How to Build a Quality Backlink Profile | 8 Expert Strategies |
You have probably heard of the term backlinking if you run a website or blog. Backlinks are crucial in improving a website’s search engine optimization or SEO. Simply put, the more high-quality backlinks you have pointing to your website, the more search engines like Google will view your website as a credible and authoritative source of information. This is the very definition of a quality backlink profile.
On the other hand, a low-quality backlink profile can harm your website’s SEO and hurt your search engine rankings. Fortunately, building a strong, high-quality backlink profile is not difficult, and it’s something that any website owner can master.
What is a Quality Backlink Profile?
A quality baclink profile is a collection of links from other websites that point to your website. When another website links to your site, it’s like they say, “Hey, this website is worth checking out!” In the eyes of search engines like Google, this is a good thing. When search engines see that other websites are linking to your site, it signals that your site is high-quality and trustworthy, and they’re more likely to display it in search results.
Here’s proof that Scalefluence can help you build a quality backlink profile.
If you have a lot of high-quality, relevant backlinks pointing to your site, search engines will see your site as more trustworthy and authoritative, which can help improve your rankings in search results. Also, a strong backlink profile can drive traffic to your site from other reputable websites.
Factors that Influence Your Profile Quality
Relevance and Authority
Google values backlinks that demonstrate relevance and authority. This means that the links coming to your site should be from related or similar domains with a good reputation.
Natural Link Acquisition
A quality backlink profile should look natural, meaning they shouldn’t seem to have been purchased or manipulated. This involves having a balanced mix of dofollow and nofollow links.
Quality of Backlinks
The quality of the websites linking to your site also matters a lot. High-quality websites with high domain authority and page authority contribute to a strong backlink profile.
Quantity and Diversity
While the quality of backlinks is important, the quantity also plays a role. Various links from different domains indicate to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy.
Anchor Text
The anchor text used in the backlinks also plays a role in your backlink profile. It should be varied and relevant to the content it’s pointing to.
What a Quality Backlink Profile Looks Like
Good profiles:
- Have many relevant, organically-gained links from multiple high-authority sources
- Contain inbound links that aren’t spammy – including the anchor text they use
- Have mostly links from websites in your niche or those that share a common theme
- Have little to no low-authority or low-quality links
- Have a diverse range of backlinks
What a Bad Profile Looks Like
Bad profiles:
- Have few high authority links
- Contain mostly links from irrelevant sites
- Lack variation in types of backlinks
- Feature too many exact match or partial match keywords in the anchor text
- Have toxic backlinks – links that come from link farms, private blog networks (PBNs), or directories that are not niche specific
How to Find Your Site’s Profile
Getting a complete, comprehensive profile for your website can be difficult because SEO tools are limited. While the top tools can pull a lot of information, they may not capture every single backlink out there.
Why not?
Google crawls billions of websites daily, with over half a million new ones coming online every day. No matter how good a tool is, it’s impossible for them all to track every single link properly. Realize that companies like SEMRush, MOZ, AHREFS and Majestic are tiny corporations compared to Google; their resources are limited and do not crawl the entire internet.
Use any of these tools to get an idea of all the kinds of links that point to your site.
Google Search Console
If you’ve not already verified your website with Google Search Console, you’ll need to do that before you can use this free tool. Once you’ve logged into the dashboard, click “Links” on the left-hand menu. From there, you’ll see “Internal Links” and “External Links.”
Look at External Links for more detailed information about your backlinks – such as who links to you the most, the pages with the most links, and how the data changes over time.
It may take a couple of days for Google to pull in information about your website if you’re not already actively using the tool.
Ahrefs
A paid tool, this does way more than backlink analysis. After logging in to your account, enter your domain and click the “Site Explorer” tool. It is our view that Ahrefs has the deepest crawl of links across the internet.
From there, you’ll see “Backlink Profile” in the left-hand menu.
That’s where you’ll find the overview of your total backlinks, domain rating, referring domains, and more.
If you want to dig deeper to see more information about each backlink, you can find the:
- Referring page
- Anchor text
- Link value
Using Ahrefs makes it easy to track your profile growth over time and help you spot potential opportunities or issues.
Semrush
Another paid tool, Semrush offers a great deal of insight into your website’s SEO and backlinks. Once you’re logged in to your account, go to “Backlink Analytics.”
Put your domain in the search bar, and wait. The comprehensive report will provide information about the:
- Number of backlinks
- Referring domains
- Domain authority scores
You can dig deeper into specific links to learn more about the source, anchor text, and the dates they were first and last seen (allowing you to track lost backlinks)
There’s also a backlinks comparison feature to compare your profile to your competitors. With the Backlink Gap feature, you can see where you’ll need to capture links to boost your ranking.
Majestic SEO
Majestic SEO is another premium tool that makes it easier for you track your SEO efforts. Login to your account, enter your domain the search bar, and let it work its magic.
Majestic will generate a summary of your site’s backlink data, including the number of external backlinks, referring domains, and the Trust Flow and Citation Flow of your site. For more in-depth analysis, navigate to the ‘Backlinks’ tab, where you can see details about each backlink, including the source URL, anchor text, and the date it was first found.
Analyzing Your Backlink Profile
Keeping an eye on your profile is crucial to improving your overall rank.
Collect Backlink Data
Start by using your chosen backlink checker tool to gather data about all the websites linking to yours.
Identify High-Quality and Low-Quality Links
Not all backlinks are created equal. High-quality links come from authoritative, relevant websites. Low-quality links often come from spammy or irrelevant sites.
If you feel like the volume of low-quality or spam links may be negatively affecting your rank, you can prepare a disavow file. By disavowing the links, you tell Google not to pay attention to them when they crawl and index your website.
Assess Link Diversity
Look at the diversity of your backlinks in terms of domains, IP addresses, and types of websites. Generally, the more diverse, the better.
Analyze Anchor Text
Review the anchor text used for your backlinks. It should be varied and closely related to the keywords you want to rank for. Too many exact-match keyword anchors might appear unnatural, potentially leading to a Google penalty.
Check Link Velocity
This refers to the speed at which you gain new backlinks. A sudden surge of links could look suspicious to search engines and may trigger a penalty. Aim for a slow, steady stream of new links as you work to improve your profile.
Conduct a Competitor Analysis
Compare your backlink profile with that of your main competitors. This can help identify gaps in your own strategy and reveal opportunities for new backlinks.
Create Your Plan of Action
Based on your analysis, create a plan of action. This might include tactics to acquire more high-quality links, efforts to remove or disavow harmful links, or changes to your anchor text strategy.
Link Building Strategies to Improve Your Profile
Quality – Not Quantity
Rather than acquiring as many backlinks as possible, focus on obtaining relevant, high-quality links. Ideally, you want links from reputable websites that are related to your niche or industry. These types of links are much more valuable than generic links from low-quality websites.
Invest in Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a powerful way to build a quality backlink profile. It involves writing a blog post for another website or blog and including a link back to your own website within the content. Just ensure that the website or blog you are guest blogging for is relevant to your industry or niche and has a high domain authority.
Leverage Social Media
Social media is also a great tool for building backlinks. Whenever you publish new content on your website, share it on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This can increase the visibility of your content and make it more likely that other websites will link back to it.
Actively Participate in Online Forums and Q&A Sites
Participating in online forums and Q&A sites like Quora can also help you obtain high-quality backlinks. These sites allow you to showcase your knowledge and expertise on a particular topic, and you can include a link to your website within your forum or Q&A responses. Just make sure your responses are helpful and relevant to the discussion.
Broken Link Building for Quality Backlink Profile
Broken link building involves identifying broken links on high-authority websites in your niche and offering to replace them with your own content. This helps website owners fix their broken links and enables you to earn a backlink by offering a valuable solution. To start with broken link building, you should use a tool like Ahrefs to find broken links on high-authority websites, reach out to website owners, and offer to replace the broken links with high-quality content.
Resource Link Building
Resource link building is a type of backlink building that involves creating high-quality resources that others in your niche will find valuable and linking to them. This helps establish your business as an authority in your niche and attracts links from other websites, thereby boosting your backlink profile.
To get started with resource link building, you should identify the key resources your target audience is looking for and create high-quality content, including infographics, eBooks, and whitepapers that provide valuable information on the topic.
Skyscraper Technique
This technique involves identifying the most popular content in your niche, creating a better version, and promoting it to the websites linked to the original content. This can help you earn high-quality backlinks from other websites, boost your search engine rankings, and drive targeted traffic to your site.
To get started with the skyscraper technique, you should identify the most popular content in your niche, create top-quality content that is better than the original, and reach out to websites that link to the original content to promote your content.
Guestographic Link Building
Guestographic link building is a type of backlink building that involves creating infographics and pitching them to other websites in your niche. This can help you to build a quality backlink profile and drive referral traffic to your site.
To start with guestographic link building, identify websites in your niche that accept infographics, create high-quality infographics that add value to their audiences, and pitch them to the website owners.
Curating a Powerful Backlink Profile Won’t Happen Overnight
Building a quality backlink profile takes time, effort, and dedication. But following these tips and strategies can achieve great results and improve your website’s SEO. By implementing the above strategies, you can build a quality backlink profile and establish your business as an authority in your niche.
