Maintaining a place in the upper echelons of Google and other search engines is crucial to the success of businesses.
SEO is of extreme importance to the visibility of your business and is necessary to rank high on Google. To make your business stand out, you need authority. To boost your authority, you need backlinks.
However, what are backlinks? Simply put, backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you “have a backlink from them”. If you link to another website, then they have a backlink from you. Backlinks are also known as inbound links because they represent other websites’ traffic coming to your site. The quality and quantity of backlinks can help your website rank higher on search engines such as Google.
However, building backlinks is not an easy task. If these links are spammy, more often than not, they end up harming the reputation of your website. If you build links carelessly and a search engine catches these efforts to build your rank there could be some serious ramifications that can take a heavy toll on your business.
An easy and indispensable solution to this issue is to maintain a clean backlink footprint at all times. So, how do you do that? Well, read on as the experts at QualDev solve this mystery for you.
Why Does a Clean Backlink Footprint Matter?
Your backlink footprint is a profile of the links you have to other websites and a reflection of how you have built them over time. It is a log of all your past and current link-building efforts and reflects the reputation of your brand and business.
If well executed, your backlink footprint can work wonders for you. It can increase your referral traffic, improve your online reputation, and boost your authority so you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
However, if not executed properly and ethically, your backlink footprint can do the exact opposite for your brand and attract heavy penalties from search engines.
The three main and clear advantages of having a clean backlink footprint are –
- Better Brand Reputation
- Improved SEO
- Avoiding Penalties
How to Maintain a Clean Backlink Footprint
Let’s look at how to maintain a clean backlink footprint –
1. Devise a Good Strategy
Before you upload any content or create any link, have an understanding of and clarity about what you are trying to achieve. Also, having a good knowledge of the best SEO practices always helps. It’s good to know what white tactics can do for you, and how black hat tactics can harm you. It is always best to have a clear, simple plan and stick to it. The more you stray from the original intent, the tougher it will be for you to have a clean footprint.
2. Start Slow
One can succumb to the temptation to generate as much traffic as possible for their website as soon as it is live. Avoid doing this and start slow because if your site has a large number of links too soon, search engines can become suspicious. Later, as your website gets more authority and visibility, and has more history, you can accelerate linking efforts. This always helps in the long run.
3. Content is King
This age-old adage is still relevant and will always be. You will need great online and offsite content to help the links you build, and to build new links as well. If you link your site to a bad piece of content, it will reflect badly on your business. Of course, we know that poorly written content will do you no good and can easily put off potential customers.
4. Always Be Relevant to Your Audience
The link you put forth has to be relevant to the end user (visitor). It should not be inappropriate or irrelevant. It should be well targeted and must deliver what it promises. Achieving this is easy when you link to interesting, well-written, and informative articles that hold your reader’s attention and give them precisely what they want.
5. Invest in Different Content Formats
When content is presented in a single format repeatedly it can be off-putting, especially when the format is used for long content. It is a good idea to keep posting content of various lengths and adding multiple short-length pieces to make it more appealing and engaging. This will improve your backlink footprint.
6. Link Placement
You can often be tempted to add all your links at the start of your piece for maximum traction and visibility. This can work against you in the long run.
Place links in different areas of your content. This might seem counterproductive, but trust that this practice will eventually prove to be very beneficial.
7. Avoid Shady Link Building Schemes
You can easily be tempted to indulge in any of the schemes that pseudo-experts promote voraciously online, especially at the start of your endeavors. While a few of these schemes might be useful and help you, most of them are unreliable and give you extremely short-lived results.
Here are a few of the main points that can ensure a clean backlink footprint. Some honorable mentions include –
- Link extensively to internal pages
- Keep changing your link-building quantity every few months
- If your business offering is topical or seasonal, pump up the linking at the relevant time
- Check and vet your link-building partners frequently
- Scale systematically and with a clear strategy
However, there are many more things that you can do.
With all these basic systemic changes, you can optimize your content, tweak it for visibility to potential customers, and get maximum traction.
If you need help, speak to the experts at QualDev! With QualDev, you can rest assured that you get nothing but the best when it comes to SEO services in New York and ethical, systematic backlinking. With quality eCommerce development services, web development, and SEO solutions that help your business or store in every possible way at every possible step, you can easily ensure that you have the cleanest backlink footprint when you collaborate with QualDev. Count on QualDev for supreme authority, highest referral traffic, and excellent online reputation.