What’s the most underutilized tool in SEO? In my opinion, it’s backlinks. If you know anything about SEO, you know that even small changes can make a huge difference in traffic. A successful SEO strategy doesn’t depend solely on keywords and website optimization! Making backlinks part of your SEO strategy is a small change that can majorly improve your Google ranking. There’s a catch, though. As with anything SEO, it’s never as easy as pasting a link or two in a blog. 

I often see business owners struggle with backlinks and how to use them to their advantage. I wanted to give you a quick rundown on what exactly backlinks are, some of the best backlink-building strategies, and how to check your established backlinks. 

What Are Backlinks?

Although we’re focusing on backlinks today, I’ll give you some quick information on the two types of linking strategies, internal and external. 

Internal linking strategies are links that redirect a user from one page to another on your website. Internal linking helps keep users engaged on your website and viewing your content. This structure also helps search engines understand how you organize your website and content.

External linking strategies are known as inbound links and backlinks. Backlinks are hyperlinks from another website that redirects traffic to your website when a user clicks on it. The more backlinks you have out there, the better. Google rewards websites with multiple backlinks because it signifies that your website is legitimate and trusted, which helps improve your domain authority and Google ranking. 

You’ll want to incorporate both of these approaches into your link-building strategy because Google rewards quantity over quality. The quantity signifies the quantity of the links. If your page is consistently backlinked, then Google knows that your page is part of a trusted website. If you had to prioritize a link-building strategy, external links are the way to go. Backlinks build credibility with Google, which results in more inbound traffic, higher domain authority, and an improved Google ranking. 

Unfortunately, you can’t post your content online, and hope people will use it for their backlinks. If your search ranking isn’t high, then the chances of someone backlinking your content decrease. How can you get people to use your website in their backlinks? You have a few options.

How Do You Get Backlinks?

Brand Outreach

One way to increase the backlinks to your website is to do some brand outreach. Here, you’ll want to use a link-building tool (like this one from SemRush) to find websites for a potential backlink opportunity. When you find a few viable leads, message them and ask about acquiring a backlink on their website. You should also send them the content’s link so they know what you want backlinked. 

Another way to increase your backlinks is to ask mutuals or others in your industry to collaborate on content. Working with others is a great opportunity for link-building, content creation, and making some new friends. 

Using an analytics or link-building tool, check if your current backlinks are up-to-date. You might have updated some content, a URL might be broken, or someone forgot to link your website while they were editing. You can reach out to those who have your website backlinked and request they update the link to reflect your new or updated content. 

The outreach method is simply reaching out to others and either requesting or updating a backlink on their website. If you take this route, emphasize that the website you request a backlink for gets something out of this, too! Explain that quality (e.g. correct) backlinks improve website authority and credibility. If you can get a backlink, they can improve their SEO, too. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Work With Your Clients

Your clients are some of the best people to work with on a backlinking strategy. See if they have opportunities or know of opportunities for backlinks (like a referral outreach). 

One of my go-to methods when working with clients on backlinking strategies is asking to collaborate with them on blogs or other content. Have them write a guest feature or snippet of an upcoming blog and do the same for them. If you’re running low on blog content or ideas, repurpose an older blog with your client’s writing and outbound links to their websites. 

If you have a client you write content for, ask them for permission to backlink yourself on their website. Only do this if your blog content applies to their business. This is a great way to implement backlinks from several websites. Also, it’s mutually beneficial for you and your client’s SEO.

How to Check Backlinks in Google

There are tons of tools to check backlinks, but one of the best (and free) resources out there is Google Search Console (GSC). If you know me, I like Google Analytics Suite because it’s a free and reliable option for all business owners to use (SEO expert or not!) If you use Google Analytics for your Google SEO, then GSC is the best tool for checking backlinks. You can find link reports, fix content issues, and understand how Google ranks and indexes your content. 

To check your backlinks in Google, open up GSC and then type in your website. From there, you’ll access your account and get information on your domains. On the left-hand bar, go to links at the bottom → external links → top linking sites. Here, you’ll see a report detailing all your backlinks and the website pages linking to your website (linking pages), and how many of your web pages they’re linking to (target pages). 

You can use this report to understand what content is getting backlinked, who backlinks your content the most, and how many times a website backlinks your content. Look at what content gets the most backlinks. Use this information to create similar content! It could get you even more backlinks.

Backlinking is a worthwhile and insightful process for understanding what content appeals most to your audience and evaluating what areas your SEO could improve. Every successful SEO strategy has a backlinking system behind it! 

Creating, requesting, and checking your backlinks might be one of the most labor-intensive SEO activities because it takes a lot of time, research, and dedication. This is why I’m here to help! I love working with my clients to tackle their SEO and help them reach their business goals. If you’re ready to increase your organic website traffic and see how SEO can work for you, book a free discovery call with me today!

About Âme Creatives

I’m a Showit Design Partner and SEO expert who specializes in crafting websites and branding for you: the successful female entrepreneur who is crushing business goals…but doesn’t have the branding or website to match. I’m an expert at being able to create a beautiful brand that fully represents YOU. Ready to work together? Send me a message!