How to Find Links That Can Actually Help You Rank Higher on SERPs

Table of Contents

How Links Impact Your Site to Rank High on Google Search Engine?

How to rank higher on Google?

The whole SEO world revolves around finding the answer to this single question.

But the dilemma of SEOs word is: The more you try to find an answer to this question, the more you feel lost.

Some guides will tell you that ‘Content is king’… focus on it.

Some gurus will show customer experience as the rising star… treat it properly.

Then there would be many blogs that will bombard you with so many tips… presenting each one as an essential one.

In this push and pull situation, most SEOs either give up or take the wrong turn.

Result? They end up renting a room at the bottom of SERPs where no visitor likes to come.

So if you are facing a struggle to rank your website high on Google despite good quality content that satisfies searcher’s search intent, working on technical SEO, and fetching backlinks, it means that you are doing something wrong.

And that wrong can be that you are not getting high-quality links or your link curating technique is not right.

Because:

All websites don’t have the same authority
All links are not the same
Some other factors also affect links’ impact

Let’s find out what goes in the world of links that helps them in giving a push to your site to rank higher on Google.

Tips to Choose Links that Help Your Site Rank Higher on Google Organically

Here are given some tips to choose links that can help you get a higher Google search ranking:

# 1: Quality vs. Quantity – What Matters?

1, 2, 3, 4 … STOP!

If you are focusing more on building a number of links, you need to stop right now.

Google has long played this number game, and it’s no more favorite playground of Google.

It doesn’t matter how many links you have; if they are of low quality, they can never help you get a high ranking in Google search.

Google prefers high-quality sites’ links to rank higher than links coming from a low-quality site.

So focus on sites that hold authority for Google so that they transfer powerful link juice to your site.

But does it mean that the number of backlinks doesn’t matter at all?

Let’s do an experiment to sort this problem:

I searched for a keyword in the SEMrush tool, and I found that the top-ranking site has more links than the second-ranking website.

So it means that it isn’t that quantity of links are not important at all.

But whether these links will be helpful to rank higher or not depends on many other variables, like:

The quality of site from where you are getting backlinks
The number of link referring domains

Like, some top-ranking websites have fewer links than the site ranking below.

Reason? Because the top ranking site has more referring domains and quality links.

Safely, we can say that the debate is not really about the quantity of links matters or quality matters.

It is more about where you get links from.

Sometimes, getting one high authority link is better than getting a hundred low-quality links.

Other times, many links from different high authority sites become a power booster to rank your website higher on Google.

Always focus on getting links to give your site authority and credibility, not just for the sake of getting links.

That’s what makes the difference!

# 2: Natural vs. Unnatural Links – What is the Difference?

When some people enter into the world of link building, they are literally like going to every site and saying:

Knock… Knock…

Hey! Err… I was wondering if I can get a link from your site, please?

Sounds something like you have been doing?

Stop right here.

Google is smarter than your imagination. It has many criteria to judge if a link is coming to your site naturally or not.

Some of these factors are hidden, while others are quite evident.

Here are some factors Google considers to see if a link is natural:

The relevancy of the linking site
Links going to different pages of the site
Links coming from diverse sites
Contextual placement of the link

If the links are coming…

From sites that have nothing to do with your site
To only a particular page on your site
From only a few domains
From an irrelevant content

…Google will consider them as unnatural, and they are USELESS.

So if you want to get links that can help you rank higher on SERPs, earn natural links that don’t look fishy.

# 3: Link Velocity – Is Link Building a Continuous Process?

You have fetched a few links from high authority sites. VERY GOOD.

But your efforts don’t end here.

If your competitor is continuously getting high-quality links and you are not, your few links will not take you anywhere on SERPs.

In other words, if your competitor’s link velocity is more than your link velocity, you will not get a higher Google search ranking.

Link velocity means the number of backlinks you build to your site monthly.

More links per month = Higher link velocity

Fewer links per month = Lower link velocity

You can check your competitor’s link velocity through Ahrefs.

Check the report in ‘New Referring Domains,’ and you will find how many new links your competitor got in the selected time frame.

Once you know what your competitor is doing:

You can easily figure out how many links you need to build to get a high ranking in SERP by defeating your competitor.

Remember that link building is a continuous process, and you have to continuously invest time and effort in link building if you want to stay on the top.

If you will not, your competitors will.

You know what it means – right?

# 4: Backlink Audit – What You Already Have?

Backlink audit is one thing that most SEO persons ditch while planning their backlink strategy.

And that’s where good things start going out of the window for them.

You need to first know the foundation of your backlink profile before planning out what castle of backlinks you want to build on it.

If your current link profile is filled with bad links, good links can’t paint previous black practices as white.

You have to first clean your link profile from bad links before expecting that good thing will start flowing your way.

Secondly, you need to know what quality links you have and from how many domains before finalizing a strategy.

That’s where a backlink audit can help you.

Simply, a backlink audit means evaluating the value and condition of all links coming to your site.

It helps you find the good and bad links so that you can develop your future link building strategy.

So before building new links to rank higher, find out:

The quality of your current links
Number of referring domains
Number of good and bad links
Links you found from diverse domains

If you know the foundation of your current backlink profile, only then can you decide what kind of link profile castle you can build on it to rank high on Google search engine.

You can easily do a link audit using the Semrush backlink audit tool.

You can use this tool to:

Find out if any malicious website is linking to your site
Import list of harmful links
Remove or disavow bad links
Track newly obtained, lost, or broken backlinks
Check the overall performance and quality of your backlink profile

Once you know what you have in hand, you can easily figure out your next step towards link profile improvement easily.

#5: Diversify Link Profile – Sticking to One Strategy? Nah!

There are MANY ways to get natural backlinks.

But still, most SEOs stick to only a couple of ways. If they are doing guest posting, they will just stick to it.

On top of that, link building packages of different link building companies also come up with one or two link building methods. So you keep on getting similar types of links from only a few sources.

Result? Google figures out that your link profile is not natural (In case you didn’t know: Yes, Google is that smart!).

So diversity is something that is essential to fetch valuable links.

If you don’t know how to bring diversity to your link profile, take help from your competitors.

You can use Ahrefs and get a report of your competitor’s link profile under ‘Best by Links Growth.’

You will get a list of acquired links. AMAZING.

Want to know what is even more amazing?

Click one of the URLs, and you will be able to figure out how these links have been acquired.

You can replicate these techniques.

But remember that there are so many link building techniques to rank higher, but SEOs miss them just because they don’t try to find them.

Here are given some secret methods you can use to make your link profile look natural.

BONUS: Secret Link Building Technique that Nobody Talks About

BONUS TIP: Do What Others are Not Doing

What if I say that you can use a trick that can give you natural backlinks without worrying about building a link profile?

Sounds impossible?

Well, that’s possible through a simple trick: give people a reason to link to your site.

Google loves natural links more than other types of links (even manually outreached links are not that valuable!).

Why?

Because:

You don’t pay for them.
You don’t give any freebies.
You don’t get them through an exchange.
You don’t get them through any sneaky activity.
You don’t manipulate Google for them.

And…

They come to your site naturally.

It shows that your website is really authoritative and worth linking.

So, you need to stand out from the rest of your competitors to get these superior types of links.

No one will link to your site if you do not offer them a reason to link to your site that other websites are not offering.

So, what you should be doing:

Add unique elements to the content
Create something that hits audiences’ interest
Include something that others are missing
Offer a solution to a common problem
Write exhaustive content on a particular topic

These are a few ways to enhance the possibility of getting natural links from people.

Need a real-life example?

Well, Brian Dean’s blog ‘Google Ranking Factors’ is a great example to show what it means and results to create a linkable asset.

Brian Dean created a list of 200 Google’s ranking factors. Irrespective that there are 200 ranking factors or more, this post had everything:

It was:

Exhaustive (come on, 200 ranking factors, man)
Offering a solution (every person in the SEO world wants to know this secret)
Something new (there isn’t a list of 200 ranking factors – presented like this)
Interesting (it even sounds interesting to the targeted audiences)
Unique (without any doubt)

And what was the result?