To further confirm how vital link building is, Google themselves have stated that backlinks are one of their top three ranking signals when determining where a website should appear in its search results.
We must add a caveat here, just in case you thought that the number of backlinks alone influences Google. It does to a point, but Google also assesses the quality and relevance of those backlinks and their origin. In other words, if you thought it was a simple matter of going out and creating dozens of spammy links, you need to think again.
Read More +Bianca Chaney / Principal Speech Pathologist, Kid Speak
The first task we must carry out is determining what keywords we wish to rank for. This requires a lot of research to identify keywords with good search volumes, determine how difficult they will be to rank for, perform competitor analysis to see what they are ranking for, and determine what combination of short-tail and long-tail keywords you will use.
Once we have researched keywords, it is time to create content within our website that relates to specific keywords. The overriding principle is that the content we create is high-quality and, indeed, content visitors who read it would also regard it as well-written and informative.
Read More +As a website starts to grow in popularity and its rankings improve, you will often find that the ‘No’ you got previously from another website becomes ‘a Yes’, and better than that, they may want content in the form of a guest post, with a backlink, that they will promote. Imagine how Google will view that when assessing your website’s backlink profile.
While getting links from high-authority sites is great, you must not focus purely on them. Google likes to see a backlink profile that includes links from all kinds of sources, which is more natural to them. Don’t overlook putting links on relevant websites that may not necessarily be on page one of Google. Also, include links from social media pages.
You also want to mix up the types of links you use. By that, we mean not focusing on one anchor text because that is your top keyword. Again, Google frowns upon backlinks to a website where every single one has the same anchor text and can penalise a website.