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One of the best SEO tools for small businesses is hiding right under your nose! And it’s totally free!
Actually, there could be a ton of appropriate answers here but today, we’re talking about backlinks.
Backlinks, a link from another site leading to yours, are one of the only ways you can grow your domain authority — a measurement that search engines use to determine how authoritative your website is and use to determine where to position you on the search results page.
Basically, high-quality backlinks = higher domain authority = better ranking opportunities.
BUT WAIT
While you can totally work on growing your backlinks on your own, you absolutely must do some research and educating beforehand.
That’s what this post and I’m here for — this is not a comprehensive list of all the ways you can get backlinks (SEMRush & Hubspot have already done that). This IS a basic level understanding if you want to learn the basics of how to improve your small businesses SEO before or after optimizing your website.
What the heck are backlinks?
Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your website.
For example:
It’s common for website designers to showcase their work by linking their brand name in the footer of your website. That usually links back to their site. That’s a backlink for them.
Another example is if you’ve ever written an article for an online publication. Whether that was a guest post, an industry article, or anything else. If your name in the byline links back to your website — that’s a backlink for you.
Backlinks are kind of a big deal, there are SEOs that specialize in building backlinks. Unless you grow into a huge corporation or things really take a wrong turn, you likely won’t need to hire a backlink specialist.
I don’t offer backlink building as a service. But one of the beautiful things about SEO and content is that a natural part of creating good content and optimizing your site can automatically help increase your backlinks. Yay! We love multi-functional things.
3 ways backlinks will absolutely help your SEO
If you don’t want to read the whole post — that I put a lot of brain power into BTW — you should at least know that getting quality backlinks is almost guaranteed to improve your SEO. And in the long-run, a few higher-quality backlinks are significantly more powerful than a bunch of mediocre ones.
of mediocre ones.
- Higher domain = better ranking opportunities
High-quality backlinks are one of the few ways to boost your domain authority, which is how search engines measure your site’s credibility on a subject. The higher your domain authority, the better your chances of ranking higher in search results.
- Compete for more competitive keywords
With higher domain authority, you can target more competitive keywords. Keywords come with a difficulty score (1-100) and your ability to rank for them is directly tied to your domain authority. So, the higher your authority, the better your chances of ranking for high-difficulty keywords.
- Referral traffic & potential leads
By creating high-quality content on your site and in your blogs and optimizing your website you’re helping people find you better and enjoy what you’re saying — which leads to backlinks. By intentionally building quality backlinks, you’re increasing your visibility, driving more traffic to your site, and generating potential leads.
To understand backlinks you need to understand domain authority
Moz, an SEO software company, designed a metric called “domain authority (DA)” (some variation of that exists across all SEO software).
It assigns a website a score from 1-100, the closer you are to 100 the higher you’ll rank in the SERPs (search engine results page).
Moz uses a variety of factors to estimate this score but the main ones are root domains that link to your site and backlinks.
- Backlinks refer to the number of links you have coming back to your site.
- Root domain refers to the number of domains linking back to your site.
- My friend could give me backlinks in 25 of their blog posts. If I had no other backlinks this would be 25 backlinks from 1 root domain.
Backlinks are an important part of determining website authority
Think of backlinks like a letter of referral. By linking to you, that site is saying:
- They trust you
- They like what you have to say
- And/or they think their audience would like you and what you have to say
As a small business, solopreneur, or even freelancer you may have encountered some pushback getting brands to link to you. I know I’ve worked with brands who are happy to list my name as author on a blog, but don’t want to link back to my website.
Each one has their own reasons as to why and oddly enough I’ve never encountered the reason that I would be able to argue with: passing link juice.
I literally hate that phrase, SEO is obviously a male dominated industry but like, clearly a man came up with that. Anyway, not only are backlinks a display of trust, they pass ‘authority’ aka ‘link juice’ from the host website to the one receiving the backlink.
What a backlink does not do is take away authority from the giver.
For example:
My website has a domain authority of 4. If I had a big client who had a website authority of 40 and they gave me a backlink for a blog post I wrote or maybe they linked back to me from their team page, giving me a backlinks (aka linking to my website) is not going to harm or reduce their domain authority.
For several reasons:
- If they’ve already made it to a 40, they clearly have some really strong backlinks themselves.
- Linking to me is relevant. I’m in their industry or I have authority to be writing these posts. Linking to my business proves that.
- Even if they’re doing a lot of backlinking to lower authority websites, if they’re relevant and it makes sense it’s not going to harm them.
As a small business trying to grow, getting backlinks is one of the only ways you can improve your domain authority.
Examples of how backlinks can help boost domain authority & trust
Here are just a few examples of backlinks and the most relevant ones you can go after as a newbie.
Portfolios
Including backlinks in your portfolio can enhance your domain authority while showcasing your work. For example, the blogs I write for my client The Filtery are published in my name. The link takes you to an author page which then links back to my website.
Not only does Google recognize that connection, but I can put that post in my portfolio and when someone clicks on it, they’ll see my name and the link right away. Almost like an instant verification.
It’s tricky, I know, but I suggest you think about how you can be creative with getting backlinks to portfolio pieces!
Guest Posting
Writing guest posts for industry-related publications is a powerful way to earn backlinks. Generally the bigger sites, like Forbes, use “nofollow” tags, which prevent the transfer of authority, but these links still drive traffic and increase brand recognition. Target reputable sites where your content adds value to their audience.
Networking
Here me out. In-person networking can uncover unique backlinking opportunities. Most importantly it exposes you to people and businesses you might not have found sitting behind your computer. It can most definitely lead to collaboration with other businesses or co-authoring blog posts which builds valuable links organically.
Forums
Do you remember during the summer of 2023 (I think it was 2023) when suddenly Reddit was ALL OVER OUR SERPS (search engine results page)? I do because it was the most annoying time of my life that just so happened to coincide with the biggest Google update to date, Reddit going public, and Reddit selling access to Google for its LLM.
However, participating in forums can be beneficial if done authentically. Ensure your contributions are meaningful and not just inauthentic link drops, which can be seen as spam and the antithesis to why forums exist in the first place.
Directories
Listing your business in online directories, such as small business groups or local chambers of commerce, is an easy way to gain backlinks. Most of them offer some sort of member page where you can easily fill out your info. Bonus points if they have a logo you can put on your site.
Podcasts
Appearing on podcasts not only introduces you to new audiences of the pod but also often results in backlinks through show notes or related blog posts. Win-win!
Reviews
Leaving reviews for products or services you use can result in backlinks, especially if they allow you to link to your website. If not, consider pitching them for a featured review that includes a link. And again, make sure it’s genuine and real.
Please read the fine print
Okay you’re sold on backlinks, right? They’re clearly valuable and they don’t seem that hard.
But creating a backlink strategy is not just about getting as many backlinks as fast as you can as quickly as possible.
By creating good content and optimizing your site for SEO you’re already off to a good start. You’re helping people find you, trust you, and naturally want to link back to you.
Also be aware that growing your backlinks is a slow process. It’s time consuming and growing by a point or two a year is extremely good. But you can do it!
Just remember …
Not all backlinks are created equal.
There are toxic backlinks and they can hurt your online presence.
You’ve probably gotten an email promising you backlinks or selling you backlinks. Perhaps something like this…
The image above is a very real email I’ve received from someone selling me SEO services. It reads verbatim: “Hi Dear partner, I hope you’ve been having a good day! I’d really like to talk to you today about something that I think will be of immense value to you. From one marketer to another, I wanted to give you an update on what we’ve been up to. As you know, The (CLIENT NICHE) industry is booming right now and we’ve been working hard to help our clients take advantage of this trend. We’ve developed some cutting-edge marketing strategies that are helping our clients increase their leads and sales by leaps and bounds. Yes, we are talking about (Guest Post Off Page SEO) the way to get more rank, authority, new audience, traffic, social media sharing, and much more.” And it then proceeds to list domains.
There are a couple of things to always keep in mind when strategizing.
- Buying Backlinks Violates Google’s Rules
Purchasing backlinks is against Google’s guidelines, and if detected, you will be penalized. And trust me, you do not want to go to Google jail! You wouldn’t buy fake references so don’t buy backlinks. Instead, focus on earning backlinks from reputable sources that know your business.
- Audience Relevance Is Key
It’s not just about getting a link from any high-authority site; the linking site’s audience should be interested in what you offer. The content surrounding your backlink should be related to your business. Google’s algorithms consider the context of the link, so if the content isn’t relevant, the backlink may not be as beneficial.
- Beware of Spammy Backlinks
Not all backlinks are good. Some come from low-authority, spammy sites, which can damage your site’s credibility. While a few low-quality links might not hurt (I myself have several that have backlinked to me), keep an eye on them. If it gets out of hand or the links are offensive, consider disavowing them. But if you have 150 backlinks and 10 are spammy, you’re probably fine.
- Outdated Backlinks
If your site has been around for a while, some older backlinks might no longer be relevant, especially if the linking site’s content and purpose has changed. While not usually a big issue, it’s worth monitoring especially if you have or are planning to purchase a website.
- Black Hat Techniques
Unethical practices, like spamming competitors with bad backlinks, are part of what’s known as “Black Hat” SEO. Basically what companies would do is send their competitors’ information to a content farm and get them thousands of shitty links. We’re good witches so it’s unlikely you’ll ever experience this but it’s good to know.
At the end of the day, backlinks are really the only way to improve your domain authority. Just like most of SEO it seems intimidating and scary but I promise you once you start thinking about it and incorporating it in a natural way it gets much easier!
As always you know where to find me if you want to talk SEO.
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