Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Getting SEO Right! This week, we’re looking at, drumroll please, backlinks!

Why all that build up, you might find yourself thinking. Link building is an essential – and oft ignored – part of SEO. Google’s search algorithm, it turns out, is quite fond of link building done well.

Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, link building used to be as easy as getting as many backlinks – good, bad, ugly – as possible. Today, link building is much trickier to navigate.
Read on to learn more about the golden rules of link building in SEO!

Nobody Likes a Spammer

This advice is, unfortunately, still touted: the more backlinks you can score, the better you’ll rank on SERPs. It’s easy to do too: all you have to do is fork over a little bit of money and you’ll be the proud owner of thousands of low-quality spam links for your site. Yum.

It may seem tempting, especially if you feel like you’ve hit a wall and aren’t seeing the results you want. Resist the temptation.

Google doesn’t take low value spam content lightly. And when we say lightly, we mean you can be blacklisted from appearing on their search results all together. Google is big on good user experiences; meddling with that goal can lead to devastating consequences for your internet presence.

And honestly, why would you want to? You want your audience to stay, and to see you as a reliable presence on the internet. Link building works on a principle of high quality and diverse inbound links; this is what cements your website’s reputation on the internet!

Diverse Backlinks are Your Friends

Why is everyone so fussed about backlinks, you might find yourself thinking. Fair question!

Backlinks are an indicator for Google: it’s how it knows that your site can be trusted and is valuable to your audience. Think about it like a peer review process. The more sites link to you and send their audiences to you, the more recommendations you have scored from other sites in your niche!

If that many sites think highly enough of you to link to you, you must be pretty good, right? Google loves that!

The best way to do better in this preview system is to have a diverse range of links from across the internet: blog posts, other websites, link directories, social media, etc.

Relying on any one of these can be dangerous; you can get flagged for having an unusual link profile.

The best way to build your link profile is to do so slowly and authentically.

Diverse Anchors are Your Friends Too

This is closely linked to the problems of spammy backlinking we explained earlier. Let’s say you’ve worked very hard on your link building – good call! – and now have a diverse set of links from many corners of the internet leading back to you.

Except they all link to you with the text the best bakery in the city.

Hmm. A bit suspicious, don’t you think? What with it being a useful keyword and all?

We all love our keywords in SEO. However, using them constantly in links as anchor texts is a little weird, according to Google, which thinks you’re trying to game the system.

As with all keyword use, keep your keywords and anchors naturally, authentically, and organically worded.

The Upshot

There are no shortcuts in SEO, including in link building. Google rewards authenticity and value when it comes to content, and it’s in your best interest to lean into that way of doing things. Link building can seem intimidating, but an agency like AdLift by your side, it doesn’t have to be!

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