The 8 Best Ways From Semalt To Build A Website's Link Profile
Building the link profile of a domain, usually called linking, is an integral part of website positioning. It consists in publishing links to the promoted website on various other websites. The purpose of publishing these links is to tell search engine algorithms that the target site is valuable and related to specific keywords. The properly conducted process of building a link profile helps in developing visibility in Google search results and other search engines.
So, how to effectively check and create a website link profile?
You'll learn a lot more in the rest of this guide!
What does a site link actually consist of?
The link to the website consists of several elements that are important in the positioning process:
- Anchor text - this is a phrase that is in clickable text mode - it is one of the elements that allows Google's algorithms to determine the theme of the page to which the link leads.
- URL address - this is the address to which the user gets after clicking the link, the linked URL can be an internal link (usually without a domain,) or an external link (always with a domain).
- Title parameter: an optional element that displays the so-called "Bubble" (or speech bubble) with supporting text, usually, information about the link. For example: "Go to the offer of wooden chairs in the XYZ store", this parameter is not closely related and can be assigned to many other HTML elements.
- Rel parameter: another link element that is not required, it is most often used when the outgoing link is not to pass the link juice value (then the link is rel = "nofollow" ). But also has other values: alternate, author, bookmark, external, help, license, next, nofollow, noreferrer, noopener, prev, search, tag.
- Target parameter - this element is also optional and most often determines where the link should be opened, it can have the values _blank, _self, _parent, _top.
Links can have more parameters, but as a rule, in the process of building a stranded profile, only the above elements are used in 99% of cases.
Here are 8 different ways to create a value link profile
Linking the website is usually a permanent element of the process that lasts throughout the website positioning period. It may include the publication of links from a specific type of page or a wide variety of types of pages from which the website is linked. The most popular ways to get links are presented below.
Forums
Internet forums thematically related to the positioned website are a great place to publish links to the promoted website. Links of this type not only inform the search engine about the topic of the page to which they lead, but can also be useful for users of a given forum and help them find products, services or solutions to a problem. Usually, posting links on forums is free for registered users. Some websites, however, require the publication of several posts without a link, and some internet forums automatically impose the rel = "nofollow" parameter on all outgoing links.
Sponsored links on the blogs
Themed articles on blogs, like forums, often attract users looking for information about a product or service (e.g. reviews, comparisons, tests) or a solution to a problem. On forums, a correctly added link from such a page will be helpful both for users and robots, among others Google. Unfortunately, when it comes to the publication of links in sponsored entries on blogs, their price range varies greatly.
While on your own blog and small blogs, placing a link may cost nothing or will be at the expense of, for example, lending a product to be tested, the price of a link of an article on the most popular blogs can reach even several or several thousand dollars. Of course, the entire sponsored article is also included in this price.
Link to affiliates sites
Most often, links of this type are obtained by websites that cooperate with other companies, through which links to their websites are placed, either in the footer or on a separate sub-page of Partners, or links to cooperating companies, sponsors, etc. Speaking of the affiliate's website, links of this type may go to wholesalers or authorized vendors websites. In addition, there may be links to the manufacturer's website on store websites, or on websites that the IT Company has created. Therefore, they can be useful for search engine robots and for users who, for example, on the manufacturer's side, will go to the stores as authorized representatives who sell products of a given brand. In the absence of cooperation with other companies, it is difficult to obtain such links from their websites.
Comments
This is a good way to get links from thematic pages without incurring high costs. In the event that it is beyond our possibilities not to buy a sponsored entry on a popular blog, we can always add a comment under such an article, which will lead to the linked page.
Since popular entries may have a lot of comments, our opinion with a link may quickly disappear somewhere among hundreds of comments from other users and not translate into user visits. But it will still be a message for robots that the linked page is thematically related to the article. Some websites allow you to highlight valuable comments, so it is worth trying to make what we write useful and helpful for users. Most often, comments published on popular websites are moderated.
Business catalogues
Business catalogues are very often used to promote brands. Most of them do not allow you to add a link directed to the phrase of a specific subpage of the website that's being positioned.
Usually, the link leads to the address of the home page, and its anchor is the name of the company or the URL itself. lots of these types of sites only offer paid business cards. And those that allow you to publish a free entry allow you to create a basic, significantly reduced compared to the full version of the business card. For positioning, this free form is usually sufficient, which will allow you to promote the brand with contact details and links it with the website address. When choosing paid versions of a business card in a large part of catalogues, we can count on the possibility of adding additional elements, such as a description containing links to our website. It is worth making it unique.
Social media
When building a website link profile, you cannot forget about the powerful social media channel. Hundreds of millions of people visiting websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other similar portals every day give almost unlimited possibilities in promoting companies. Therefore, it is worth setting up an account on at least one social media website and using it to inform users about your activities. Linking to your posts is free and allows you to direct users exactly where you want to go. In addition, social media has it that if our post with a link is interesting, it can very quickly attract many users to the site. Links placed on the most popular social networks such as Facebook or Twitter may be visited by Google robots.
Back-end services
As a rule, back-end sites belonging to SEO companies are moderated and do not allow adding links in them. They can have a different structure and subject matter. Only the client of the agency that created the websites can count on links from these websites. However, there are many sites where you can place your entries or directories, often based on old and free scripts that are maintained by independent companies or individuals. Adding a link in them may be free or involves a small and one-off fee in the amount of several to several dozen dollars. Some free catalogues require a backlink on your site. Many of these types of pages allow you to add a short description with an additional link in the entry.
Link profile analysis
In the process of building a link profile, its analysis is also important. It is worth doing it before starting the process of publishing links, because an incorrect approach to this task may be associated with a lack of effects in the form of increased visibility or position on specific groups of terms.
In the link profile analysis, it is very important that no tool currently shows the full link profile of the page. Even tools created by Google provide information only about some of the links found by search engine robots, and the list of links is not updated in real-time. As a rule, even incomplete information is sufficient to analyze the link profile and plan further work related to its construction.
If we already use the offer of a marketing agency that deals with the positioning of our website, we must remember to consult an SEO specialist for independent activities related to the publication of links. The adopted strategy of the positioning company usually includes the expansion of the link profile with the appropriate distribution of anchors leading to selected URLs. By publishing links without consulting the SEO specialist, we can disrupt the entire plan.
What tool to use when analyzing the link profile?
The first free link profile analysis tool is Google Search Console. If it is not already installed on our website, you can do it as soon as possible. Search Console allows for quite a bit of link analysis. However, it does not give you relevant information about the link profile. So, if you want to do a fairly in-depth link analysis and then plan a link strategy for the positioned page I advise you to use a paid tool such as the Dedicated SEO Dashboard.
Dedicated SEO Dashboard
The Dedicated SEO Dashboard is a tool frequently used in the analysis of the link profile of websites. If you have a lot of websites that you want to analyze, using this tool will be very efficient. The special feature of the Dedicated SEO Dashboard is that it presents the data in a very clear way and has many extensive options for viewing and exporting. In addition, this tool has many other features that can help you accomplish many other SEO tasks.
How to link a website?
Above, we have presented the basic information related to linking websites. However, if we do not have experience in positioning the website, instead of publishing links on our own, it is better to use the help of a marketing agency specialized in positioning.
The very process of building a link profile may turn out to be insufficient to obtain the appropriate positions or to obtain traffic at the assumed level. Often, apart from the publication of links, it is necessary to optimize the source code, as well as expand the content, which, in combination with linking, allow you to obtain great results.