy-to-read lists. List blogging will aid your backlink strategy.
Insert images and infographics and create HTML snippets for others to post on their site.
If another website mentions your brand and includes a link to your website, this is an effective way to get quality backlinks.
Link building is a two-way relationship. Link out to other websites and you may get a high-quality backlink in return.
Be involved in the local community. Connections don’t just happen online. As a brokerage, don’t forget to talk to people at events or on the phone about your business as part of your link building strategy. Whether your event or meet-up is supporting a charity or bringing awareness to your brand, your efforts could indirectly lead people to search for you online. Remember this networking-type building activity can happen locally.