Unfortunately we don't have total transparency into Google’s algorithm. Because of this, it can be difficult to determine just what Google is looking for when ranking a website. What they have told us is to build our websites around the needs of the reader, rather than the needs of the search engine, and to acquire links naturally, by people linking to us because of our high quality content.
This is always the best practice when building a website. Nothing can beat the diversity and natural linking patterns of people linking to websites they like. Although “linkbait” is a tried and tested SEO strategy, sometimes we need to help our websites along to achieve the search engine rankings we desire. Once a website is totally optimised for the search engines (on-page SEO), it’s time to turn our attention to the off-page SEO. This means finding a way to get websites to link to our own.
One of the easiest ways (which is probably seen as an “old-school” method), is simply to contact webmasters and ask for a backlink! If you have a quality website that will benefit their readers, they may oblige. They may also ask for a link in return. It could be said that a two-way link is better than no-link at all, but whether you want to link out from your website is a decision you’ll have to make on your own. It’s much harder to build a portfolio of solely one-way links!
One of the best ways to get relevant and high quality backlinks to your website is by guest posting. Find blogs within your niche/industry, and send them an email requesting the opportunity to post some great content on their website. They get free, unique content for their website, and you get one or two contextually relevant backlinks to your website.
One of the link building methods that used to be very powerful was to use software to build profiles on forums, which contained a backlink. The problem with forum profile links is they’re often irrelevant, and lack any real link juice. Many people bombard their websites with thousands of profile backlinks every day, but they often go undiscovered by Google, and the ones which do get indexed are given a very low value. The same can be said for automated blog comments, etc.
Manual directory submissions can still have an effect on rankings, especially if they’re specialised towards a specific niche or industry.
There are a number of ways to create backlinks, but the focus should always be on quality rather than quantity. It’s better to have one relevant backlink from an authority website than a thousand spammy links on a defunct Russian forum.
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