Today more than ever, a link is an essential element of natural referencing.
In the early days of the web, links were not seen as “ranking signals” but as relevant connections and partnerships between sites. As links have become a dominant part of SEO algorithms, many have focused on acquiring links in bulk. Backlinks have finally become popular for several years.
But link building is more than a gameby observing who can acquire the most.
It’s about creating the right connections that benefit each site, as well as their users.
Before you start aimlessly building links, here are some tips on how to qualify the different link opportunities you have.
Today, a number of tools can be used to search for link opportunities.
While these tools are great to get started, don’t fall into the trap of using the lists they generate and trying to build links, analyze them instead.
To increase the chances of acquiring the best link and be sure that the links you build are relevant to your site, you need to take the time to qualify them.
Once acquired, do not hesitate to optimize your link anchors in order to be even more relevant.
The qualification of a link is done in two phases.
The first phase consists of a quick review, the objective of which is to reduce the list of potential links as quickly as possible based on quality criteria.
The second phase is a more manual analysis of the remaining links. In this phase, we comb through the last potential links qualifying those that correspond best.
Examine potential link opportunities to improve your SEO
The first step is to take the list of links you’ve collected and transfer them into Excel or Google Sheets. Make sure you copy all the relevant data you have on each link, you will use these metrics to determine which links you should remove and which ones to keep.
Once the links are in your document, you can start to narrow down this list so that it is easier to manage. Here are some of the metrics I look at when qualifying links:
- The relevance of the theme addressed : indeed, one of the most important elements and the context in which your link will be found. You must therefore first find sites covering subjects that are similar to yours.
- URL authority : Today we have a number of domain metrics used in SEO. Use PR (PageRank), PA (Page Authority), DA (Domain Authority) or any other site quality domain settings to sort your potential links in descending order. This will help you see which sites are the strongest and most reliable.
- Remove competitors : A number of research tools will identify competitors as potential partners. You will obviously need to remove them as partners, as your competitors are unlikely to have any connection with you.
- Keyword occurrences in the URL : One of the easiest ways to determine if a link is relevant is by searching for the keyword in the URL. Simply search the document for the keywords you defined and highlight any links that contain them.
- Review inbound links : By examining the number of inbound links of a potential partner, we can also qualify it. Although many of the sites at the top of your list will generally have a lot of links, there will be a few that have fewer than you expect. Link quantity should never be the sole decision point for you, but it is a good metric to consider when narrowing down your list of potential partners.
Go further in qualifying potential links
Now that you’ve narrowed down your list of potential partners, it’s time to review it. But this time, you will have to do manual analysis and discover the real link opportunities. Although this part is the tiring one, it is also the most useful.
During this phase, you will want to visit each site and do a quick check. It’s quite simple, ask yourself the right questions. Is the site attractive? Are there a lot of spelling mistakes? These questions can help you make the final decision whether or not to request a link/article.
You may also want to evaluate their social media presence. Looking at the number of subscribers, fans or Twitter followers can be an obvious indicator of the quality of a site. Don’t just look at the numbers. Make sure they post new content and engage with followers.
If the site appears legitimate and active, and the domain/URL settings meet your needs, then the final step is to determine how to link your site to the targeted site. Do not forget that you must have something valuable to offer webmasters when you contact them to request a link or article.
Finally the link opportunities can be analyzed
Link building is a science and an art. By taking the time to qualify, and perhaps more importantly, disqualify different link opportunities, you will ensure that your link campaigns are more targeted and successful.
Running link building campaigns is important but is not the only thing to do when it comes to SEO. Don’t forget to optimize your entire site to make it easy for Google to understand and analyze.