In this article, we are going to learn everything about off-page SEO. We will cover anchor links, backlinks, and other topics related to off-page SEO.
Everything About Off-Page SEO
Backlink and its Importance in SEO
Backlinks are the links of our websites mentioned on other external websites. A backlink represents a vote of confidence from one site to another. They give a signal to Google that other websites vouch for our content. It was once the biggest ranking factor in Google’s algorithm in 2017.
If the big websites refer are website in their content through backlinks, it will give us a big boost in Google search rankings. However, if we purposely create more backlinks to get higher search rankings, it will negatively impact our website especially if they are low-quality backlinks.
Anchor Text and its Role in Building Links
Anchor texts are clickable words used to link one webpage to another. The default color of the text is usually blue as it’s a hyperlink. However, we can change the color of it based on our website theme.
SEO best practices say that the anchor text should be relevant to the page we are linking rather than generic. Google read this anchor text and they consider it when ranking a website.
For example, if we link to a website with the anchor text “smartwatch”, then Google is going to assume that the page we are linking to has some relation to smartwatches.
There are 5 different types of anchor texts we can use when linking to a webpage.
1. Exact Match as Anchor Text
This anchor type would be the exact match with the reference of the keyword we are targeting. These are powerful and there’s no doubt as to what the page is going to be about. But these are not natural and we need to avoid using them frequently. Google’s algorithm has learned about the misuse of this type and reduced its importance in its ranking system.
2. Partial Match as Anchor Text
This type is a few words from a sentence that gets matched with the keyword and we are creating a link on it. It doesn’t hold all the keywords and it looks more natural and it is safer to use in our blogs. However, as with most link-building campaigns, it’s hard to control what anchor text people use while linking the sites. We need to try and mix up and explore other anchor types.
3. Brand Names as Anchor Text
This is the type where we use the brand name as the anchor text. Branded anchors are great for increasing your brand presence online and they are also super safe as we can’t get penalized by Google for having too many of them as it’s a website linking tool mentioned in your brand name. For example, let’s take Amazon. The majority of websites linked to amazon.com will do so using a branded anchor such as Amazon.
4. Naked URLs as Anchor Text
Here, we will make the whole URL as anchor text. We don’t use any word referring to that URL but paste the whole URL and link it to another web page.
5. Generic Words as Anchor Text
These are miscellaneous texts where we can add links to them. We can see some articles where they have texts like “read more”, “click here” etc, these types of anchor texts come under this section.
To What Pages should we build Backlinks?
We build backlinks to improve the ranking of the page. So, If we want to improve the ranking of the home page of our website or any particular page or blog post, we need to build backlinks to that page.
So, overall, we need to build backlinks to all the content that we want to rank in Google but please make sure those pages provide value to the users. Otherwise, our website may get penalized by Google for bad practices.
Do-Follow vs No-Follow Backlinks
Do-Follow Links
The Do-Follow links are the regular links we have in the article, In the realm of SEO, If a page gets an inbound link which is the hyperlink pointing to that page, it will get a small SEO boost. If it gets referred from multiple sites, based on that it will get more boost. If the page gets a link from authoritative sites like BBC, Google considers it as authentic and gives our page more boost.
The do-follow link looks like this
<a href="websit.com">Link</a>
No-follow Links
A no-follow link is a link that does not count as a point in the page ranking process. It does not boost the page rank and it does not help in raising the rank of a page in Google. A no-follow link looks like this.
<a href="websit.com" rel="nofollow">Link</a>
It has a no-follow attribute at the end of the tag which tells Google that it’s a no-follow link.
So, we need to focus on getting more do-follow links than no-follow links to get a boost in our web page rankings. One of the best methods to achieve this is guest posting from other websites.
How To Determine Good Backlinks
Not all backlinks are equal. Various factors determine the quality of backlinks. There’s a 5 steps checklist to determine the quality of backlinks we use.
1. Check Domain Authority
Good domains have a domain authority of at least 25. We can check the domain authority of any website using Moz. So, If you want to get a backlink, consider websites whose domain authority is higher than 25.
2. Number of Keywords Website Rank for
A good website ranks for a lot of keywords on Google. If any website has a lot of keywords ranking any Google, then Google considers it authoritative and pushes its ranking. If we get a backlink from this kind of website, we will benefit more. So, if we are getting a backlink from any website, consider that the website has at least 100 keywords ranking in Google.
3. Organic Traffic of a Website
Well, if we consider the above two points, then that website will be getting more traffic daily. If any website has good traffic, it would be the right choice for us to get a backlink from it. There’s no any definite number in terms of traffic but consider websites that are getting at least 200 organic views per month.
4. Referring to domains on a website
Backlinks still play a significant role in Google rankings. If we are getting a backlink from any website, we need to check its backlinks and what domains are referring to this website. If that website has very good backlinks from authoritative websites and if we are getting a backlink from this website, our websites get boosted with a chain of all the referring domains this website gets boosted.
5. Check the Linking of Other Websites from this Website
The website, in which where we are getting a backlink, we need to check whether this website is giving backlinks to tons of other different websites. If that’s the case, getting a backlink from this website won’t help us much as the SEO boost has already been diluted among other websites. Well, this might not be a completely negative factor but this backlink gives us less SEO boost on our website.
Link Building Strategies
We have different ways to build backlinks for our website and we will cover it in this section.
1. Link Building through Guest Posting
Let’s say we have started a website on a particular niche. Our website is pretty new so we won’t be getting enough traffic in the beginning. To increase the traffic we need to write more and more articles on our website and along with it we need to do guest posting on other websites that are possibly in the same niche.
Guest posting is nothing but we are submitting an article to a website that is superior to ours along with a link referring to one of our websites which is a backlink to our website. This will help our website to gain more trust in the eyes of Google as a larger website has referred our website for content.
This can be done for free, as a barter exchange of backlinks, or chargeable depending on the other website administrators.
2. Link Building through Competitor’s Backlinks
Well, this is a very simple strategy. We will check the backlinks of our competitor websites and we ask them manually for our website too. To find out the backlinks of our competitor websites, there are a lot of tools available on the internet like Ahref, SEMrush, etc. which are freemium and paid plans to do this job.
3. Link Building Through Forums
Forum link-building is a good strategy because it allows us to establish a relationship with influencers inside the industry. We can build strong communities for our website through forums which can help us generate traffic in the future.
4. Link Building Through Resource Pages
Resource pages are the pages that provide awesome content on a given topic. If someone is looking for something in particular, the resource pages will provide them with all the information through reference links. So, if we have our links on these pages, this would be one of the potential ways to drive traffic to our website. Wikipedia is one of the examples which adds reference sites for their content.
5. Link Building Through Broken Links
This is one of the favorite strategies of link building by many bloggers. In this strategy, we will look for resource pages which we mentioned in the above section. We check their reference links and find whether any link is broken. If we find one, we will contact the admin of that page and inform them their links are broken. We will provide our links to replace them. This might be time time-consuming process as we need to go through all the resource pages and their reference links in our niche. But if we can find a few, it will help our website rank in Google.
6. Link Building Through Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique is a link-building strategy where we can improve the existing popular content and then replicate the backlink. So, here we are going to re-create the content that is extremely popular, we will make improvements to it. Then we will find backlinks to that existing content and ask them to replace the existing links with our links as our links have better content. Like the above techniques, this also needs good research on finding the relevant resource pages and backlinks to build this strategy. It would be highly efficient if we followed this strategy.
7. Link Building Through Reverse Image Search
There are a lot of websites, that use the images we created on our website without giving us credit. We can do a reverse image search in Google and find out who is using our images. Then we can ask them to add credits to those images that can be backlinks to our website.
8. Link Building Through Relevant Blog Commenting
In this strategy, we will find the relevant blogs to our website and we comment under their blog posts. This isn’t the most authoritative method, but we are diversifying our backlinks which will create a traffic push to our website.
But remember, if we create more links through this strategy, Google will think that we are creating spammy links and it will damage our website reputation. So, keep in mind that this comes mostly under no-follow backlinks.
9. Link Building Through Social Profiles
In this strategy, we are going to our social media accounts and adding the links under our bio section. This is not the most authoritative strategy but it does leave footprints of our website on different social media platforms which exposes our website to the existing users on that platform. This will help us get new users on our websites from other platforms.
This is how we will do off-page SEO for our website to increase its visibility in terms of search engines.