Backlinking Basics: Benefits, Risks, and Best Practices

Backlinks back, all right! Sorry if you now have Backstreet Boys stuck in your head. But, let's link that thought to the topic of today's blog: Backlinking. Backlinks can be a crucial part of your website SEO strategy, helping you build domain authority and driving traffic from third-party sites.

Read on to discover how strategic backlinking can elevate your website's authority and boost search engine rankings.

Understanding Backlinking and Its Impact on SEO

Backlinking is the term for when other websites add links back to your website. These links are called backlinks and they play a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO).

You could think of backlinks as votes of confidence from other websites. Backlinks indicate to search engines that your website is a trustworthy and authoritative resource.

Backlinks are important for SEO because they help search engines determine the relevance and popularity of a website. When a website has high-quality backlinks from authoritative sources, it signals to search engines that the website is valuable and should be ranked higher in search results.

Backlinking can have a significant impact on your website's visibility and organic traffic. By earning high-quality backlinks, you can improve your website's authority, increase its chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), and attract more organic traffic.

The Benefits of High-Quality Backlinks to Your Website

Having high-quality backlinks offers several benefits for your website:

• Improved search engine rankings: High-quality backlinks from authoritative websites can boost your website's ranking in search results.
• Increased organic traffic: When your website ranks higher in search results, it attracts more organic traffic from users searching for relevant keywords.
• Enhanced credibility and authority: Backlinks from trustworthy and reputable websites enhance your website's credibility and authority in your industry or niche.
• More referral traffic: Backlinks from relevant websites can drive referral traffic to your website, increasing your overall website traffic.
• Faster indexing: Backlinks can help search engines discover and index your website more quickly, leading to faster visibility in search results.

Identifying Toxic Backlinks to Disavow

While backlinks are generally beneficial for SEO, it's important to be cautious of toxic backlinks that can harm your website's reputation and rankings. Here are some ways to identify and avoid toxic backlinks:

• Monitor your backlink profile: Regularly check your backlink profile using tools like Google Search Console or third-party SEO tools like SEMRush to identify any suspicious or low-quality backlinks.
• Look for warning signs: Pay attention to backlinks from unrelated or irrelevant websites, websites with low domain authority, or websites involved in spammy practices.
• Check for unnatural anchor text: Backlinks that have excessive amounts of exact match anchor text (anchor text with repeated keywords that exactly match the destination page) or overly optimized anchor text can be a red flag.
• Analyze the website's content and quality: Backlinks from websites with poor-quality content or spammy practices should be avoided.
• Avoid link schemes: Be cautious of participating in link schemes or buying backlinks, as this can lead to toxic backlinks.

By identifying toxic backlinks and disavowing them, you can protect your website's reputation and maintain a healthy backlink profile. How can you disavow a toxic backlink so it doesn't impair your Google search ranking? Let's dig into that:

Using Google's Disavow Tool to Protect Your Site

In some cases, despite your best efforts, your website may still have toxic backlinks. In such situations, it's important to disavow those toxic backlinks to protect your site's reputation and rankings.

Google's Disavow Tool is a resource provided by Google that allows website owners to disavow or disassociate themselves from specific backlinks. Here's a simplified explanation of how to use Google's Disavow Tool:

• Identify toxic backlinks: Use tools like Google Search Console or third-party SEO tools to identify toxic backlinks to disavow. Compile a list of the toxic backlinks and pay special notice to their root domain or subdomain.
• Create a disavow file: Create a text file listing the URLs of the toxic backlinks that you want to disavow. Each URL should be on a separate line. You'll probably want to use the root domain of the main site and each of the subdomains to disavow all links from a toxic site rather than specific pages of that site. This will help you save time and if the toxic domain adds more links later, you'll already be disavowing them.
• Upload the disavow file: Go to the Google Disavow Tool page, select your website, and upload the disavow file. If there are any issues with the file, Google will give you an error report with a list of items to fix. Make the required edits and reupload the file.
• Submit the disavow file: After uploading the disavow file, submit it to Google. Note that it may take some time for Google to process the disavow file and take the disavowed backlinks into account.

Some Things to Keep in Mind about Disavow Files in Google Search Console:

When building your disavowed links file, there are a few limitations you'll need to keep in mind:

1.  There is an upper limit to how long a disavowed URL can be (2,048 characters).
2. Each line can only have one URL to disavow.
3. You're limited to 100,000 lines—i.e., you can only disavow up to 100,000 domains or subdomains in total.
4. The file size is limited to 2MB.
5. The file must end with ".txt" to be considered valid.
6. To disavow a whole domain or subdomain, the line must start with "domain:" otherwise, you'll only be disavowing the page that uses the main domain name. For example, if you entered "www.example.com", you would only be disavowing that page, but "domain:www.example.com" would disavow the entire domain.
7. You can only have one file of disavowed links at a time. If you upload a new one, it will replace any existing disavow links files you have. So, it may be a good idea to download the existing file and add new links to that list to preserve your existing disavows.

By using Google's Disavow Tool correctly, you can protect your website from potential harm caused by toxic links.

Best Practices for Acquiring Quality Backlinks

Earning high-quality backlinks takes time, effort, and a strategic approach. Here are some best practices that can help with your link-building efforts:

• Create valuable and Engaging Content: Producing high-quality content that provides value to your target audience is essential for attracting natural backlinks. If others don't find your content worthwhile, they won't link to it—so start by making great content!
• Reach Out to Relevant Websites: Conduct some outreach to other websites in your industry or niche and offer to contribute guest posts or collaborate on content. This can help you acquire valuable backlinks and highlight specific resources on your website. When creating guest content, it's important to avoid blatantly advertising your products and services. Instead, focus on creating a valuable piece of content for the host site and let it guide people to your site to get more information.
• Build Relationships with Influencers: Engage with influencers in your industry and build genuine relationships. This can lead to opportunities for natural backlinks. When choosing influencers for a partnership, consider:
  • How that influencer aligns with your brand identity. If your business identifies as helpful, informative, and professional, partnering with an insult comic might not be the best fit!
  • What's in it for the influencer? This should be a coequal partnership between your business and the influencer that provides benefits to both parties. Try to keep in mind the influencer's needs to build a lasting and fruitful relationship.
• Participate in Industry Forums and Communities: By actively participating in relevant online communities, you can establish yourself as an expert and attract backlinks from other members of that community. You could even link directly to your site in those forums to point members to more resources related to your comments (assuming the platform allows you to post links).
• Promote your Content: Share your content on social media, email newsletters, and other platforms to increase its visibility and attract backlinks. Having more eyes on your content increases the chances that it will be picked up by a relevant, high-quality party.

By implementing these best practices, you can increase your chances of earning high-quality backlinks that will benefit your website's SEO.

Start Building Your Backlinking Strategy

Need help implementing your backlinking strategy or generating the high-quality content you need to organically attract backlinks? Book a meeting with the Bluleadz team to get started!

We can help you leverage HubSpot tools to get more backlinks, bulk up your SEO, and drive more customer conversions from your website.