How To Do Backlinking in SEO? A Step by Step Guide
So you are one of the SEO noobs who have just landed in the SEO world and are dazed finding an answer to the question, “How to do backlinking in SEO?”
The simple answer to this question is: By getting a link for your site from another site.
But I wish it was really as simple as it sounds.
After joining many SEO forums, reading multiple link building guides, and connecting with SEO biggies, you at least now know two things:
- The importance of backlinks in SEO
- Building SEO backlinks for your website is not easy
Backlinks are one of the top-ranking factors that search engines take as a If you guest post through this practice, it can become a life savior for your businessvote to determine if your site is valuable, credible, and trustable to show it on the top of SERPs.
If you want to know what is a backlink in SEO with an example, here you go:
You can see in this example that the top-ranking website has more backlinks than the second-ranking website.
But other factors also play their role in defining the search ranking of a website.
For example, look at this.
You can see that not all top-ranking sites have more backlinks than the below-ranking website.
Still, many studies have proved that backlinks do play an important role in:
- Enhancing search visibility
- Increasing search engine ranking
- Driving qualified traffic
- Improving brand awareness
- Building credibility and authority
So backlinks importance in SEO is firm, and they are inevitable for your online success.
But how and from where you get the backlinks to define whether you will be able to fetch the benefits of backlinks in SEO or not.
It means that there isn’t only one way of link building.
Types of Backlinks in SEO
There are three types of backlinks, and every type has a different relationship with Google.
- One type is Google’s lover: Natural backlinks
- The second type is Google’s friend: Manual backlinks
- And the third type? Google hates it: Unnatural backlinks
TYPE # 1: Natural Backlinks
Google prefers natural backlinks for rankings because people give them out to you without asking or in return of any favor.
So why will someone do that? Because they find your content valuable and worth sharing with their readers.
And that’s what Google wants. It takes backlinks as a vote, so obviously, it wouldn’t like to see manipulative votes.
For example, here is what a naturally inserted link looks like:
This natural backlink is telling Google that the pointed website has something valuable and worth-mentioning. Amazing, no?
So create something that people feel urged to share in their articles for their readers.
TYPE # 2: Manual Backlinks
Manual backlinks are fetched when you manually approach bloggers and ask them to give you a link.
You can do it in two ways:
#1: Insert Links
Ask bloggers to insert a link in already written content. This is also called niche edits, and you can also hire link insertion services if you don’t know how to do it.
#2: Build Links
In this process, you offer them to create awesome content for their site with a link back to your site.
This is not considered as a black hat link building practice, so it is good to go.
And another good thing is that everyone does it. Even your industry’s biggies are doing it to earn valuable links that help them grab top search positions.
Like, here, Brian Dean proudly mentions it in his guide that how he manually outreached the site owner and got a valuable link.
Believe me when I say that everyone else is doing it.
It is impossible to get your content noticed unless you move some needle and do some promotion for it.
Go ahead and manually outreach backlinks to see a boost.
TYPE # 3: Spammy Links
Unnatural links, bad links, or spammy links are those backlinks that you neither get naturally nor you manually ask for them. You forcefully build them.
Now, these links are what we call as bad boys of the SEO world.
Google hates these links and all those websites that are involved in this practice.
Thanks to Google’s Penguin algorithm, Google now devalues all such links that are not naturally earned.
So if you have earned links through any of these ways…
- Private Blog Networks (PBNs)
- Discussion Forums
- Poor Article Submission Sites
- Blog Commenting
- Automatic Link Building Programs
- Poor Quality Sites
- Directory Submissions
- Social Bookmarking
…these all ways can push you in the troubled puddle of bad websites that do black hat SEO practices.
That’s why we strictly avoid such practices in our link building services.
So when I say that how and from where you get backlinks matter a lot in defining your website health – I mean it!
This takes us to our next question:
How to get natural backlinks in SEO?
How to Do Backlinking in SEO?
Your opportunities to get high quality backlinks increase if you are a local business.
For example, you can go for local citation building that involves submitting your business information on important business directories to stay relevant to appear in local searches.
But it doesn’t mean that there is a scarcity of opportunities for other businesses.
Here are some safe and sound link building ways that can unleash the true potential of backlinks and give a live example of why are backlinks important in SEO.
METHOD # 1: Guest Posting
Yes, guest posting is still alive.
Yes, people are still doing guest posting for link building.
Yes, it can bring benefits to your site.
If you are among those who think that guest posting is not a good idea for link building, you have been introduced to the wrong version of guest posting.
Guest posting is only wrong when you do it just for the sake of getting a link.
But it works amazingly well if you:
- Publish guest posts on high authority and relevant sites
- Manually outreach blogger sites
- Editorially place the backlink surrounded by relevant and valuable content
- Don’t forcefully induce your link
If you guest post through this practice, it can become a life savior for your business.
METHOD # 2: Create Valuable Assets
The best way to get links is: Give others reasons to link to your site.
Valuable assets give you a reason to do that.
People only link out to your site when you have something worth linking to.
It can be in the form of:
- New concepts and ideas
- Valuable content
- Visual content, like images, infographics
- The best version of a topic
Like, do what others are not doing.
For example, Moz published an extensive link building guide with around 7 detailed chapters.
Can you guess how many backlinks this guide has generated?
Well, I don’t know what was your guess, but it has garnered whopping 5.52K backlinks from 1.54K domains.
Amazing, right?
You can also get them if you put a little more effort, thought, ideas, and time.
METHOD # 3: Write List Posts
List posts mean how-to guides, tips, techniques, etc.
Why these posts make up an excellent source to get links is because people love reading them.
They are:
- Compact
- Comprehensive
- Digestible
- Easy-to-read
- Informative
So who doesn’t like linking to a piece of content that can offer a powerful punch of value to their readers in one go?
For example, I searched for this keyword, and I got this:
You can see that most of the articles are list posts.
Why?
Because they really work!
METHOD # 4: Check Your Competitors Backlink Profile
If you don’t want to put in much effort by finding link prospects, take the help of your competitors.
If they are ranking high by getting links from the particular sites, so can you.
Obviously, your competitors are not going to help you by telling you their secret success recipe.
But you can use tools like Ahrefs backlink checker to see who is linking out to your competitors.
Things get easier once you find out this list.
You can reach out to them and ask for a link (well, obviously, tactfully!).
If they are linking to your competitor and you also have something valuable, the chances are that you can also get a link.
Conclusion
SEO is not an easy feat.
It has too much going on in its world that it gets hard to keep track of things.
On top of that, you don’t know what is wrong and right.
So if you have decided to land your spaceship on the land of SEO, make sure you know what you should do and what you shouldn’t.
This blog has given you a brief idea about link building, what is the importance of backlinks in SEO, and how to do link building the right way to avoid Google’s wrath.
Hope it makes your SEO journey a bit less troubled. Happy link building!
