In this episode, we cover:

Today, we are talking to Michael Johnson, the Sales Manager at Page One Power. He has been in the SEO industry for over seven years.

He has developed hundreds of SEO campaigns and strategies for companies of all sizes, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 brands.

As Sales Manager, Michael works with prospective partners to ensure goals, expectations, and beliefs all align before the launch of every campaign.

In this episode, he will discuss some proven strategies for effective link building.

Show Notes Explanation

Hey everyone, this is Senthil. Welcome to another episode of SEO On-Air. We all know more links help boost rankings, but building links these days has become extremely tough. In today’s show, we’ll discuss proven strategies for effective backlink building.

To speak on this, we have Michael Johnson, the Sales Manager at Page One Power. Page One Power is an organic link building company based out of Garden City, Idaho, in the US. Welcome to the show, Michael.

Time Stamp: 02:30-04:20

In today’s landscape, what is the best and safest way for link building for businesses?

• Based on the history of link building, around 7 or 8 years back, links were something that happened.
• But that’s not the case right now. Google now considers links as a sign to understand the effectiveness and usefulness of a website.
• Links are now earned through creating high-quality content.
• Link building is also about building relationships through outreach and focusing on offering value to the web and the audience.

Time Stamp: 04:26-07:23

What type of content can help to build backlinks?

• One type of content that really works is resource page links. They are the most natural links that exist on the web.
• The way that I do it is first, focus on a specific audience that has a lot of resource pages dedicated to them on the web.
• Then create a content piece that solves the problem for that set of audiences and also correlates to your products or services.

Time Stamp: 07:41-10:13

Where should an e-commerce store link to-the product page, category page, or the blog section?

• The mindset that most people have for e-commerce sites is that they want their product pages to rank better, and to rank better, you need backlinks.
• People don’t typically link to product pages unless they are paid for, so you probably won’t get a lot of links to your product pages.
• In that case, it is better to focus on unlinked mentions.
• However, the best practices to generate natural backlinks are creating great content, useful resources, and using internal links to link them to your product or category pages.

Time Stamp: 11:02-14:13

How do we look at good link building opportunities?

• Most people consider a good DA as a measurement of site quality, but I believe otherwise.
• For me, the first criteria are relevancy. Is the site relevant to your niche or your products or services?
• Next, look at human value. Does the website you’re targeting, add value, attract the audience, and get good traffic?
• The third criterion is trust, look at domain metrics, see if the DA and DR make sense for you. Also, look at the linking neighborhood, check that the site is not linking to spammy sites or low-quality sites.

Time Stamp: 15:23-17:09

Most webmasters want to give no-follow links. What’s your take on that?

• Always try to get do-follow links because they will give you the most value.
• To get those do-follow links, you have to build links that provide value to the audience.
• In the process of creating those organic links, you’ll also get no-follow links, and that’s okay.
• No-follow links can’t be controlled every single time, so don’t worry about it much. Instead, keep trying for do-follow links.

Time Stamp: 17:19-19:14

What are some of the anchor text ideas that you recommend?

• We recommend taking a varied approach to your anchor text. You just have to think about the ways people link to pages and the anchor text they use.
• Let’s say you are trying to rank for a small business accounting software; you can create a guide about small business accounting because people can then link to the particular keyword.

Time Stamp: 19:50-21:23

What are your thoughts on web 2.0 links?

• I don’t see them as a sustainable or long-term approach to link building.
• If you can create real engagement, then any link building approach is good to go.

Time Stamp: 21:40-23:21

Can you recommend some tools for outreach?

• Our team uses BuzzStream because it’s very organized. We also use SEMRush for keyword research and competitor analysis.
• I love Moz and Majestic. There is a feature in Majestic called Click Hunter, where you can see all the sites that link to your competitors.
• Buzzstream is also a fantastic tool.