As a digital marketer or website owner striving to boost online visibility, you might find yourself wondering about the specifics of backlink submission. This concept, a crucial cog within the broader machine of search engine optimisation, plays a significant role in improving your website’s position on search engines. This article pulls back the curtain on backlink submission, shedding light on its relevance, its potential benefits and its execution. By the end of this eye-opening read, you’ll find yourself equipped with the knowledge to leverage backlink submission to your distinct advantage.
Understanding Backlink Submission
The journey to improving your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines can be a colourful one. One of the many paths you need to tread on this journey is backlink submission. This indispensable part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) involves getting other websites to link back to yours. Not only does this increase your site’s visibility, it also helps search engines see your site as credible and valuable, thereby improving your rankings.
The Concept of Backlink Submission
Much like submitting your assignment or project to a superior who then judges it, backlink submission involves offering your website’s link to other site owners. This could involve asking them to include the link in their content, or even writing guest posts for their site that contains your link.
Relevance of Backlink Submission in Search Engine Optimisation
The importance of backlink submission in SEO cannot be overstressed. Google, for one, sees backlinks as votes of confidence from other websites. This means that when other sites link to yours, Google thinks your site is credible and worth visiting and thus pushes it higher in search ranks. It gives your website impressive organic presence and visibility.
Types of Backlinks
Dofollow Backlinks
Dofollow backlinks just as the name suggests, simply means the links that allow search engines to follow them. They pass on link juice to your website, thereby positively impacting your site’s ranking and visibility.
Nofollow Backlinks
On the contrary, ‘nofollow’ backlinks do not allow the search engines to follow them and hence, do not contribute to a website’s ranking. However, they still help in bringing referral traffic to your website.
Ugc Backlinks
‘Ugc’ stands for User Generated Content. These backlinks come from comments, forum posts, and other content that is created by users, and not the website owner themselves.
Sponsored Backlinks
Sponsored backlinks are those that are paid for. In other words, you buy these links from other sites. They are often tagged as ‘sponsored’ to show that they are commercial in nature.
Process of Backlink Submission
Initial Research and Analysis
Before embarking on backlink submission, it’s necessary to do some initial research and analysis. This should involve understanding your website’s current SEO standing, including your existing backlinks and ranking for relevant keywords.
Finding Potential Backlink Sources
After you understand your current SEO position, the next step is to find potential backlink sources. This could be websites that are relevant to your niche, influencers, or blogs that create content similar to yours.
Evaluating the Quality of Backlink Sources
Not all backlink sources are beneficial for your SEO efforts. Some might be spammy sites, while others might offer low-quality backlinks. Hence, part of the backlink submission process is to evaluate the quality of potential backlink sources to ensure they are beneficial for your SEO efforts.
Approaching the Website for Backlink Opportunity
Once you’ve ascertained the quality of potential backlink sources, it’s time to reach out to them with a backlink proposal. This step requires tact, politeness and a bit of persuasion to ensure the other party sees the value in linking to your site.
Tools for Backlink Submission
Google Search Console
Google Search Console serves as a helpful tool in backlink submission. It helps you to analyse your website’s current backlinks and also find out which sites are linking to yours.
Semrush
Semrush is another handy tool for backlink submission. It helps you to easily carry out backlink analysis and also find potential backlink sources.
Ahrefs
Among other things, Ahrefs is popular for its extensive backlink checker. It gives you detailed insights on your backlinks and also helps you find high-quality backlink prospects.
Moz
Moz is an SEO platform that could help you with backlink submission. Its Link Explorer tool allows you to find out who is linking to your site and also discover other potential link sources.
Majestic
Majestic is an SEO tool well-known for its powerful backlink checker. It assists you in analysing your total backlinks and also helps to identify new backlink opportunities.
Role of Content in Backlink Submission
Quality of Content for Backlink Generation
Your content needs to be good enough to earn backlinks. What this means is that it should be high-quality, relevant, and valuable to the reader. This way, other websites believe that linking to your content would add value to their users.
Creating Link-Worthy Content
This goes beyond merely writing quality content. It’s about creating something that is link-worthy. Something that is thoroughly researched, unique, and valuable enough that other websites would have no choice but to link to it.
Incorporating Relevant Links into the Content
When creating content, you also need to consider incorporating links to relevant resources. These could be other credible websites or pages on your site. This helps to improve your content’s credibility, thereby making it more link-worthy.
Backlink Submission Strategies
Guest Posting
Guest posting involves writing posts for other websites in return for a link back to your website. This can be an effective way to generate valuable backlinks and increase visibility.
Broken Link Building
This strategy involves finding broken links on other websites, and offering your content as a replacement. This can be particularly effective if your content is relevant and high-quality.
Skyscraper Technique
The Skyscraper Technique involves finding popular content within your niche, creating something even better, and then reaching out to the right people who would be incentivised to link to your superior content.
Influencer Outreach
Another way to earn backlinks is through influencer outreach. You can reach out to influencers in your niche and ask them to link to your content, or perhaps write a guest post on their blog.
Analysing the Success of Backlink Submission
Measuring Search Ranking Improvements
One way to determine if your backlink submission effort is successful is by checking how your site’s ranking has improved.
Traffic Analysis
Another measure of success is the amount of traffic brought in by the backlinks. Increased website traffic implies that the backlinks are effectively drawing people to your site.
Backlink Source Monitoring
It’s also necessary to keep tabs on the sources of your backlinks. You want to know which sources are providing the most high-quality backlinks, to help refine your backlink strategy.
Ethics of Backlink Submission
Understanding Black Hat and White Hat SEO Techniques
While trying to improve your site’s visibility and ranking, it’s important to be aware of different SEO tactics – the unethical black hat and the ethical white hat techniques. Black hat techniques, such as creating link farms or sneaky redirects, could harm your website’s reputation.
Avoiding Link Schemes and Spammy Practices
It’s critical to avoid link schemes and other spammy practices in backlink submission. These include buying backlinks, excessive link exchange, or using automated programs to create links.
Ensuring Ethical Backlink Submission
In all your backlink efforts, it’s crucial to ensure that it is ethical. This means avoiding black hat SEO techniques and focusing on providing real value, not just to search engines but also to your readers.
Drawbacks and Challenges in Backlink Submission
Time-Consuming Process
Creating and submitting backlinks is not a process that can be rushed. It requires adequate research, planning, and constant monitoring which could be time-consuming.
Risk of Link Spam
There’s also the risk of link spam in backlink submission. This is when your website contains too many irrelevant or low-quality backlinks, which could hurt your website’s SEO in the long run.
Possible Penalties from Search Engines
One of the major challenges of backlink submission is possible penalties from search engines if they detect black hat techniques. These penalties could affect your website’s visibility, traffic, and revenue.
Steps to Recover from a Bad Backlink Submission
Identifying Harmful Backlinks
If your website is suffering from penalties or poor performance due to bad backlinks, the first step to recovery is identifying these harmful backlinks. These could be backlinks from spammy or irrelevant sites.
Requesting Removal of Bad Backlinks
Once you’ve identified the harmful backlinks, you should try to get them removed. This usually involves contacting the website owner and requesting that they remove the backlink.
Using Google’s Disavow Tool
If the website owner refuses to remove the bad backlink, you can resort to using Google’s Disavow tool. This tool lets Google know which links to ignore when assessing your site’s credibility and ranking.
In the end, backlink submission is a subtle art involving strategy, diligence, and a keen understanding of SEO rules. It forms a central part of your SEO efforts and when done right, it could significantly boost your website’s performance. So go ahead and dive into the world of backlink submission, ensuring to keep it ethical and focused on providing real value.
Hi, I’m Nicholas Bortoluzzi (but people often call me Nico).
I am the Founder and Director at SEO Lynx, an internet marketing agency operating in the UK and servicing clients worldwide.
The article on this page was written and curated by myself.