Most small business owners know that getting people to link back to our website is one of many factors that Google takes into consideration when it ranks our website. But not all inbound links are created equal. What is the magic Google link juice, why does it work and how can I get some?
The links I am describing are what is known as backlinks. Digital marketers refer to creating a backlink or link building strategy. They work particularly well when the person linking to your blog post or website has authority in the online space or your industry.
Over the years different kinds of approaches to link building have taken place. Many have been firmly on the black hat side of SEO – such as paid link building sites and networks. In these bad old days, people could simply submit their site into these forms and get a series of links back to their site, plus refer people to other sites.
Even typing that I am remembering when that happened and thinking what kind of strategy was that? How was that useful for a person searching online for information?
So did Google. And they changed things for the better to prevent this link farm free-for-all.
For an external backlink to be of benefit to you, the site linking to you needs to be a relevant and valuable one.
So what does that mean exactly?
- Popularity – a good inbound link will come from a site with lots of traffic. So getting a link to your website from a website that has significantly smaller traffic than you is not really going to benefit you. Google views popularity through the prism of authority and relevancy. This leads nicely into this next point.
- Topic Specific Relevancy – just getting a large site to link to you is not going to be of benefit if the site linking to you sells Dog Food and you are in the fitness industry. Links to you need to be within your space.
- Trust & Authority – you might notice inside your Google Analytics from time to time referral accounts that look like this – cheap-trusted-backlinks.com. This is obviously an example of a referral link that is anything but trusted. Links from Universities, government agencies or non-profits are good examples of trusted sites.
- Freshness – we need to review who is linking to us on a regular basis to make sure that we are securing new links. What might have been a great source 2 years ago – may not be treated as so important by Google now. But how do we know who is even linking to us? You might be surprised who is.
There are a variety of tools that help with this process.
SemRUSH is one resource, Ahref’s is another. I use Raven Tools for my clients. All of these resources allow you to see who is linking to you, from where on their site and if they are sending this data to Google via a DF (do-follow) or NF (no-follow link). The DF links are potentially where the good google juice is.
What is great about these tools is that you can also see who is linking to your competitors. This is often an invaluable starting point to building your own backlink strategy.
There is no magic bullet if you are looking to build web traffic, there is just smart and consistent use of techniques to build long-term relevance. If you have never really understood who is linking to you, beyond online directories, now is the perfect time for you to start the journey.
