Link Building
What is a backlink?
A backlink is another website linking to yours. Examples of this can be ‘click here‘ or ‘visit this website‘, or when the URL is used: example.com, and http:www.example.com. Images can also be backlinks.
A backlink can happen naturally by creating quality content which other website owners will find useful and could share it on their website or blog. However, for small business owners who often don’t have the time to publish regular content, building links can be extremely difficult.
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks can be a vote of trust to search engines like Google and will help establish authority within your niche and industry. When a website links to yours it can pass some of its power and trust to your website. Over time, your website/domain will become more powerful and trustworthy.
Alongside an onsite SEO strategy this can result in higher rankings for competitive search terms, creating more traffic, sales and leads to your business.
Is link building still important in SEO?
What is anchor text?
- Exact match: Uses the exact keywords used on the page being linked to.
- Partial match: Uses variants of the keywords on the page being linked to.
- Branded: Uses the name of the brand in the anchor text.
- Naked: Uses http://www.example.com.
- Generic: Click here, learn more, visit this website etc.
In SEO it’s important not to create too many exact match backlinks as this can be considered ‘over optimised’ and won’t look natural to search engines. We suggest a healthy mixture of branded, naked and generic links at the start of any link building campaign.
What are the benefits to link building?
- Increased website traffic from the sites that link to you.
- More powerful website so you can target more competitive searches.
- Higher organic rankings.
- Indexed in the search results quicker.
- Outrank your competitors.
Would you like to know more about links?
Types of links we can build for you
At Targeted SEO we only build quality and trustworthy links. Search engines have become extremely intelligent over the years and can now recognise links which are have been built purely to manipulate ranking positions.
Citations
A citation in SEO terms is usually an online reference to your business and can contain your business name, address, phone number, business description, website URL and links to social media.
It’s important that this data is consistent (NAP data) for local SEO and Google My Business rankings. Citations are also a signal to Google that you are a real business and the first stage in our link building campaigns.
Authority Guest Blogging and manual outreach
After citations, we recommend building links on blogs and websites related to your industry or services. We can reach out to a wide range of quality websites that already have authority and trust in Google. We can publish an article on these quality sites with a link back to yours, carefully selecting the anchor text, URL and length of the article is also part of the process.
Guest post backlinks are very powerful and will boost the power of your site in the search results.
How much does link building cost?
Google will always recommend that you do not pay for links, rather they should be earned by creating quality content and building relationships with other people and website owners in your industry. This is true in some respects and we would also recommend this strategy. However, this can be difficult in some commercial niches and trades.
For other website owners who have worked hard to build their brand and trust, they know they have a high DA site (domain authority), and usually, they won’t let you guest post for free.
You can expect to pay anywhere between £180.00 / $260.00 to £360.00 / $480.00 upwards per guest post. This is dependent on the DA of the site you are guest posting on. Guest posting has a knock on effect to the monthly retainer that you pay an SEO agency like us to get you results.
When can I expect results from link building?
Results from link building depend on the niche that your business is in, the competition in the SERP’s, age of your site/domain, and the onsite optimisation of your site. However, we have got fast results in competitive niches in as little as 4-5 months of investment (case studies available on request).
If you are interested in a link building campaign ask us for advice. We will analyse your site in ahrefs (SEO software) and provide guidance on the types of links you need, alongside any onsite SEO strategy.
