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acklinks, that is links from external websites pointing to your website, have always been a fundamental ingredient in any SEO strategy and contribute positively to a website’s Google ranking. In the simplest way of understanding backlinks, they can essentially be seen as another website giving credit to your website by pointing their visitors to your site for information about a certain subject. Google therefore rewards websites who have more of these links as they are deemed to be giving more value, which ultimately is what Google wants to be delivering to its users.
Originally it was simply a case of having more backlinks pointing at your site and seeing a climb up the Google search ranking. The term ‘Black Hat’ SEO describes the practice of gaining links in an inorganic manner, for example by hiding invisible links on pages, low quality directories featuring thousands of links and automation software generating links.
Google regularly introduces algorithm updates and always aims to crack down on Black Hat SEO practices by removing any credit it had previously given to ‘dodgy’ links. In some instances it will even penalise such links and websites will see their Google search positions drop as a result.
The most famous algorithm update to address this issue was the Penguin update in 2012. The way that Google treats different links varies enormously following the Penguin update. Links that are most valuable are those that come from high DA (Domain Authority) websites. Additionally the more relevant the linking website is to the linked to website, the more value the link will provide. For example if the linking website is in the same industry or location as the linked to website, Google will see this as a more organic link and thus credit it as such.
Nowadays businesses looking to grow their backlink profiles must focus on ‘Whte Hat’ link building. We will look at some techniques for gaining such links in the rest of this article.
White Hat Link Building Techniques
- Publishing High Quality Content
Creating high quality content remains the best way for generating quality links. The idea here is that people will share a link to your content because it is highly engaging, interesting content.
- Guest Blogging
Guests posts are articles that you write for publication on other websites. The website will also link back to your website when a mention is made to it in the article or when noting the author of the article.
- ‘The Skyscraper Technique’
Brian Dean was the founder of this technique which works as follows. Firstly choose a keyword that you want your website to rank for. Next, find the top 10 ranking websites for this particular keyword. Thirdly, create a piece of content that you believe is way better or more current than the content already ranking. Finally, find all the websites currently linking to the content in the top 10 positions on Google and reach out to them to ask if they would be interested in linking to your new content.
- Analyse Competitors’ Links
Using certain online tools you can view all of the links pointing to your competitors. You then want to identify how they obtained these links and aim to copy the process to gain the same or similar links.
There are other innovative methods, relevant to each different industry, that we use at Avida Brands to build high quality backlinks for our clients as well as those listed above. If you’d like to find out more about White Hat backlink building please get in touch.