We all know backlinks are essential for a client’s SEO campaign, but knowing how to earn the right kind of links in the right way can help you get faster results.
If you’re tired of not getting your clients where they want to be, then we can help.
We’re going to show you why building as many links as you can is not the answer to getting faster results and what you should do instead.
- Check link portfolio of competitors
- Correlate to your own link profile
- Establish how many links it takes to rank no1
- Build High DR Links with anchor text and quality domains
Check Link Portfolio Of Competitors
Why do clients come to you? They all come so they can outrank their competitors, right?
So if you want to get faster SEO results, you have to assess and analyse their competitors’ backlinks.
You can’t just start building links for targeted keywords if you have no idea what they are up against.
Studying the competitors will help you understand what your clients are competing against and reveals the opportunities that can truly improve their SEO.
To help you get started, we’ve broken down the first few steps that you need to take.
1. Start with the top 3 competitors
Type your client’s targeted keywords into search engines and make a list of the 3 organic results that appear at the top of the page.
2. Choose an SEO tool
There are many backlink analysis tools that are easy to use and make spying on competitors incredibly easy such as Ahrefs, Moz open site explorer or SEMrush. If you haven’t used any of the above before, why not try a free trial first to see which one works best for you.
3. Get downloading
Most SEO tools allow you to search and export a copy of any domain’s backlink analysis. We recommend using Ahrefs because they are the best tool for gaining an in depth insight into a competitor’s backlink profile.
With Ahrefs, you can go as far as setting up a backlinks alert for a competitor to receive a weekly email of all the new backlinks they earn.
Correlate to Your Client’s Link Profile
We’re now going to show you how the information from a backlinks report can help you create an outline of what needs to be done for your client.
Carefully study and analyse the competitor’s backlink profile to define where and how they are performing well.
All the different metrics can help you measure how far away your client is from the competitors.
Find the differences between your client’s and the competitor’s approaches to link building and identify the areas you can improve.
Here are some of the important metrics to pay attention to in your analysis:
1. Check the number of inbound links and referring domains
Both numbers play a huge part in search engine rankings.
But it’s important to acknowledge that link quantity is not the main factor, and the number of unique domains pointing to a competitor’s site should also be taken into account.
That’s because sometimes multiple links from one domain are not as valuable as one link from a high authority referring domain.
2. Check anchor text
It’s super easy to view the history of a competitor’s anchor text with Ahrefs.
It will show the number of the referring domains using a particular anchor text and the overall percentage of all the many different anchor text a competitor has earned over time.
3. View the links built for targeted keywords
Always check the number of backlinks a competitor has made for your client’s targeted keywords.
Learn about the types of those links and the quality of the domains they are coming from. It might be worth looking for missed opportunities.
Are there any niche related keywords that the competitors are missing? If yes, by using them, you’ll not have to compete with anyone.
4. Finding new backlink opportunities for your clients
Make a list of all the high authority domains that are pointing to their competitors.
The chances are if they are relevant and pointing to competitors, then they might also link to your client.
Establish How Many Links It Takes To Reach Position 1
While there isn’t a magic formula that can get a client to position 1, calculating roughly the number of backlinks they require to outrank their competitors is a good place to start.
You can start by checking the number of links the top competitors have built for each of the targeted keywords.
But remember you can’t just start building the same number of links and expect your client to jump to the top of the SERPs because not every link is equal.
If you really want to succeed and get faster SEO results, you need to dig deeper.
Start collecting as much information as you can about all the elements that impact the value of a link such as, domain rating, anchor text, the type(dofollow/nofollow), authority, relevancy and more.
If you want to learn more, check out our post on how we pinpoint exactly the number of backlinks required to rank #1.
Build High DR Links With Anchor Text And Quality Domains
Our last step to getting faster SEO results for your clients is all about feeding search engines what they want and need.
While Google uses a number of ranking factors to determine the value of a link, the top 3 dominating factors to focus on are – domain authority and relevancy and anchor text.
1. Domain authority
If you want a juicy high DR link, then you have to choose a high domain rating. The higher the rating of a referring domain, the more juice it will pass onto your client.
So use the list of the high authority websites that you made earlier from your client’s competitors’ backlinks and start earning high quality inbound links.
Don’t forget to use blogger outreach, niche edits, guest posting and business listening for more opportunities.
2. Relevancy
The linking domain relevance is a big topic amongst most marketers, but how much of a ranking factor is it really?
To find out how important it really is, we’ve looked at multiple websites with high DRs across different industries, as well as some of our own clients and their competitors’ backlinks.
And in every case, all domains had a large number of links pointing to them from unrelated websites.
In fact, only a small percentage of the inbound links were from niche related websites.
Although most argue that relevancy is vital, it would look far more unnatural if you just focused on earning links from relevant websites.
So instead of focusing on just the relevancy of the domain, make sure the content and the page are relevant.
3. Anchor text
Search engines use the anchor text to understand what a page is all about and what keyword it should rank for.
So while it is important to get your clients keyword rich anchor text, it shouldn’t dominate their backlink profile.
If you include the keyword too many times in the anchor text of the links then Google may think that you are spamming and not rewards you.
For obvious reasons, you won’t directly have control over all the backlinks a client gets, but you can still make sure to use a variety of anchor text for those that you earn through guest posting or blogger outreach.
Anchor text tips:
- Use relevant anchor text
- Use a variety of exact match, phrase match, branded and naked URL
- Don’t manipulate the anchor text
- Focus on a natural ratio
- Avoid generic terms such as ‘click here’ or ‘this article’