Relevant Links: The Core of Backlink Building
By: Ananyaa Venkat | Updated On: January 23, 2024
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Are you buying backlinks to make it to the first page of Google? That’s great. But are you sure you are actually building links that have the potential to help you reach your SEO milestones?
Being a top Google ranking factor, backlinks are the powerhouse of SEO. While building them the right way can send your site shooting to the top of Google, a few wrong moves in building backlinks can wreak havoc for your site.
BEWARE! Investing in irrelevant, low-quality links will only eat up your time and energy and not produce significant SEO results. Worst of all, they may land you on the wrong side of Google and earn you a penalty.
That’s why here I’m to tell you all about relevant backlinks: how to build them, how those links can bolster your link profile and help you crush your competitors and so much more.
Want to see your website at the top? Don’t let your competitors outshine you. Take the first step towards dominating search rankings and watch your business grow. Get in touch with us now and let’s make your website a star!
What are Relevant Backlinks?
Relevant backlinks are links you acquire from sites that are closely related to your industry or niche with the right keywords in place.
The external site that you choose to link to will often cover topics similar to yours and address similar groups of audiences. That’s a strong sign that you are actually building relevant backlinks.
On the flip side, links from sites that are in no way related to your niche are irrelevant backlinks. Such links are likely to be of low quality and may NOT be a valuable addition to your link profile.
Still wondering why relevant backlinks are particularly important? Let me explain.
Search engines like Google perceive relevant backlinks as more valuable and trustworthy because they indicate that your website is connected to reputed sources within the niche and also help the bots understand your content better.
This way, building relevant backlinks can prompt search engines to show up your page for more relevant searches.
Plus, coming from industry-specific sites, these links emphasize that your content is valuable and informative for readers who are interested in a specific topic.
That said, relevant backlinks can increase your website’s visibility in SERPs, boost its ranking potential and drive more targeted traffic your way.
Benefits of Building Relevant Backlinks
As you now know, relevant backlinks can fetch you a significant SEO advantage. But what exactly is it?
Let me break down the benefits of building relevant backlinks below.
Qualified Referral Traffic
Building relevant backlinks helps bring in qualified referral traffic to your website because you share a common customer base with websites that link back to you.
That said, the visitors who click on the backlink and end up landing on your page are likely to have a genuine interest in your content because it is relevant to their search.
Such visitors are likely to spend more time exploring your content and interacting with your website. This will increase your site’s user engagement.
Improved Conversions
What do you think is the next step after magnetizing qualified traffic to your website? It translates the visitors into your customers.
As the visitors are already interested in your content, you are actually another step closer to converting them into prospective customers.
By hooking up to the interest they show in your content, you can convince them to buy your products or services using well-targeted marketing campaigns.
Overall, building relevant backlinks can have an immensely positive effect on your website’s conversion rate.
Strong Ranking Signal
Backlinks are a top Google ranking factor. So, when you build contextual backlinks from highly relevant websites, they pass a strong ranking signal to Google.
Google looks at these backlinks as votes of confidence, especially when they come from authoritative sites in the same niche.
This will improve your chances of being rewarded by the search engine with higher rankings. The more relevant backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank.
By building relevant backlinks consistently, you can strengthen your link profile and increase the online discoverability of your site.
Improved Authority and Trust
Relevant backlink building contributes to building your website’s authority and trustworthiness. How?
When other reputable websites in your industry link back to you, it signals to both search engines and users that your website is a reliable source of information. This helps establish your brand as an authority within your niche.
As your authority grows, users are more likely to perceive your content as something quite reliable and return to your website for industry-related searches in the near future.
That said, building authority and trust through relevant backlinks can have a long-term positive impact on your brand’s reputation, credibility, and overall success in your industry.
Google’s Take on Relevant Backlinks
When it comes to backlinks, here’s one question that many people ask. Link quantity Vs. quality: what matters for Google? And the simple answer is Google prioritizes the quality of backlinks over their quantity.
From the Penguin update way back in 2012 to the most recent link spam update in 2022, Google’s algorithms are designed to reward websites with high-quality, relevant backlinks that provide value to users. The search engine giant counts on these links to determine the quality and authority of a website.
John Mueller, Senior Search Analyst / Search Relations team lead at Google says, “ From my point of view, I would tend not to focus on the total number of links to your site or the total number of domain links to your website, because we look at links in a very different way.”
He adds, “We try to understand what is relevant for a website, how much we should weigh these individual links, and the total number of links doesn’t matter at all.
That means a few high-quality, relevant backlinks from trusted sources can benefit you much better than a chunk of low-quality, irrelevant backlinks.
In Google’s eyes, backlinks you create from topically relevant websites are more valuable than the ones from low-quality, irrelevant sites.
Suppose you run a fitness website. 10 backlinks from fitness-related sites will bring you more SEO value than 100 backlinks from technology sites. That’s the kind of difference link relevance can make to your site in terms of SEO.
How to Check Link Relevance
To start with, let me explain how to check link relevance using Ahrefs.
Checking Link Relevance with Ahrefs:
- Site Explorer:
- Start by entering the website’s URL into the “Site Explorer”. This will give you an overall impression of the website, including its domain rating, backlinks, organic keywords, and more.
- Backlink Profile:
- Go to “Backlink profile” and then “Referring domains”. Checking the referring domains will show you what types of websites are linking back to your potential backlink source. If many are related to your industry, this is a good sign of relevance.
- Top Pages:
- Check the top pages of the website by going to “Organic search” then “Top Pages”. The top-performing pages should give you a good sense of what the website’s content is about.
- Content Gap Analysis:
- Use the “Content Gap” tool under “Site Explorer > Organic search > Content Gap” and enter your domain and the other website’s domain. If the website ranks for similar keywords as your site, it could be a relevant link.
- Anchor Text:
- Go to “Site Explorer > Backlink profile > Anchors” to see the anchor text used for backlinks. This will give you a better idea of the topics that the site covers.
Now, let’s move to SEMrush:
Checking Link Relevance with SEMrush:
- Domain Overview:
- Go to “Domain Overview” and enter the website’s URL. Here, you’ll see an overview of the website’s SEO metrics, which will give you an idea of the site’s overall theme.
- Backlink Analytics:
- To check the site’s backlink profile, go to “Backlink Analytics”. This tool shows you the website’s backlink information. In the “Referring Domains” tab, you can see the domains that link to the site. If these domains are within your industry, the website is likely relevant.
- Top Organic Pages:
- By visiting “Organic Research” and clicking on “Pages”, you’ll see the top pages of the website. The topics of these pages will help you gauge the website’s relevance.
- Keyword Gap:
- The “Keyword Gap” tool lets you compare your website’s keywords with those of the potential backlink website. If there are many common keywords, the website is probably relevant to your niche.
- Anchor Text:
- In “Backlink Analytics”, there’s an “Anchor Text” section where you can check the anchor text of the backlinks the website has. This can also provide clues about the website’s content and its relevance to your site.
Best Practices for Building Relevant Backlinks
Let’s get down to how you can build relevant links. Following the below best practices when building links can complement your SEO efforts handsomely.
Dos
Outreach to Relevant Sites
Narrow down authoritative and relevant websites in your industry and reach out to them to acquire high-quality backlinks.
Personalized and genuine outreach can help establish connections and increase the chances of getting relevant backlinks.
That’s why at Stan Ventures, we leverage a 100% manual outreach strategy to handpick authoritative sites and craft genuinely compelling, niche-specific email pitches that ensure contextual link placements in relevant sites.
Create Helpful Content
Following the rollout of Google’s Helpful Content Update at the end of 2022, creating value-added content that’s helpful for users has become more crucial than ever.
Content that solves problems, offers specific insights and delivers value is more likely to attract backlinks from relevant websites.
Focus on creating high-quality, informative, and valuable content that addresses the pain points and requirements of your target audience.
Use the Right Anchor Text
The anchor text that you use to build a backlink is what provides it the context. Using the right anchor text will help users and the search engine alike understand what your page is about.
Again, this will boost the number of clicks you get and add more SEO value to your content.
So, when building backlinks, make sure you use anchor text that is relevant to the content of your page that’s linked.
Leverage Social Media
Leverage social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and others to promote and share your content. This will increase your content’s exposure and help you attract backlinks.
Make sure your content is informative and link-worthy. That’s how you get people to link back to your page naturally.
Don’ts
Participating in Link Schemes
Avoid taking part in link schemes such as bulk link building, especially from low-quality, spammy sites.
The search engine looks at link schemes as a manipulation of its algorithms to get higher rankings by unfair means and penalizes sites it thinks are involved in them.
So, ensure you build links at considerable intervals and maintain a natural link profile to dodge getting onto the bad side of Google.
Over-Optimization of Anchor Text
Keyword stuffing will produce a negative effect on your site’s SEO. Using excessive exact-match anchor text can make your content appear unnatural and spammy.
This will affect the chances of your content attracting backlinks. So, make sure keywords are naturally distributed across your content.
Ignoring the Quality and Relevance of Linking Domains
Not every backlink is a good addition to your backlink portfolio.
As I’ve been emphasizing from the beginning, quality and relevance are supercritical when it comes to building backlinks.
Ignoring these factors will result in low-quality link building, which may contribute to your SEO efforts going in vain.
How to Monitor Relevant Backlinks
Acquiring professional quality backlinks is great. However, that’s not the end. You have to monitor your backlinks from time to time to ensure that your link profile is healthy. Here’s how you do it.
Track and Analyze Backlink Metrics
Leverage SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to regularly monitor metrics such as referring domains, domain authority, anchor text, and traffic from backlinks.
This will allow you to assess the relevance and quality of your backlinks and identify any changes in trends over time.
Disavow Irrelevant or Low-Quality Backlinks
Conduct a backlink audit to identify irrelevant or low-quality backlinks that may harm your website’s SEO.
Use Google Search Console and other backlink audit tools to review your backlinks. If you find any irrelevant or spammy backlinks, consider disavowing them to prevent them from negatively affecting your search rankings.
Keep an Eye on Your Competitors’ Link Profiles
What if I told you you could use your competitors to acquire more relevant backlinks to your site?
Yes. Keeping a close watch on your competitors’ link profiles offers insights into their link building strategies and helps you identify potential opportunities for building relevant backlinks.
Analyze the link profiles of your business rivals to find out sites that link back to them but not you. Once done, reach out to corresponding sites and ask for links.
This makes link acquisition a lot easier because if someone links back to your competitor, they can link back to you too.
Get in touch with those webmasters and highlight why they have to link back to you and how it will turn out to be a mutual benefit.
As much as you want to build backlinks, you also need to make sure that they are relevant and contextual. That’s what will truly gear up your SEO growth.
Implement the above practices to acquire relevant backlinks to build a natural link profile and give the search engine a compelling reason to rank your website higher in SERPs.
Want to build relevant backlinks to your site without breaking a sweat? We are happy to help. Contact us today.
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Comments
3 Comments
Thanks for this post! was really helpful.
Building a strong foundation for SEO through backlinks is crucial, Relevance is key. Very useful post!
Thank you Siva for the comment. Your are right, the purpose of backlinks have undergone a sea change and now it’s mostly tied to increasing the relevancy of the website to a search term that user types on Google. The more relevancy Google finds in the content and the backlinks the page has, the more chances of getting ranked.