Backlink quality

If you know anything about SEO, you probably know that backlinks matter for ranking in Google. And yes, this is still true even with AI search.

However, you probably don't need as many backlinks as you think. And if you don't understand why backlinks help and which backlinks help, you're likely to waste a lot of time and money.

I'd like to just get into how we think about backlinks at our agency. If you don't know, a backlink is just another website linking to your website.

It's one of many factors that search engines use to determine how high you should rank. The idea is pretty simple: if a lot of other websites online are linking to your website, you must be a trusted, authoritative source.

But of course, SEOs are gonna SEO. It's pretty easy to throw up a website linking back to yours, or pay another website to link back to yours.

And so over the years, Google and other search engines have had to become more and more sophisticated at detecting which links are natural, authentic backlinks and which have just been placed for SEO purposes...

sionally. And like I said before, links are just one factor that Google uses.

When you're doing SEO the right way, the signal you're trying to send to Google is that your business is growing, you're becoming more of an authority in your space. And Google has a pretty good idea of what this looks like when it happens authentically.

You're publishing more content to your website. More people are searching for your brand by name, people are more likely to click on your website in the search result.

People are talking about you online. And yes, more people are linking to you.

And so if your business is truly becoming more of an authority, Google expects all of these things to rise simultaneously. You suddenly get a bunch of links, but no one's talking about you online.

Your brand search didn't go up, you're not producing more content. That just looks unnatural to Google.

So a good link building campaign isn't about getting as many links as possible, it's about getting enough links to keep up with all the other efforts...

places. The next thing I recommend doing is building links with existing relationships.

Try to think of every person or business you know with a website. You're then gonna reach out and ask if they can link to you.

But don't worry, you aren't asking for a favour. You're gonna do this in a way that's mutually beneficial.

There's typically three approaches. 1.

You offer to write them a testimonial that they can place on their website with a link back to yours. 2.

You offer to write them an article they can put on their blog with a link back to yours. And 3, you offer to put them on your partners or resources page if they'll do the same on their website.

Don't assume you're gonna get a lot of links this way. But if you can identify 10 websites and get two of them to link back to you, you've done a good job.

And the last method: instead of going to these websites that are actively soliciting links, go to the websites that Google is telling you they trust...

hem. In either case, it's well worth it.

These are websites that Google is telling you they already trust. Then if you still need links, you can reach out to a trusted link building agency.

Let me know if you need a recommendation. I'll put you in touch with my friend Scott over at outreacher.

But of our 40 SEO clients, I only recommend this for two of them.

You'd never guess this about Google. Google had its biggest leak ever last year in 2024.

This is some of the things that were revealed. Google demotes sites with exact match domains like bestchicagoplumber.com.

Google tracks your clicks in Chrome. Sites that get more clicks get better rankings.

Long clicks versus short clicks are measured. You want people to click then stay in your site.

Backlinks on URLs that get no clicks are seen as low quality. Backlinks from a Forbes URL that gets no traffic will not be great even though it's Forbes.

If you didn't check Google's API leak last year, there were some crazy things shared in it.

$508 is the average acceptable price for acquiring one high quality backlink. Honestly, I'm surprised it's not more.

A backlink is just when one website links to another site. If you've ever gotten a high quality backlink for a search term that has a ton of volume, that's bottom of funnel, that's really competitive, and the link you got is really high and you've in the difference that it makes.

Something like that is worth way more than $500. The boost you can get can be near immediate.

You could have been trying to rank for a keyword. It's a competitive keyword.

That means lots of other people are going after it. And this link makes so much of a difference I'm surprised it's not more than this.

The reason it's this amount is because people don't know if it's gonna be actually high quality or not. It needs to be on a page that actually gets traffic, on a site that ranks, in a site that's in your niche.

I remember one time I didn't pay for this, but I was going after search terms in the health niche. It was a mental well being niche...