What are Contextual Backlinks?
In the world of SEO, backlinks have been one of the most succeeding factors for a long time. Not only can they be used to increase the domain authority of your website, but they can also help to connect to credible sites in the industry.
However, things have taken a different turn in the link building world over the past few years. Previously, all you needed for the ranking of your business site from an SEO perspective was to get lots of links, and context really wasn’t the main issue.
Nowadays, search engines have become much smarter and place more significance on contextual links. For this very reason, even many experts in the SEO world prefer high-quality contextual links that are most relevant to your business.
But what exactly is contextual link building? To begin with the basic concept, these are the links that are surrounded by textual data in the body of some content. In simpler words, contextual backlinks are high-quality links that are usually embedded with some kind of textual content.
The idea of placing such links is to provide some kind of indication or relevant information that would explain where the link is pointing and what you can expect to see on a site when you will click the given link.
Importance of Contextual Link Building
Backlinks have always been the rockstar of the SEO world, as it still serves as one of the top-ranking factors for a website. This means that it makes it extremely difficult for a site to rank on search engine result pages (SERP) and get more organic traffic without these links.
Especially when it comes to contextual backlinks, they hold way more significance than any other links. The reason behind this is that search engine algorithms nowadays give more importance to them because such links add value to the content as compared to other non-contextual links.
In addition to that, adding relevant contextual backlinks also helps you to increase the trustworthiness of your site, which can be one of the major reasons for you to direct more organic traffic towards your site and gain better brand visibility online.
Source: Backlinko
Advantages of Contextual Backlinks
As described by most experts, links have always been one of the most significant factors for ranking a website on search engines. They are also responsible for bringing in more organic traffic and natural impressions on the web page.
Similarly, when it comes to adding contextual backlinks, they hold more weight with Google. The reason behind this is that they let the search engine identify that your content will be useful for readers, might be created by humans, and is not any kind of spam.
In addition to that, relevant and high-quality contextual link building is also a way of showing your site’s credibility and trustworthiness in an efficient manner. So, here are some of the major advantages of contextual backlinks:
- Increase credibility
- More organic traffic
- Enhance brand visibility
- More relevant links
Source: Link Graph
Types of High-Quality Contextual Backlinks
As it has already become quite clear from the above-explained points that search engines judge your business site based on the quality of links it contains. For this very reason establishing proper backlinks with high domain authority sites plays a crucial role in improving the SEO of your website.
However, before you incorporate links in the content of your web page, you need to understand its type and what type is suitable where. This way, you will be able to understand the benefits in a better manner. So, here are some of the many types of contextual backlinks.
Nofollow and Dofolllow Contextual Backlinks
Generally, when a certain website is linked to the other, it can generate links in one of two ways. Either it will be a dofollow link or a nofollow link, and the goal of placing both types of links is the same, but it still gives the search engines two different messages.
When it comes to a dofollow link, it is basically a type of contextual link building that is used to help enhance the SEO by passing the credibility of the origin site to the destination site and in order to improve its authoritativeness.
This passing down of domain authority from one site to the other is known as “link juice.” This means that dofollow link building is used when a website wants to enhance its ranking on search engine result pages by improving its domain authority or credibility.
Source: Obtain Backlinks
Contrary to that, a nofollow link is used when you do not want to ass the link juice to the linked website. This is why such links are used in situations where a site might want to use links for affiliate links, user-generated content, or for sponsored links.
Editorial Backlinks
Editorial backlinks are also one of the many types of contextual link building. These links are used in editorial mentions that mostly refer to your website and are placed within the high-quality and relevant content of the site.
Most of the time, editorial backlinks are generated when a piece of content is cited as the source of some particular information, such as infographics or blogs, etc., that are related to a specific topic or when a company representative is quoted in the content.
Free Tool Backlinks
As suggested by the name, this kind of contextual link building is used when a valuable tool is offered for free. This is one of the most strong methods of both earning quality backlinks as well as gaining more brand visibility and has a long-lasting impact on the search engine optimization of the site.
This can help you to create useful yet simple assets for your website. You can also promote the tools with sites that have a relative audience to your own page in order to encourage more backlinks from such high-quality tools.
Badge Backlinks
Another one of the most effective and clever strategies to establish more authoritative backlinks is by coming up with a badge that is used to award other brands. This is done to give recognition to such brands for their achievement in any kind of capacity.
Now, the actual game begins with this. Those websites can proudly post these badges on their own business site. This way, you will get a backlink from those credible sites. You can also use different SEO tools to identify websites with a similar target audience.
Source: Alexa Blog
Comment Backlinks
Along with many other types of contextual linking is posting relevant and genuine comments on your content and then adding valuable and credible links in the conversation. This will help you to build the authority of your site.
However, you need to remember to make sure the links are placed naturally in the comments. This is necessary as if the links are executed in a spammy way, this can have a very negative effect on the reputation of your site with search engines.
Source: Reputio
Paid Backlinks
One of the many ways search engines rank your site higher on search engine result pages is by accessing your business website and how many valuable assets it contains as compared to other popular sites that are your competitors.
For this very reason, many people tend to buy contextual backlinks with high domain authority in order to bring in more organic traffic to their web page. However, Google warns that selling or buying such links can have a negative impact on your site’s overall rankings.
Guest Post Backlinks
Gaining quality contextual links with the help of guest posting is one of the oldest and most efficient link building techniques. When you tend to provide quality and credible guest posts to well-established websites, you can get backlinks to your site in return.
When a site with high domain authority gives you a link, they tend to direct more organic traffic to your page as well as it also enhances your ranking on search engine result pages by letting the search engines know that you are a credible site.
How to Create Contextual Backlinks?
No matter what many people might say, the best SEO strategy to increase the ranking of any website is with the help of contextual link building. Using effective link building techniques can not only increase a site’s authority but can also be vital in enhancing the keyword rankings as well.
This means that if you want your business website to reach out to the maximum number of its potential target customers, you would need to focus on generating more contextual backlinks and take help from expert content marketers in this matter.
But the actual question of the hour is how exactly can one create such backlinks and what are the right tactics to pitch an amazing content idea for this.
So, to know more, here are some of the best contextual link building strategies that can help you to achieve the goal without having to get into much hassle.
Strategies for Contextual Link Building
Invest in Local SEO
One of the first and foremost strategies that can help you to build more contextual backlinks for your site is by investing more resources in your local SEO. This means that you would need to make sure to reach out to your local industry experts for high-quality links.
You can also use keywords in your content that have high organic traffic in your local area so that you can attract more target audiences to your website. This way, you can also allure more people to build contextual links for SEO with your site.
By making the local SEO your priority, you can start with the basic grounds and make your foundation solid before entering the international market and already build the domain authority of your site in a better manner.
Source: Blue Corona
Create Shareable Content
You might have often heard the term “Content is the King.” This certainly makes a lot of sense when it comes to building quality links with high domain authority sites, which is why it is necessary for you to produce credible content on your website regularly.
Nothing can impress your audience more than something that can provide them with valuable information as well as answer all their questions.
For this very reason, you need to make sure to generate content that would be worth sharing over different platforms.
The more your content is liked by your target audience, the more high-quality sites will be interested in building contextual links with your website. This way, google will also recognize your site as credible and increase your ranking on search engine result pages.
Prioritize Guest Posting
No matter how old this technique might be, it is still prioritized by most industry experts in almost every niche. After all, you get to build domain authority while directing a relevant organic audience to your website.
Remember to provide guest posting services to your relevant industries to reach more of your prospects. This means that if you want to build more contextual links, you are needed to prioritize guest posting to increase your ranking on search engines.
Try Broken Link Building
Another one of the many proven effective contextual link building strategies includes broken link building. It also involves offering other resources to fix the broken links on other websites. This can create an opportunity for you if the resource is relevant to your niche.
It is obvious that nobody wants any kind of broken links on their sites, but things do take a new turn every once in a while on the internet. This means that a link that was helpful once can soon become broken when the URL of that resource changes or when they disappear.
You can avail of this broken link building to leverage your site by pointing the broken links to the website’s owner by offering them a similar resource that will be hosted by your site.
Check Competitor’s Backlinks
While it is great to look for better ideas and invest your resources in brainstorming innovative techniques, one of the many places that can turn out to be a great inspiration for you to build high-quality contextual backlinks is by finding out what your competitors are upto.
This means that you need to determine what kind of backlinks your competitive sites are using and utilize tose links in your content as well in order to direct more organic traffic to your page and increase your ranking on search engine result pages.
It is one of the tremendous contextual link building techniques that can help you to have a better reach to your potential customers in an enhanced manner.
Generate More Infographics
While high-quality content and valuable content production are necessary to increase your domain authority, one thing that most people might know that can help them in enhancing their ranking is generating graphical content.
The reason behind this is that Google and other search engines love pictorial content, especially when it provides value to the reader. This is why if you want to gain quality links from credible sites, you need to create engaging infographics.
When you post tremendous and attractive infographics on your website, people might use it in their content as well and provide you backlinks in return without charging you any cost, which will direct more organic traffic to your site.
Source: AWAI
Leverage Social Media
In this era of digital marketing, almost every person is using social media to share their views and perspectives and connect to people all over the world. You can certainly leverage these social media platforms to enhance the domain authority of your site.
This is one of the most remarkable ways to build Contextual SEO backlinks to relevant resources on your website as well.
This will also help you to bring in more quality organic traffic to your business site. However, one thing you need to remember is not to spam links in your comment sections.
With the help of social media, you can spread word of mouth more quickly to your target audience in a better manner. You can also use several different tools that will also guide you to stay on the top and make you stand out among your competitors.
