Building Links Calgary
Linking between relevant websites helps to bring in more traffic. This method can help boost the optimization of a website, helping it rank much higher. Site owners will want to make sure they cultivate authority backlinks for their website to help improve the site, draw in more visitors, and boost the ranking for their website in the search engines.
Backlinks are inbound links to a website. They connect the site to relevant articles from other websites and help boost the authority of a website. More backlinks will tend to show that the website is more popular. However, the backlinks need to be quality backlinks and as many as possible should be from an authority website. These are websites that are already highly ranked and seen as experts on the subject.
Are Backlinks Helping SEO?
Part of SEO is a popularity contest. While it’s possible to boost your ranking if your website doesn’t have a lot of visitors yet, sites with the highest rankings have many more visitors each day. The amount varies depending on the keyword and how often people search for it. When a website has more backlinks, it appears to be more popular to the search engines.
The backlinks do need to be quality links, however. Quality backlinks are those that are relevant to the website. Quality is just as important as quantity, if not more. If the backlinks are from random sites that aren’t relevant, they’re not going to help the website nearly as much as links that are from authority websites. Search engines don’t want to see a ton of links that have nothing to do with the site, they want relevant links.
How Can a Website Owner Obtain Backlinks?
To get backlinks, the website owner needs to work with other website owners. They’ll need to find websites that are relevant, then ask the website owner to link to their site. Website owners can contact local bloggers and others who write about related topics to request a backlink. However, one issue with doing this is reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links are done when two website owners decide to link to each other’s website. In certain is fine, but the website owner needs to be sure the results will benefit them as well. They don’t want to trade links with just anyone. The website they request a backlink should be relevant and shouldn’t already have an abundance of backlinks on their site. Again, this is where quality over quantity matters.
Does Linking to Your Other Websites Help?
Website owners who have multiple websites might want to link one site to another. This is typically okay, but there is the potential for issues. Backlinks need to be quality backlinks, so the websites that are linked together should be about similar topics or should at least compliment each other. For instance, if a website owner has a site about cooking and one about being a parent, a link, in this case, would not be a good idea.
This should be done sparingly, if at all. The search engines can see which websites are hosted on the same IP address, which means they’ll know the same person owns the sites. They typically won’t count these links as quality backlinks. On the other hand, they won’t hurt the website’s ranking as long as they are used sparingly, so they can help bring traffic from one site to another. More traffic can help boost the website’s ranking.
One Thousand Backlinks
Educate Yourself and be Careful!
Many backlinks ‘can’ be added at any given time, as long as they have been earned, while respecting Google’s best practices. Websites that ‘do’ gain a ton of backlinks which are not relevant to their website are risking more negative results – as the search engines get smarter. Spammy or shady backlinks are not going to boost your rankings at all, they may even hurt you in the form of a penalty! Depending on how the backlinks are secured, if they are proven to be obtained with shady practices, your website can be removed entirely from search engines. SERPs SEO staff will definitely make sure your backlink profile is clean. Slowly acquiring quality backlinks can have a much more significant impact on the ranking of the website.
Backlinks are crucial today for website owners who want to ensure their website ranks highly in the search engines. To build quality backlinks and boost how much the links can do for the site, owners will want to work with a company that helps build the links. SEO experts like SERPs.ca use a white-hat, natural outreach effort to help cultivate quality backlinks for any website.
Calgarian Website Link Building
The popular theory is that the more backlinks, whether or not they are quality links, are better. This theory states that more backlinks are crucial to increasing a website’s ranking quickly to help the website attract more visitors. Many SEO’s still think this is true, though it can cause significant issues for your site down the line. It can even create your website’s ranking to plummet, and this can be very difficult to come back from.
Shortcuts/Cookie-cutter grey-hat methods can buy you a higher ranking now, but that higher-ranking won’t last. Instead, learn about how to acquire backlinks without the shortcuts, without the ‘want’ even though it takes longer, to see a sustained increase in your website’s ranking.
The Definition of Backlinks, and Why They’re so Important
Concerning your website, backlinks are the links that connect other sites back to yours. These are the links that help show people they can get more information on your website, that help bring them from other websites to yours. However, they do a lot more than this as well. Backlinks can help boost your website’s SERPs rankings. Building links for SEO purposes in Calgary will help your site and business strive in this economy if done correctly, of course!
Search engines look for backlinks to determine the popularity or authority of a website. If there are a lot of other sites linking to yours, the search engines assume your website contains authoritative information that people may want to know. The search engines then rank your website higher, ensuring more people can see the information that the search engines have determined is important based on how popular and authoritative your site seems to be.
Previously, more backlinks did mean a higher search engine result. The more backlinks a website had, the more popular it seemed, which means the search engines would rank it higher. However, the major search engines caught on to the different ways websites would obtain links to make them appear a better option, even if they weren’t. This resulted in Google creating the Penguin algorithm update. This update changes the algorithm used by Google to look for not just the number of backlinks, but the quality of them as well.
Google doesn’t say exactly what they look for when determining the value of links. They don’t want website owners to try to bypass their qualifications for assessing the value of a link to try to gain a higher ranking quickly. Instead, it’s important to simply focus on obtaining quality backlinks, even if there are fewer of them, to ensure the backlinks are going to help the website gain a higher ranking. Today, it’s better to have fewer high-quality backlinks than to have an overabundance of low-quality backlinks that could cause your SERPs ranking to nosedive.
The Google Penguin Update
Google considers low-quality and irrelevant backlinks designed to gain a higher ranking to be spam. In 2012, they announced the Penguin algorithm update designed to find out which backlinks are relevant and which ones are just spam. This update was designed to identify links that, according to Google’s guidelines, are manipulative, unearned or simply link spam. They specifically looked for backlinks that were purchased, as these are done simply to help boost the website’s ranking, not to help visitors to the website find more relevant information.
This is the most significant change to the Google algorithm as far as how links are counted. And, it’s often the biggest one that’s ignored by SEO professionals and website owners alike. Website owners today are still purchasing backlinks, still spamming forums, social media, and other websites to create backlinks, and using other shortcuts to try to obtain more backlinks for their site.
While this might appear to work in the beginning, it’s temporary; it’s not going to provide a sustainable increase in the website’s ranking. Even if the links seem to help at the beginning, because of the Penguin update, they aren’t going to continue to help the website keep its higher ranking. Eventually, it could mean the website’s SERPs ranking, drastically fails, negating all of the work and money to obtain the low-quality backlinks.
The Biggest Shortcut Available Today – And Why it Doesn’t Work
Website owners today often pay for backlinks. Instead of working to create backlinks for their website naturally, they’ll pay a company to obtain thousands of backlinks overnight. These backlinks are obtained through a variety of different methods, though they’re not likely to be high-quality backlinks that will positively impact the website. The reason this still exists and is available is that, at first, it works. The thousands of backlinks will rapidly boost the website’s ranking, making it appear as if the purchase was successful and well worth the money. The problem is, this doesn’t last.
Though the ranking does increase, it will quickly fall again and may never be able to reach that higher-ranking again. Website owners often don’t see the real issue causing their ranking to fall, which means they’ll pay for more and more backlinks, trying to regain the high ranking they initially saw. Their ranking might rise and fall again, but eventually, they might be penalized through Google for attempting to purchase a higher ranking. If they continue or they obtain enough penalties, they could be removed from Google’s search results entirely. It is almost impossible for a website to come back from this.
Shortcuts You Should Avoid When Obtaining Backlinks
Website owners and SEO professionals use a variety of shortcuts to obtain backlinks today. The goal is often to obtain as many backlinks as possible in a short amount of time to ensure the website’s ranking will rise quickly. They’ll often use manipulative tactics to try to gain this higher ranking, including purchasing links. Understanding the types of links and how they should not be used is crucial to know how to cultivate high-quality backlinks that are going to boost the ranking of a website. It’s important to know what you should avoid or be cautious about.
Directories and Link Networks – There are many different types of directories and networks web marketers might participate in to try to gain more links. Article directories were simply a website that hosted short articles written specifically to gain backlinks and are no longer going to work. Web directories can be useful if the web directory chosen is actually relevant to the website. Link networks are designed to place more links throughout the network to create a huge number of backlinks quickly. Websites can be penalized or removed from Google’s index when they use a network like this.
Hidden Links on Websites – Links that are valid can be seen by viewers of the website and can be used by the viewer to get to more information that’s relevant. Long ago, website owners would create hidden links by making the links the same colour as the website’s background to try to get the link counted as a backlink for a website without having to actually show viewers the link existed. These were often paid for, and they simply do not work anymore.
Exchanging Links Between Websites – Websites can exchange links with each other to create backlinks, but it still must be done correctly. The links need to appear naturally, need to lead to relevant information, and need to be high-quality links. Websites cannot simply trade links to any other website to try to gain more backlinks for their website. If exchanging links isn’t done carefully, it could lead to penalties for both websites.
The First Step to Getting High-Quality Backlinks
Much like on-page SEO, there are similar elements when creating an off-page marketing strategy, such as using relevant keywords and creating exciting, engaging content. However, in addition to writing content, you now need to reach out to trusted, reputable websites who will vouch for your website, services, and products. By gaining the vote of confidence from fellow sites, your integrity, and authority as a market leader increases, which is highly significant for Google’s algorithms. The other critical factors Google uses to assess off-page SEO include:
To get high-quality backlinks, you need a website that’s worth linking to. Website owners who understand backlinks aren’t going to want to link to just any website. It can bring down the authority of their own website and decrease their search engine ranking if it appears they’re just linking to any website that asks. Instead, you’ll want to make sure your website is relevant and a good choice for them to link to. To do this, you’ll need high-quality content.
Many websites are designed just to sell a product. However, that doesn’t mean they cannot include information their visitors would be interested in. Along with selling the product, they can include content written by experts in their industry. This gives visitors more information, shows that they’re an authority on the subject, and encourages other websites to link to their content. Many websites aren’t going to just link to products on another website, especially if they’re in the same industry and trying to sell their own products. They will, on the other hand, link to informative content that will be beneficial for their visitors.
Any website, regardless of the products they’re trying to sell, can use high-quality content to show they’re an authoritative source for the industry. This can be seamlessly integrated into their website, can become a focus of the website, and can help lead to more sales. The content they post on the website can help their visitors get answers to questions they might have, can help encourage backlinks to bring more visitors to the website and can help the website gain a higher ranking because the search engines see that the website includes information that people will want.
Create Backlinks Naturally
Backlinks need to be created naturally. Though this can take a while to do, the backlinks create this way will not lead the website to a risk of penalties, will help bring in more visitors from other websites and search engines, and will help show that the website is an authority in their industry. It might be a while between each backlink that’s created, but when high-quality backlinks are created, you’ll gain far more from them. There are a few different ways to naturally create more backlinks. The main idea is that you’ll want to make sure these backlinks are ones you would want to create to gain more visitors even if it did not have an impact on your search engine rankings.
These are just a few of the reasons to have our writers produce content and copy for your website. Read on to learn more about why so many entrust us with this important responsibility or get in touch with us to place an order now.
Use Niche Directories
Although web directories can be seen as spam links, this is not always the case. Done carefully and using the right directories, you can create backlinks to your website that will help boost your ranking. It’s important to look for directories that are relevant to your products. For instance, if you sell fitness products, look for directories that help consumers learn about the top fitness products they can purchase online. These directories are relevant and can help more viewers find you, not just boost your search engine ranking.
Connect with Industry Experts
There are already people who are an expert in your industry and who have a website you might want to link to. Create a backlink from their website to yours by having them participate in your website. This can be done, for example, by interviewing them for your website. They’ll want to link to your website so their followers or fans can read what they said in the interview for you, creating more links that will take their website visitors to your website.
Create Educational Content
Educational content teaches your visitors about something. They might learn how to use something you sell, how to do a project using the items you sell, or anything else that teaches them something that might be interesting to them. This type of content can be a written article or a video, so long as it teaches the viewers something. When they learn something interesting, they’ll be willing to share your content with others. This helps naturally spread your link around the internet, reaching out to more viewers and creating backlinks that help boost your ranking.
Write Guest Posts
While you want to create informative content for your own website, it’s possible you’ll want to connect with another website to create content for them. If you create content for a relevant website, it will include links to your website, which count as backlinks. Make sure you’re choosing to create guest posts that are written for relevant sites to ensure this is going to be a way to create more backlinks instead of being seen as a manipulative way to gain a higher search engine ranking.
Ask for a Link
Another completely valid way to obtain backlinks that’s often overlooked is to simply ask for a link. This should only be done with websites that are relevant, as it’s going to be a waste of time to try to convince websites on a completely different topic to create a link to your website. Take the time to find the right person to contact for the website, then call them to discuss adding a link to your website from their website.
What is Your DA? Why is it Important?
To determine if your backlinks are helping and to make sure your website is ranking as high as possible, you’ll want to check out the DA, or domain authority, for your website. This is a search engine ranking score designed to predict how your site will rank in the search engine results. The higher the score you have, the higher your website will rank. This is done by evaluating links and comparing them to your own website over time to see an increase or to your competitors to make sure your site will have a higher ranking.
Though this doesn’t work exactly since the search engine’s algorithms are not fully known, the tools that can determine your DA are as accurate as possible and can provide a good idea of how well your website is doing. You’ll want to use these tools regularly to ensure your website’s ranking is increasing and making sure you stay ahead of the competition. Use more than one tool at a time to get a better picture of how your backlinks are helping your website.
Use All the Tools to Check Your Website Quality
Today, there are many different tools you can use to check your domain authority. While you can use shortcuts to gain backlinks and get a higher ranking, at least temporarily, you cannot get a high score with these tools if you’re not creating quality backlinks. Higher scores show you are an authority in your industry and will show you that you’re on the right track to get a much higher ranking in the search engines.
Majestic
Majestic uses two different metrics, trust flow and citation flow. The citation flow simply predicts how popular your backlinks are, while the trust flow shows whether the link is from a trustworthy source. Your citation flow score can increase without your trust flow increasing, but you will want to make sure your trust flow increases to be as high as possible.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is designed to help you monitor how well your website is doing in Google search results. It includes crucial metrics designed to allow you to see how the search engine itself views your site, the backlinks to your website, and much more.
SEMrush
SEMrush checks the number of links to your website and ensures there are not too many of them, that it looks like the links are spammy. It also helps show the quality of your links, then lets you know if there are any high-quality links within your backlink profile which will help significantly boost your website’s rankings.
MOZ
MOZ is the tool to check your website’s domain authority plus much more technical and on-page SEO metrics. MOZ also provides essential information to help you boost your website’s DA so your site can rank higher in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Many SEO professionals use this tool to audit and update their websites.
More backlinks are not always better. Backlinks cannot simply be purchased. They cannot be obtained through spamming social media websites, forums, and messaging boards. They need to be procured carefully and need to be high quality to help boost your website’s ranking and to ensure your site doesn’t receive any penalties. Though it can take time for you to obtain high-quality backlinks, creating natural backlinks that help show your website is an authority will help you gain a higher search engine ranking. They’ll also make sure you can keep your higher search engine ranking, enabling you to reach out to more customers.
Backlink Acquisition and What Every Business Owner Needs to Know
The widespread theory is that the more backlinks, whether or not they are quality links, are better. This theory states that more backlinks are crucial to increasing a website’s ranking quickly to help the website attract more visitors. Many SEO’s still think this is true, though it can cause significant issues for your website down the line. It can even cause your website’s ranking to plummet and this can be very difficult to come back from. Shortcuts/Cookie-cutter grey-hat methods can buy you a higher ranking now, but that higher ranking simply won’t last. Instead, learn about how to acquire backlinks without the shortcuts, without the ‘want’ even though it takes longer, to see a sustained increase in your website’s ranking.
The Importance of Backlinks
Google looks at a site’s authority when ranking it. Backlinks from reputable sources increase the authority of the page while also improving the page’s value in terms of search engine optimization. On the other hand, duplicate content brinks the page down in the SERPs. In fact, some data suggests Google gives a great deal of weight to the link popularity of a page, as slightly more than 22 percent of its ranking algorithm is devoted to this one element. However, the backlinks must meet certain criteria before they are given this weight.
Content
The most critical element when it comes to backlink acquisition is outstanding content. When a site lacks timely, relevant and interesting content, it becomes much more difficult to obtain backlinks. For this reason, experienced third-party providers don’t allow clients to write and provide their own content. The team works with the webmaster of the partner site to create content, as this helps to ensure everything is in sync and the client obtains the desired results.
When ranking a site for the search engine results page, Google looks at semantic relevance and optimization. Keywords continue to decrease in importance, as the search engines now wish to see a topic covered in depth on one page. For this reason, long-form content has likewise increased in importance, as it allows for more information to be shared with a visitor in one sitting.
Obtaining Backlinks from Reputable Sources
A business owner or webmaster may find it difficult to acquire backlinks as they aren’t sure how best to go about doing so. Often, a person sends an email and hopes for the best. However, many other business owners may be doing the same, so it helps to find a way to stand out in the crowd. When requesting backlinks, send an email to the webmaster or blogger, but don’t stop there. Be sure to follow this communication up with a phone call, as most people don’t do this. This shows the site owner or webmaster that backlinks are taken seriously and they are more likely to consider a partnership in this situation.
However, the backlinks must be from authority sites. Fortunately, there are tools available to help determine the domain authority. Once this has been identified, a webmaster needs to take other steps to learn more about the company. For example, it must be determined if the link is a do-follow or no-follow link, as Google looks more favourably on those links that are do-follow. Furthermore, they take the type of publication into account, preferring large publishers over small, independent sites with fewer readers and a particular focus. Knowing which sites to focus on when obtaining backlinks is crucial to one’s success.
Relevancy
The relevancy of the backlinks is critical. The two websites linking to each other must be extremely relevant or Google will discount them. Quantity is of less importance than quality in this area. More links are better, but only if they come from authoritative and diverse sources and relate to the material presented on the page where they are displayed. Obviously, the best way to get other sites to link to yours is to offer high-quality content. Doing so makes it easier for the partner site to link to the content and promote it, which is the objective when it comes to backlinks.
Metrics
All metrics need to be considered when choosing which sites to partner with. Don’t simply focus on the traffic received by a site or a site that offers products and services for sale. Look for those sites that go above and beyond the basics, and link to sites that have an About Us Page, ones that tell a story about the business, and things of that type. Consumers wish to do business with those they know, and features such as these on a partner site allow the consumer to feel more confident doing business with both partners. While it isn’t always possible to find sites that have all of these features, the goal is to do so whenever possible.
Finding these sites takes time and effort that many providers aren’t willing to invest. However, some providers do go above and beyond the standard procedure to ensure their clients get the best results. Make sure to choose one of these providers as a backlink partner and gain an edge over competitors. Ask about what metrics are used and why. If the provider pulls out a set list and doesn’t offer any explanation as to how the particular metrics will be used to move the client’s business forward, it is time to look elsewhere. A cookie-cutter approach is not beneficial when it comes to obtaining backlinks, but many providers treat it as such.
Finding Backlinks
People often ask how third-party providers find reputable backlinks. The first place to start is to research professional platforms such as LinkedIn to find reputable individuals and companies in the industry. They are the ones that have a huge following, great content, and an outstanding reputation. Connect with these individuals and companies and begin making new friends. When a person does so, they find the sharing of ideas opens many doors and increases one’s ability to acquire beneficial backlinks. However, more needs to be done.
Some companies scour the internet and assume this is enough. While this is a great way to find authority sites to partner with, it is only one step of the process. Successful backlink acquisition requires a person build a network outside of the online world, and the best way to do so is to attend events and functions to share ideas with others in the industry and learn from them at the same time.
A good place to start building this network is with influencers in the industry. For example, a person who sells car parts will want to connect with those individuals who run a website and have a weekly podcast on the topic. They can be of great help in the future when it comes to promoting great content and are often more willing to do so when they have a relationship with the person supplying the content. Furthermore, journalists should never be ignored when building a network, as they can distribute information quickly and easily to their reader base. These are only two examples of how a diverse network can be of great help to a person looking to acquire high-quality backlinks.
Location Is of Importance
Care must be taken when choosing international sites to partner with. While the world is full of amazing people who have a great deal to contribute, search engine crawlers are limited in what they can scan. If a site does not contain perfect grammar and English, it may not be properly indexed. Although it is unfortunate that an outstanding site may be overlooked due to this, it is simply the way companies must function until technology advances to the point where the crawlers can better process information that isn’t exactly as expected. For this reason, businesses need to partner with North American sites at this time.
Price
Don’t assume simply because a website is demanding payment for a backlink that it is reputable. Sites should want to publish the content provided by others simply because the material is great. There is no need for a fee to exchange hands in this situation. It may be an amazing article that will be shared on their site or a beautiful infographic, and the fact that the material draws new people into their site should be payment enough.
One thing to keep in mind is Google has been known to penalize sites in the past for purchasing backlinks. The company now states acquiring backlinks strictly to improve in the search engine rankings is forbidden. This isn’t the only concern the company has regarding paid backlinks either. Google has stated any backlink that has been purchased comes with more risk and, as a result, will be given less weight than other backlinks that have been obtained for free.
Finally, when working with a third-party provider, expect to pay more for experienced staff. This is a competitive industry and providers must pay their employees well if they wish to keep them. While this may appear burdensome at first to clients, they quickly come to realize that this is one industry where a person honestly does get what they pay for. The experienced staff can locate reputable backlinks that will move the site up in the search engine results pages and do so in a way that is extremely professional.
Limitations
Clients need to recognize that their preferred URL for a backlink cannot be guaranteed. When partnering with another site, a website owner or webmaster needs to understand the partner is more knowledgeable about his or her site and therefore knows which page to link to in order to provide the best results. The link needs to benefit both parties in this situation, and the client must recognize that the third party provider and the partner are in the best position to determine which URL to use to achieve this goal.
Broken Backlinks
Clients often wonder what can be done to prevent broken backlinks. When linking to authority sites, this becomes less of a concern. Rarely are broken links seen on these sites, as they tend to remain “live” forever. However, the provider has no control over the partner sites. To ensure clients don’t need to worry about this issue, backlinks are guaranteed for 180 days. In the event a broken link is found, it will be replaced during this period at no charge to the client.
While backlinks can be easily obtained, doing so without considering the above factors may lead to disaster. Any link that does not take into account Google’s best practices will do more harm than good to partner sites. Sadly, many webmasters, business owners, and low-cost third-party providers fail to recognize this, and the result may be the complete removal of a site from the search engine results page. Don’t rush the process. Take the time to acquire quality backlinks to watch the site move up in the search engine results. Doing so benefits the business for the foreseeable future, so it is worth the time and the effort put into the process.
What many people likewise fail to realize is Google does not distinguish between the United States and Canada. They look at North America as one unit and rank sites accordingly. Individuals may assume this will hurt them, but nothing is further from the truth. This not only gives a company more options when it comes to their third-party providers, but it brings more exposure to companies that can move up in the rankings. A larger audience sees them. For this reason, every company needs to strive for one of the top three positions on the search engine results page. With the right provider, making it to one of these spots becomes easier.
We are this provider. Contact us today to learn more about how we can be of assistance to you. Our success is founded on your progress, which is the one thing we never forget. Unless we help you move forward, our business can’t grow and expand. For this reason, we give 100 percent to every project we take on and use techniques not seen with other providers. Reach out to us, and we’ll explain how and why we do this so you can succeed.