Guest Article
Every discussion about Google rankings and SEO involves backlinks someway.
Why? Because these are one of the major ranking factors in most of the search engines, Google specifically. If we look at SEO Power Suite, Search Metrics, and Backlinko’s research insights, inbound links are there in the ranking factors list besides content and user experience.
Simply put, it’s nearly impossible to rank without having backlinks.
I’ve witnessed numerous times the power of editorial backlinks to skyrocket a website from nowhere in Google search results to be placed on page one.
Links are Important, But Not All
Every link holds a value, positive or negative way. Not all links are treated equally. And we can digest this phenomenon easily. Link from a high domain authority (DA) website wouldn’t do any good when there is a far gap in concern with contextual or geographical relevancy. Domain authority is a search engine ranking score that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages or (SERPs).
If you don’t understand search algorithms deeply, you would spend hundreds of dollars on buying a link from DA 80+ website which doesn’t hold real value, your targeted audience, and thus, you’ll not get desired ranking or traffic results.
When you don’t grasp the understanding of search algorithms, you may attempt the following mistakes:
1) Spend hundreds of dollars for a link (just based on DA or TF metrics). These links can hurt you if neglecting relevancy, link placement, anchor choice or linking page selection.
2) May lead to not-natural link building due to inconsistent link velocity, links from PBN, links following the same pattern, or an unusual ratio of Dofollow vs Nofollow.
3) Sometimes your site could get the over-optimization penalty, Google manual penalty or even Google’s Penguin algorithm impact!
Such mistakes can hurt you badly. I’m sure that you don’t want to see such decline in organic traffic:
This is the screenshot of a domain overview report (from SEMRush) for one of my new client. I can’t reveal their name or domain URL, but back in OCT 2017, their Google organic traffic was above 8K. You can see that they’ve declined to less than 3K despite having inbound links from 2.1K referring domains. And that was the problem in this campaign. Links were so easy to be considered as manipulative ones due to the pattern being used throughout the campaign.
The decline history:
Another example of a magazine sort of blog covering business topics – (I can reveal its name, but I’m sure the guy will call me that’s why am I mentioning him and his past SEO sins)
If we go back in past years of history, the report will point-out even more links. Looks like, they had started cleaning up their link profile some months ago. Just see – 53000 links from 255 Domains; they have a great amount of site-wide links. And not the ideal SEO linking strategy, for sure.
Chasing the same kind of links, again and again, is not fine. And this is where Link Diversity plays its role in SEO.
It’s a methodology of acquiring inbound links from a different theme of pages (blog posts, resources, contributors, partners, directory, citation etc), from different types of sites (.com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, .co). It is also concerned with implementing variation in anchor text, and a proper ratio of Dofollow ones and Nofollow ones.
Regularly and intensely checking your inbound link profile can save your website from organic traffic drops.
We are talking about your website itself, so there is no need for expensive SEO tools like Raven, Ahrefs, or SEM Rush. You can configure Google Search Console property and thus, easily check your link indexing.
Here, you’ll find the link section: https://search.google.com/search-console/links?resource_id={Your Website URL}
Yes, for competitors’ link audit, you need reliable SEO tools.
When going to build a link or checking a link, please pay attention to these four attributes:
- Relevancy of Domain (the entire website and the specific web page) to the linked page.
- Second, the anchor text.
- The authority of the referring domain and web page the inbound link will (or has) come from, and
- Link placement (Contextual, in BIO, in side-bar, or in Footer area)
Good vs Worse
A decent link profile will have relevant (contextually as well as geographically), diverse, and authentic links. It wouldn’t include forum signature or profile links, paid or reciprocal linking, sponsored posts, massive sidebar or footer links, hidden HTML links, from pure commercial anchors, and from one single pattern (for example, just author bio links from tons of Guest Posts).
The bad link profile is the one which includes all or some of them. A link tester can easily catch bad links, so there is no question that Google Bots can ignore them. They treat such links as unnatural; because they’ve come from questionable sites.
Link acquisition is as important as Technical SEO configuration for overall search campaign success. It’s also important to build your link profile as natural as possible. The real key is to not attempt poor link schemes. So next time, when you order new links, don’t say– “Hey, I need 50 links from DA 20-50 websites”.
About the author:
Shyam Bhardwaj runs SEO Vancouver Pros, a digital agency specialized in content and local SEO. He regularly writes columns at publications like Startup Grind, Tweaks Your Biz, and Small Biz Club.
The post Why Link Diversity Should Be Your Primary SEO Concern appeared first on Succeed As Your Own Boss.