Link Building and BackLinks
So you have a website with great content, but you are still having trouble ranking on Google. The key to having your company show up in front of potential customers is to follow the Google E.E.A.T.methodology. The A is for Authority which is about linking value.
What makes Google’s search engine display relevant results is that it relies on other user inputs to determine which sites to show up. They do this by looking at who is linking to your site. Below are a couple of bullet points outlining the features of this strategy.
Number of Links
It is about the number of backlinks, but it isn’t just about a number. Get a lot of quality links, and you will get authority. Get a lot of low-quality links and you could actually hurt your performance in search. Google started just looking at links not how they are linking, contextual links, or anchor text, but they have started identifying different ways to determine the quality of a link. The have been updating their search over the last 15 years. Yes, quantity helps, but also quality. You can match a competitor’s number of links, but you will notice that some sites with less backlinks could still outrank you. That is because of the quality of the backlink.
Contextual Links
One of the most important updates Google has made over the years, was to adapt its algorithm to look for contextual links. This means that the backlink is contained within content relevant to your website, for example. You are a Dentist in Salt Lake City, Utah, and someone links to your site an article about ‘Pain-free Dental practices’. Within the content, they reference your website and provide a link to your website. This is a contextual link. Before this update, Google would count a link on any site placed anywhere on a webpage, whether it was relevant to the page or not.
Quality of Linking Sites
The next thing Google started to look at was the quality of the site. Each site is given a numeric value that through backlinking(sometimes referred to as link juice) can be passed to another site by linking to that site. So the value of the site with the backlink became very important. Companies like Moz and SEMrush quickly came up with their own ranking metrics to try and match what Google may be using to assign value to a website. They came up with DA(Domain Authority) and DR(Domain Rank).
To determine the value of a website, these metrics can be a good starting point. These metrics however, are not accurate enough to rely on alone. We like to use search volume as a final check of value. Metrics from these sites can be manipulated. However, search volume is not easily gamed, especially when it is based on their own rankings.
Google’s Helpful Content Update
Google continues to improve its authority score and taking another step towards improving the client experience. They did this by releasing the Google Helpful Content Update in 2022. This update that caught many SEO agencies off guard. Too many agencies increased their profit by providing low quality content. In trying to improve user experience, Google also ensures quality helpful content is produced. At liftmyrank we have always believed that Google would eventually release this update. Although it has taken 10 years, our clients were well prepared.
Bad Links Will Hurt Your Site
Still, too many agencies continue to provide low quality links that will hurt their clients websites. Quality and valuable backlinks help your site gain authority, but bad, low-quality sites do the opposite and hurt your authority. There are a lot of spammy, low-quality sites out there used just for link building. Sometimes bad SEO agencies will use a PBN(private blog network). This is where they own the websites they are posting content to. If they are doing this, the content quality would also have to be pretty low, hurting your site even more. Luckily Google has a tool that you can disavow these sites from harming your site. Some will also link these sites to hurt your value so that your competitors will outrank you. I would run a link audit at least once a year.
Solution
We created Lift my rank using Google best practices and future proof our clients from Google spam updates. Our content is written by US, quality writers and proof read by our team of Editors. Our outreach team is constantly developing relationships with publishers that have high quality and free from spam. Our goal is to make the internet a better place through relevant helpful content that helps businesses compete online. We offer competitive Link Building pricing that wont break the bank.