SEO Bootcamp: Learn the Basics of SEO in 2 Weeks (2016)
Chapter 6. Building your Webpages’ Link Profile
Search engines consider links as popularity metrics. After the Panda updates, Google still considers links as valuable, but it has become stricter in using them as ranking factors.
How search engines use links:
Make sure your links relate to your main topic
The types of links leading to your website should depend on the type of content that you offer. If you offer celebrity news for example, the websites publishing your links should also be related to celebrities. This includes celebrity blogs, forums and other celebrity news sites.
You should also consider the locality of your website. If your website caters to the population of a specific city, links from websites also related to that city will have more weight than links from websites that offer general information.
Popular websites hold more weight.
You should also consider a website’s popularity when looking for sources of links. A link from the New York Times website will hold more weight than a link from your friend’s blog. Search engines consider these types of website as trustworthy. Links from spam websites will also do your webpages more harm than good.
Be careful in using anchor texts.
In the link structure, the most important factor to consider is the anchor text. This is the part of the code of the link that users can read and click. The anchor texts of links leading to your website should also be related to your topic. However, you should make sure that the anchor texts leading to your webpages look natural. If all of them use the same anchor texts, Google may think that you are gaming the system or using black hat methods to build links.
Build links slowly over time.
Search engines may also think that you are using such methods if your website is new but you already have hundreds of links. To avoid this from happening, you should make sure that the SEO companies or professionals you hire will not build links that point to your website indiscriminately.
A link’s value decreases over time.
Amateur marketers also think that the quality of the links they have remain the same as long as it is live. Google however, has taken freshness of content as an important factor when ranking. As the websites that link to you become less popular, your ranking also goes down. To prevent this from happening, you should produce content regularly that will contribute to your link profile.
Activity for days 11 -13:
You will need a lot of time in building your website’s link profile but taking these steps will help you in starting the process. Your first task is to find people who also have websites similar to yours. They should not offer spam content and they should be managed by reputable companies or online marketers.
Your next step is to collect contact information about the owners of these websites and start communicating with them. One of the best ways to do this is to offer to do a guest post on their website. Most webmasters will welcome an opportunity to get free content on their website. They will review your content before they give it the go signal so you need to make sure that it is of high quality. You will need 2 days to create a well-researched and excellent content and a day to start sending out emails.
On the 14th day, you should review on the improvement of your ranking and what other tasks you can do to improve it further.