Digital Marketing, SEO

Real World Backlink Examples (part 1)

Sam Natello - July 13, 2018

Backlink Tactics - Part 1

Real World Backlink Examples

Creating high-value backlinks can be a challenge.  After years of trial and error, our agency has perfected a 7 stage backlink-building program that can be used for any client, in any industry – creating awesome SEO results.  This article will show you an actual backlink-building strategy we are using for one of our clients.  It is, in fact, an article created specifically for the purpose of backlink building.

The Project Background

We have been hired by Active Yards to help their network of dealers across the country rank higher in Google searches against their “local” competitors.  Active Yards is one of the leading manufacturing companies of vinyl fence and aluminum fence.  For more background information about the company and the specifics of the project, you can read the project description here.

Step 1 Building High-Authority Backlinks From Sites We Control

There are many layers of backlink building.  When a website has a low Domain Authority (you can check your domain authority using MOZ), a low TRUST score, and a low Citation score ( you can check these scores for your own website at Majestic ), backlinks from ANY website with a strong Domain Authority will help get things moving in a positive direction.  For this reason, anyone planning on helping other websites build quality backlinks should focus on their own websites first.  (For the record, our DotCom website and our network of websites have strong scores).

The trick is to find creative ways to link to the websites you are trying to help without hurting yourself in the process.  This article you are reading now is one such approach.  We wanted to create a number of links to some of the websites we are working on for SEO.  It is also important for our own website to rank for keywords like” SEO” and “backlinks” and “website design”, “digital marketing” and a whole host of other related terms.  By writing this article, we are using all of these keywords while we are, in fact, building backlinks to our target websites (lower on the page).  It’s pretty sweet.

High-Level Backlinks

The first thing we are going to do is link to each of the 11 websites we are working on in this particular example by linking to their root domain.  When we do this, we want to be careful to use important keywords that they themselves wish to rank for.  We did not build these websites but we are in the process of optimizing the content on their pages.  On-page optimization is another topic for another day.  For now, here are the 11 websites we are running SEO campaigns for in this example:

Deep Linking for SEO Benefit

Deep linking is the process of linking to pages within a website that are NOT the home page or root domain.  Typically you choose to deep link to these pages uses an exact keyword match to the keyword you are trying to rank on Google for.  This is a signal to Google what the contents of this page might be.  If the LINK TEXT is consistent with the content of the page you are linking to, this is a positive signal for Google.  Anytime you see a CLICK HERE … that is not helping the site / web page as much.  LEARN MORE is another common link text that doesn’t help the site or the page as much.  In the examples below, we have optimized a page on each of the websites for the keyword “Aluminum Fence”.  If you click on any of the links, you will see we are not linking to the home page but rather to the page on the website having to do with Aluminum Fences.

More Deep Linking for Additional SEO Benefit

Generally speaking, you can pack about 100 outbound links on a page without suffering the wrath of Google of looking like you are too “spammy”.  So, since we have only used a total of 24 outbound links so far, I feel pretty confident that we can use 1 more set of links , no problem.  I’d like to also give a little “love” to the pages on each of our 11 target websites that we optimized for “Vinyl Fence”.  As the example above, we will deep link directly to these pages within each website using the target keyword in the link.

Analyzing the Backlink Approach

In the article above, I have created 3 backlinks to every one of our target websites.  One backlink goes to the home page (or root domain).  1 deep link goes to the page within the website that is about Aluminum Fence, and 1 deep link goes to the page that is about Vinyl Fence.  Each link includes the location and the keywords in the text of the link itself to help signal to Google that these websites are relevant to these words (keywords).

We have dozens of websites that we control that have strong domain authorities, so if we do this over and over again, we will build a nice little backlink boost to get things started.  Be aware that this is only one “layer” of backlinks that are needed to truly propel a website to the top of Google rankings

 

Summary

In this first layer of backlink building, we were able to build backlinks to our target websites using our own website and a number of “other” websites that we control.  This is a great solution to get things “started” and it is a big help for new websites and/or for websites that have a weaker DOMAIN AUTHORITY than the websites we control.

In future articles, we will explore other backlink building techniques that we use to “layer” our backlinks.

 

Backlink Building Step 2: Build Your Own Authority Site

 

Sam Natello is the founder and top dog at DotCom Global Media. Sam is expert digital strategist who has worked with some of the top brands in the world. In addition to running one of the premier website design and digital marketing agencies in the U.S., Sam also serves on the board of directors for multiple high-performing companies, is an author, and has spoken at business conferences across the United States. Read his inspirational story "From Homeless to CEO." Feel free to send a message to Sam with any questions or comments.