For most search engines, backlinks are the ultimate ranking factor. Traffic to your site is directly related to the quality of the backlinks your website has. Ultimately the greater number of authoritative websites that link to you, the better rankings and traffic you’ll get. It’s always important to remember the power of Google rankings. When you surf the web, Google analyses your websites backlinks to understand how your pages are connected to one another and in what way.

Needless to say there are a multitude of ranking factors to consider but backlinks represent the most important metric for search engine optimisation (SEO). While quality backlinks are sometimes hard to get, we have gathered together six clever tips to help you earn backlinks.

1.     Build a solid internal linking structure

While internal links won’t necessarily give you a considerable SEO boost, they will increase the overall usability of your website. Building a solid internal linking structure is just like any other technique but don’t abuse it and create an excessive number of internal links/pages. Adding unnecessary links/ pages will only complicate the user and make your website look suspicious.

2.     Replicate your competitors

Replicating competitor’s backlinks is one of the smartest ways to find new link building opportunities and improve SEO. Aim to analyse your primary competitors which are usually ranking in the top five positions for your main keywords. Often when competitors are ranking above you, it means they have a better link profile and higher quality backlinks. Remember you should only replicate the links that have a good authority. Compiling a list of your competitor’s backlinks and then replicating their best ones is one of the easiest ways to get backlinks.

3.     Guest Blogging

Despite what some may believe, guest blogging has been around long before Google started using backlinks as a ranking factor. Ultimately guest blogging provides one of the best ways to make yourself heard online. With guest blogging, you can tap into pre-established audiences and interact with people from your niche. Not only can you build quality backlinks, it’s a great technique for driving traffic and building more followers on social media. However, if you’re going to guest post it needs to be high-quality.

4.     Build backlinks with infographics

Not only are infographics perfect for building backlinks, they also drive traffic from social media as they are highly shareable. Infographics provide popular link building methods which you can submit to popular infographic directories. In order to push your infographics even further, you can use social media such as Twitter, to find people that have shared related infographics in the past. Reaching out to others and asking for their feedback has the added benefit that they may share your infographics on social media while adding links to them.

5.     Promote your best content everywhere

No matter how great your content is, it won’t get backlinks if no one knows it exists. You have to proactively search for people that are interested in linking to your content and sharing it on social media. Influencer research tools are a great way to find people who are willing to share your content. Remember the more bloggers you talk and engage with, there is a higher chance of getting your content shared. As you build more quality backlinks and develop stronger relationships with well-known bloggers, getting others to share and link to your content will become much easier.

6.     Broken link building

A less common approach to building backlinks is the broken link building technique. This involves finding 404 errors on others' websites and letting them know about it. Essentially, you’re doing other websites or bloggers a favour by letting them know and potentially they may return the favour by linking to your website.

While the whole process of getting backlinks might seem time consuming, in the long run it’s well worth it. You can build backlinks to your website by following the tips in our blog and be sure to remember only build quality backlinks.

Remember Search Engine Optimising (SEO) ​ is a long-term game. To improve your site's ranking (SEO) we’ve made a list ‘10 Ways to Improve SEO’. Follow these suggestions and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine results.

1. Publish relevant content

Quality content is the number one driver for your search engine rankings, and simply put there is no greater substitute for great content. When you create quality content specifically for your intended users, site traffic increases, which leads to an improvement in your site’s authority and relevance. For each page identify and target a specific keyword phrase and repeat this keyword phrase several times throughout the page.

2. Update your content regularly

In addition to publishing relevant content, aim to update your content regularly. Remember search engines feel strongly about content. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site's relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh. Review your content on a regular basis and make any necessary updates as needed.

3. Boost pages with internal links

Internal links are links from one page on the same domain to another. When internal links are used strategically, they can significantly boost the performance of pages in search engines because internal links support the flow of PageRank around your site. In simple terms, the more internal links your page has the higher its PageRank, which is important considering PageRank is a confirmed Google ranking factor.

4. Refresh content with diminishing traffic

Aim to complete regular content audits of your page. If you notice that organic traffic to one of your pages is decreasing, consider updating the content. Remember updating content doesn’t always mean rewriting the entire page. It comes down to your target keywords and their competition. Quite often all you need to do is refresh the outdated sections.

5. Focus on metadata

When designing your website, each page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata, or information about the contents of your page. The most important type of metadata is ‘title metadata’. This metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. In terms of a good meta description aim to include generally two full sentences.

6. Use ALT tags

A key piece of information that will go a long way in increasing SEO is describing your visual and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. The use of Alt tags allows search engines to locate your page, which is crucial especially for those who may only use text-only browsers.

7. Replicate backlinks from outdated, low-quality pages

When you perform a Google Search, often click on the first result only to find a substandard piece of content. It’s likely you started thinking how this page is ranked number one. Moments like this present opportunities in the sense that if poor pieces of content can get tons of high-quality links and rank in Google, so can you. To do this, find the substandard pieces of content that have lots of links and get the people linking to them to link to you instead.

8. Have a link-worthy site

Aim to focus on creating relevant links within the text. Rather than having a link that says ‘click here’ try writing out the name of the destination. If you think about a ‘click here’ link has no real search engine value beyond the attached URL, however if you write the name of the destination for example ‘​Marketing Eye Blog’​ the description is rich with keywords and will more likely improve search engine rankings.

9. Optimise the page speed of important pages

Everyone has clicked through to a page that takes ages to load. In most cases you either repeatedly clicked the refresh button or probably clicked the back button and tried another site. Ultimately slow pages are bad for business and SEO. To improve page speed and keep readers on your site consider reducing image sizes and enabling browser caching. This will allow your users to load your page without having to wait very long.

10. Improve the click-through-rate of your top-ranking pages

The title tag of a page acts as the headline of an article. Ultimately it is your job to entice the searcher to click through to the page. If you can write a title tag that persuades people to choose your page over the others, you’ve won. Aim to add powerful words to your title that tap into people’s emotions. Keep your title tags short and sweet to capture the reader's attention and improve readability.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Anais Nin

To have a job today, we are amongst the more fortunate. With devastating effects of COVID causing recession in many economies, the employment market has fallen to the lowest in many years. Some of the latest statistics on just how high unemployment will be in 2021 can send anyone into a negative space, so how do those who are employed, stay positive.