Backlinks are one of the fundamental factors of website ranking in the Google search engine. External promotion can be different, and the debate about the "usefulness" of links does not subside. Today, we are going to talk about link building, types of links, their relevance, and how to choose a platform for placement.
General information about links
Let's start small. A link is a tool for moving from one page to another. For example, a pet care website has a link to the page of a pet food manufacturer. The linking site is considered the donor, and the feed manufacturer's page is considered the acceptor. Links include an anchor (text or image) and anchor text (words before and after the key).
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External promotion: a little history
Google introduced link ranking in 1997. The meaning of the ranking technology was as follows: the more links to a website, the higher its authority. And then it started: SEO specialists massively increased links and brought low-quality sites to the top of the search results. Already in 2003, search engines introduced the first filters to reduce the number of link spammers. The point is that the influence of links has decreased, but they are still an important component of website promotion. A high-quality link profile is a must if you have long-term plans for your website.
Is linkless promotion possible?
This is an eternal debate from the "which came first: the egg or the chicken" series. We believe that SEO without links for high-frequency and mid-frequency keywords is impossible. You can promote your site with content only for ultra- and low-frequency queries. You will have to spend a lot of time and money on creating "original" articles, make systematic publications, and wait for the result.
Content promotion includes publishing a variety of content (taking into account semantics) and creating a convenient and understandable website structure. A high-quality website and content increase the behavioral factors and the time spent on the website. Accordingly, if the site structure is inconvenient and the content is not original, the user will quickly close the browser tab.
The main types of links
There are different types of links: perpetual, leased (or temporary), automatic, and crowd links. Let's take a look at how link types affect promotion.
Eternal
Such links are bought once and placed on the resource forever. Only "forever" can last only 1-3 years. There may be different reasons for this:
- the resource owner has decided to remove all links;
- stopped paying for hosting services;
- sold the site, and the new owner vidalized the link.
The main advantage of such links is that they are placed inside thematic articles. They look natural, so it is difficult for search engines to identify them.
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Rental
Paid links are paid monthly and are not placed in the text: only in the sidebar or footer. They look unnatural, so they cost less than perpetual links and are easily identified by search engines.
Previously, the demand for such links was incredible among SEO specialists (they bought up to 10,000 cheap links).
Automatic
These are links with a monthly fee provided by Sape, Seopult, Webeffector, etc.
SThe SEO specialist needs to specify the landing pages and queries for obtaining external links. The system does the rest: it finds the appropriate pages and sites and places the links. If a link is missing, the service replaces it with another one.
You rely on the algorithms of the chosen service and do not control the process. Such promotion resembles a pig in a poke: the positions and traffic of the site may increase, but there is a very high probability that the site will fall under search engine filters.
Crowd
Such links are placed in reviews and comments on thematic forums and blogs and look natural. Crowd links are paid for once and are placed forever (of course, if the forum administration does not remove them). For example, a user bought a product in an online store and was satisfied with it. He posts a positive review with a link to the product. Search engines consider such links to be natural.
The main disadvantage of building external links with the help of crowd-sourced links is that it is time-consuming. You will need to place one link to get it:
- find a thematic forum or service;
- register and increase your rating (without a rating, it is not always possible to leave links and write messages);
- write a natural post to make it look useful to people, not promotional.
Then it's like Russian roulette: if you're lucky, the post will be moderated and you'll get a backlink and possibly additional traffic to your site, if you're unlucky, the moderators won't post the post and you'll waste your time.
TIR 2
Second-level links (also known as tir or tier 2 links) are an approach that will take your external promotion to a whole new level. This term refers to the method of placing external links, not to your website, but to the pages of other resources where you have previously posted content with links to your pages (they are also called tier 1 links).
Why do it? To increase the effect of the received links. Without increasing your link profile. That is, the number of links to your site will remain unchanged.
This is what second-level links can do:
increase the rating of your resource;
increase its attendance;
increase the visibility of the site on the Web;
increase the authority of your domain.
Many SEO experts use a similar strategy. Moreover, websites in the TOP 5 search results in a highly competitive niche for a high-frequency query are most likely to use TIR 2 links. If you are not using them in your promotion yet, it's time to try it! And if you're worried that Google will penalize your site for using this technique, don't worry: you're not at risk because you're building up the link profile of other resources. Of course, you need to do it within reasonable limits!
When it is most beneficial to use tier 2 links:
If you already have a limited number of backlinks from cool websites, building them up makes each link stronger;
if you have too many first-level links, put links from other resources on them to get more benefit without suspicious activity with your link.
The main thing is not to make the promoted website worse. We recommend avoiding dubious sites and placing links only on trusted thematic resources.
How to choose a suitable platform?
The resource analysis includes 6 main indicators.
Attendance
The more visits to the site, the higher the likelihood of referrals to your resource. Consider sites with more than 500 visitors per day. Analyze where users come from. If users get to the resource from search results, placement on such a resource is the best option. You can analyze traffic and its sources using a plugin from Similar Web.
Quality.
You can determine the quality of the donor's link mass using the DR Ahrefs (a good indicator is more than 20) and TF Majestic (a good indicator is > 10) parameters. If the site has a low trust, you should not "cross it out" from the list for placement. It may be a young site with good potential.
Subject matter
If you write about sports, post on sports sites; if you sell building materials, choose construction forums. You have to admit, posting a link about cement on a sports resource is a bad plan. The problem is that thematic resources run out quickly. To continue promotion by building external links, you can:
- expand the topic (post in related niches that are close to your topic);
- be placed on multithematic platforms;
- negotiate placement in the media.
The level of "reference"
Linking is the ratio of the number of links to the number of indexed pages. A resource is considered good if the level of linking is low (no more than 30%).
Location.
If your link is placed on the main page of the site, you will get maximum attention and clicks from the audience, and not just a "link for the sake of a link". Placement on the main page is more effective than in the footer or sidebar.
Visual analysis of the site
An experienced SEO specialist will quickly determine whether it is worth publishing a link on a resource. If you don't know how to determine the trustworthiness of websites, analyze them:
- how often the site is updated;
- audience engagement (if there are comments after the article, it's a good sign);
- the number of reposts and publications in social networks;
- technical errors on the website;
- the presence of aggressive advertising (there will be no viral advertising on a good website).
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Conclusions.
We recommend making SEO promotion comprehensive: collect the semantic core, use link building, conduct internal website optimization, and fill the pages with high-quality content.
This way, your resource will look natural and will not be sanctioned by search engines.
