Getting natural backlinks is an incredibly important part of any successful website’s SEO strategy.
Natural and organic backlinks act as “votes of confidence” to search engines to prioritize your content over competitors.
To put it as simply as possible: backlinks provide authority to your website which, in turn, tells Google to “trust” your content and push your site higher up in search results (thus resulting in more traffic).
In this article, we’ll provide a comprehensive overview of anything and everything you’ll ever need to know about building and obtaining natural backlinks.
What are Natural Links in SEO?
So what exactly are natural links in SEO, and how do they compare to other types of backlinks?
Natural links refer to backlinks that are created, well, naturally. They’re not purchased or acquired using any unethical or questionable methods.
Instead, natural links are the result of other websites finding your content helpful and/or valuable.
Many SEO professionals consider natural link building to be the best way to build backlinks. Everything is done legitimately and, to be frank, it’s a great way to get backlinks for free.
Other websites will link to your domain, not for financial gain, but simply because they found your content valuable and well-written.
Can Backlinks Hurt SEO?
Backlinks sound great, but can they hurt the SEO of your site? The short answer is: sometimes, but rarely. The long answer is: it depends.
Backlinks that come from reputable and trustworthy sites are always positive. These “high quality” backlinks will help boost your site authority and, thus, lead to more visitors.
However, links that come from spammy or low-quality websites can have the reverse effect. For this reason, it’s worth keeping an eye on your backlinks and removing any that seem suspicious (through Google Search Console).
Are Backlinks Still Important for SEO?
“Wait,” you may be asking, “are backlinks still important for SEO?”. The simple answer is yes, but the way backlinks affect your search rankings has substantially changed over the years.
Many years ago, a site owner could purchase thousands of backlinks for just a few dollars in order to trick search engines.
These days, Google has gotten a lot more intelligent and is able to distinguish between natural backlinks and fake/spammy links.
Buying fake backlinks is a poor idea, and it can even result in manual penalties which block your site from ranking for the rest of its life.
However, building clean and natural backlinks is still an excellent way to boost site authority and overall rankings.
How to Create Natural Backlinks (3 Core Concepts)
Now that you know the basics of natural backlinks and their importance, how exactly do you get started? How do you actually build natural backlinks?
As with many things in SEO, the process of building natural backlinks is rarely simple, but following three core concepts can get you off to a good start.
1. Create High-Quality Content
The first (and most important) step in building organic backlinks is to create high-quality, engaging, and helpful content.
Typically, this means writing detailed and well-structured blog posts. Choose a topic relevant to your niche and cover it thoroughly. Add details (but not useless fluff!) and make sure nothing is left unanswered.
Additionally, consider creating videos, infographics, or any other type of content that could be useful to your audience and those in your niche.
Typically, create anything that your desired audience would find useful. Excellent, high-quality content is the cornerstone of natural link-building.
To put it simply, to get high-quality backlinks, you’ll need to create high-quality content.
2. Social Media & Forums
After you’ve created incredible content, whether that be articles, videos, etc., you’ll then need to get it out for the world (or the internet, rather) to see.
One way to do this is to participate in social media platforms and on forums. Some platforms will likely not allow “self-promotion”, but others would be more than happy to accept any well-written, relevant content.
Wondering where to look? You can use Google to search for forums within your niche or browse through the Facebook “groups” page to find appropriate groups for your niche.
The key is to find a community and get deeply engaged in it. Yes, this will take some effort. Discuss with other users, respond to posts, and, occasionally, insert your links.
So long as you don’t come off as spammy, most groups and forums will be accepting of self-promotion. Over time, people will take notice naturally.
3. Contact Website Owners
Finally, a great way of obtaining natural backlinks is to work with other websites within your niche.
Most websites, big and small, will have a section with contact information. Generally, this will be the site admin (if the site is small) or, when looking at a bigger company’s website, a marketing/web manager.
Send them an email (or reach out on LinkedIn if you can find it!). Be professional and polite, but not clinical and boring. Introduce yourself, compliment their website, and then offer a specific example of where a backlink can fit.
Remember, think about how it would benefit them. No one will give you a backlink out of the kindness of their heart.
Natural Link Example
To put this concept into an example: let’s pretend that you write content about Siamese cats.
When searching around the internet, you come across a website that writes about cats in general but lacks any significant content about the Siamese breed specifically.
From here, you can email the site owner and offer them a backlink to your article about Siamese cats.
By doing this, you’ll be providing value to their website’s audience and, in return, you’ll be getting a valuable, natural backlink.
How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Rank?
Now that you know the steps for building natural backlinks, how many do you even need to rank?
Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer to this. The “required” number of backlinks depends on a variety of factors such as your niche, the age of the website, the quality of links, and keyword competition.
Rather than worrying about getting a high number of backlinks, focus on getting quality links instead. You’ll see far more success with 5 high-quality links versus 100 low-quality links.
How Do Beginners Get Backlinks?
For beginners, getting a single backlink can have a substantial effect on the early growth of a website.
Once again, the formula to earn natural backlinks is simple in practice.
First, create high-quality content that is relevant to your niche.
Next, promote it on social media and forums. Be genuine and engage with communities.
Finally, consider working directly with website owners and offering your link where it would provide value to their readers.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, building natural backlinks is a truly time-consuming process, but it’s not particularly complicated.
By following the simple steps above (strong content, forums/social media, and reaching out to other websites), you’ll be on the fast track to getting your first 100 backlinks with ease.
Just remember, to get high-quality backlinks, you need high-quality content. So get out there and start writing!
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