Getting Backlinks in 2023
Prior blogs discussed the importance of having good user experience on your business’s website. However, user experience (UX) is only one aspect of what it takes to get a website to rank high in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages, also called SERPs. Backlinks are another very important factor for ranking against your competition. An SEO strategy should take backlinks into account.
What Are Backlinks?
Backlinks are links to your domain that appear on other websites. For example, some law firms have their website domain appear on business listings such as Avvo and Lawyers.com. It is important to have high-quality and relevant backlinks. If you fail to obtain backlinks and have competitors who are pursuing backlinks, then you could miss out on new business.
How to Get Backlinks
There are a number of different ways to obtain backlinks. Unfortunately, there are wrong ways to obtain backlinks. Bad backlinking strategies can cause significant harm to a domain and its ability to rank in the Google SERPs and elsewhere. Avoid these mistakes:
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- Putting your domain on websites with a lot of spam. This could hurt your domain authority. Domain authority is a predictive metric originally developed by Moz. The score uses data from across the web and on a website to assign a score. If you associate your domain with spam, Google will associate your business with spam.
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- Pursuing irrelevant backlinks. Remember, Google is looking for businesses that provide consistent and relevant information on their services across the web. If you are a lawyer, it would be a mistake to put yourself on listings for doctors. It would confuse people and create a bad user experience with your business. You should aim to pursue backlinks that have to do with your business services, or that can provide information on your services to potential clients and customers.
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- Backlink stacking (the “Shotgun Approach”). Backlink stacking is a process typically used by inexperienced digital marketing professionals. This is where a business owner or marketer takes a “shotgun approach” and adds themselves to as many listings as possible without a strategy in mind. Backlink stacking, at best, will make it take longer to benefit in the SERPs. At worst, you could inadvertently add your domain to spammy or irrelevant websites and listings. Never just randomly add your business and domain info to business listings without a particular strategy in mind. Always check the listing and website data first. Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs and many other digital marketing analytics platforms have tools that can help you uncover data on other domains.
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- Only pursuing follow links. Your domain should have both follow and nofollow links. Having only follow links could signal to Google that you are attempting to game its algorithms. You could suffer penalties as a result, as many follow links are paid links.
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- Losing patience. Backlinks do not necessarily create benefits right away. It is important to be patient and continue building backlinks even if results are not appearing or appearing slowly.
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- Failing to disavow bad backlinks. If you have poor-quality/spammy backlinks, make sure to disavow them via Google Search Console. Do so very carefully. Future blogs will go into a lot more detail on how to spot bad backlinks.
Pursue these strategies to obtain new backlinks:
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- Put yourself out there. Obviously, there are a lot of ways to use backlinks to build your brand. In one case many years ago, myself and my team got a bankruptcy attorney onto the front page of Reddit during the 2016 POTUS Election, which in turn caused news websites to cover the AMA and link back to his website. This is only one example of how a business owner could use more organic techniques to showcase his or her brand. Sponsoring conferences, appearing in the news, and hosting a charity event are examples of strategies business owners could pursue to obtain new high-quality, authoritative backlinks.
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- Obtain backlinks relevant to your business/industry. You should aim for backlinks that are relevant to your clients, customers and overall industry. For example, attorneys could add domain info to law firm listings and news websites that cover legal news and trends. Some of these will be follow links while others will be nofollow links. Business listings are only one way to obtain relevant backlinks. If your business or law firm is ever covered in local, state or national news, be sure to ask for a backlink. If your business or law firm attends a convention, see if you can become a sponsor and obtain a link.
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- Pay attention to your competition. If you are going to take even one piece of advice from this blog, let it be this – never ignore your competition. This is also true for backlinks. Certain tools can tell you which high-quality domains link to your competitors. You can try to obtain those same backlinks for your own business and save yourself many tens of hours of research in the process.
How to Check Backlinks
It is recommended to use a digital marketing analytics tool to find backlinks. You could easily find backlinks associated with your industry by looking at your competition and other websites associated with your services. For example, personal injury lawyers may want to check out their competition and organizations like AAJ/American Association for Justice.
Questions about how to obtain backlinks for your law firm or business? Reach out to Trilux Digital via our contact form.
