Best strategy with links for SEO
The SEO strategy for links should revolve around the following two key points:
- Quality content.
- Quality links.
Creating quality content is essential in an SEO strategy, not only for SEO Off Page, but for SEO in general. If we create attractive and useful content for the user, we will automatically obtain links and we will not have to force them.
Obviously, we can reinforce natural links (that is, those that we do not force) with some type of collaboration with pages related to our topic.
Regarding the quality and quantity of links, we will always opt for the first option. It is preferable to have a few of high quality than many without quality.
Remember that not everything consists of getting links as there are some that can negatively affect SEO with penalties. The most important thing is that you don’t obsess over getting them. As we have already mentioned, focus on the content you offer being of quality and, with a little time and patience, the references and improved SEO on your website will come.
Metrics and link monitoring
Don’t get obsessed with SEO metrics either, use your judgment, experience and common sense first and try to determine the quality of a website manually. If you still have doubts, use the metrics as a reference and try to use several of them at the same time to make a much more solid decision.
Remember that the metrics not only apply to the websites that link to you, but also internal links, review them from time to time and keep in mind that improving them is a process that takes time. Likewise, we must monitor who links to us from time to time using Google Search Console.
Be aware of extreme variations in a short period of time, for example, a significant increase in sites linking to you, a drastic drop in your metrics or a significant drop in visits could be a symptom that you are suffering from a black hat SEO attack. Having Google Search console notifications activated will also help you detect an attack of this type early.
With all these criteria and, once you are sure that the link negatively affects the SEO of your website, try to eliminate it first by contacting the website and then, only if you have not received a response, disavow the link on Google using disavow.
Content, context and anchor text
Don’t just focus on the quality of the domain or the specific web page that links to you. You must monitor the anchor text and the context in which the links are located.
The words that link you must be related to the linked content and it is preferable that they flow naturally with the text, that is, that the links are not forced into the text, making it difficult for the user to read.
Likewise, at a more general level, monitor the context within which the link is located, that is, both the domain and the specific web page that links to you must have a minimum relationship with the linked content.
Internal, external and broken links
Use internal links within your website, they are positive. Not only will it benefit your SEO Off Page, it will also improve the user experience. Using breadcrumbs doesn’t hurt either.
In the same way, use external links to other websites, again and, as before, it will not only improve your SEO Off Page, it will also improve the user experience since you are providing them with the possibility of expanding information.
In both cases, check the broken links through Google Search Console, as they can penalize and do nothing to help the user experience.
Avoid traps or black hat SEO
Avoid doing SEO tricks, if you do not have high knowledge they can end up harming you and, if you do, it is possible that they will end up taking a toll on you in the future.
It makes no sense to create many websites without content and without quality that point to your website. Google checks the IP addresses of the linked websites and, if they are the same because they are hosted on the same server, it considers them as internal links, which have much less weight than external links for SEO.
What is positive is developing an SEO strategy where several quality sites, worked on, with a certain relationship and that provide value to the user, link to ours, as we mentioned when we talked about developing a centralized SEO strategy.
Also avoid massive reciprocal links, those where we agree with a web page so that it points to us and we to it. Google is able to detect these cases and, although they count positively for SEO, they do not have much weight.
One strategy to improve reciprocal links is indirect triangular links. That is, instead of a site A pointing to a site B and site B to A, it is preferable that site A points to B, B to another site C and C to A.
Likewise, we are going to avoid link farms, that is, web pages that have many outgoing links with the sole objective of “influencing” the SEO Off Page of the web pages to which they point. Sites that have an exaggerated number of outbound links are not suitable for us.
Finally we will avoid, of course, the buying and selling of links. As we have already seen, it is of no use if these are not of quality.
Customer journey to get natural links
This section is closely related to quality content. We can summarize it in:
- Know our objectives.
- Know our target audience, for which we will need some type of market analysis.
- Know how to interact with the target audience.
Regarding the third point and, applied to SEO Off Page, we can use the customer journey framework, which we can summarize in the following phases:
- Dream, attract the attention of the target audience.
- Plan, help the public plan what they dream of.
- Buy, facilitate the purchase for the user to comply with the previous planning.
- Enjoy and share your experience so that other people start dreaming and repeat the process again, with this we will be able to get quality links.
All of these steps are based on trying to improve the user experience and, in the process, obtain natural links and improve our SEO Off Page.
Most important domains and no follow
For incoming links, there are domains that are more important than others, these are government domains (.gob and .gov) and educational domains (.edu).
Although we are going to prefer quality over quantity, do not disregard references from small websites that do not have a high domain authority or a high trust flow, it does not mean that they are going to harm you, it depends on other factors such as context, theme or content… etc.
Don’t disregard no follow links either, they are those that are not followed by web spiders and that also do not score for SEO. To know if a link is follow or no follow, you have the NoFollow extension for Firefox and for Google Chrome.
Although they do not affect SEO positively or negatively, they do generate traffic for us. The only thing to keep in mind about them is that you cannot use them as the center of your SEO strategy as they do not contribute at all to your position in the search engines.
