The Truth About Links And Website Rankings
When ranking websites, search engines like Google take over 200 factors into consideration. Of these factors, links tend to rank high on the list. When a website links to pages, those linked pages have a better chance of ranking on Google and other search engines. A link from a relevant website acts as a high-quality referral and gives a boost of credibility to search engines. Let’s dive in further on how links affect the ranking of your website.
Taking a Closer Look At Backlinks
When evaluating links for your website, it’s essential that you consider the link graph and how it relates to ranking. The link graph is a map of the internet that shows how various web pages link to one another.
While there are many links that can be beneficial to web pages, there are also a plethora of low-quality links that can negatively affect a website when it comes to search engine rankings. When the links to these spammy sites are removed from the link graph, experts call it a reduced link graph. Moreover, outbound links and no-follow links will not disrupt the link graph and it won’t affect how Google ranks websites.
Google’s algorithm is greatly influenced by links to determine search engine rankings, but it’s not the only factor. For websites that are trying to improve keyword ranking through their link building, it’s important to pay attention to the sites that you are linking to and that are linking to you.
Inbound and Outbound Links
Many people are quick to believe that their lowered rankings are a direct effect of bad links that are pointing to their websites. In an attempt to rectify the situation, many SEOs and webmasters will attempt to submit disavow files to Google to disassociate their sites with these links. However, confusion settles in when they are thorough with discarding those links and find that their ranking hasn’t improved.
Getting rid of negative links may not be the magic pill that solves ranking issues, because the websites you link to are also a factor. On the link graph, both inbound and outbound links are separated into two parts. For good balance, it’s ideal to link to many high-quality sites as well.
Linking Roles Vary
As links are used to measure rankings, researchers have found that user intent can greatly influence how much weight these links carry. For example, when something noteworthy happens in the news, many articles are pushed out to get the information flowing throughout the web. If you read those articles, you’ll notice that most don’t typically have a lot of links throughout the text. This is because they are so new and most importantly, very relevant. Healthy amounts of links aren’t needed to boost their rankings because their content is already heavily trending. User intent varies but is also crucial to the roles of links.
Link Building Tactics
There are many different ways you can build links to your website. Let’s discuss a few
HARO – Help a Reporter Out
HARO is a great service to find contributors and editors that are looking for people to help provide some information for a story that they are writing. In many cases, you are able to provide a brief bio and a link to your website for your contribution to the article.
With this tool, you can submit different story ideas for relevant queries. It’s a great way to find people looking to feature content without having to do a ton of manual searching.
Onsite Blogging
Having an onsite blog should be common sense in 2019. Not only does having an onsite blog make Google happy by adding fresh, unique content to your site often, but it can also really help with link building.
You can offer guest posts with relevant industry leaders, exchanging backlinks for one another. You can link to other sources in your original articles, and other sources can link to you for their original articles. It is an easy way to generate great inbound and outbound links for your website.
Trending Topics for Onsite Blog Posts
After you have initially set up your onsite blog, you now have the power to write about anything relevant to your business, or even just in general. Try searching for what topics or articles are trending right now. Chances are, you may get a link back to your website as source on the topic if you are one of the first to write on a trending topic.
You just need to make sure that you are timely with your post so that your information is surely to rank quickly on the topic. Getting a link back to your site on a trending topic gives you both increased traffic to your website and high-quality backlinks.
The Broken Link Technique
The broken link technique is considered one of the oldest link building techniques in the books to many SEO experts. This technique consists of two areas where you can generate high-quality backlinks.
First, you can run a test using software to find any of your website’s broken links that are linked on other websites. You can then reach out to their admin and see if they can update the link.
In addition, you can scroll through relevant websites and see if there are any broken links going out to other websites that are similar to yours. If there is, you can reach out to the admin and notify them of the broken link. You can then ask if they would consider replacing the broken link with your website’s URL because it is a similar resource.
Tracking Mentions
Tracking your business’s mentions is a great way to find new link building opportunities without too much manual searching. You can use a tool to place an alert on your business’s name whenever it is mentioned online. When you see that your business was mentioned, check to see if there was a link to your website included too. If there wasn’t reach out to the author, person, or outlet, and ask that they place a link with your website if possible.
Posting Relevant Content
One of the last link building techniques we will describe in this post is simply posting content that will be a resource for an individual. Figure out what problem or area that your business can help with. Write content that is informative and valuable for the reader.
Links play an important–major–role in site rankings, but it’s not the only factor that Google pays close attention to. It’s all about finding a balance in the use of inbound and outbound links with mindfulness to how user intent can be contributing factors.
