The Reality of Building Backlinks

[John V]

Link building, here is how it works in reality

Before you begin you have to ask yourself a question. What knowledge or product do you have that would make people pay you for what they can get elsewhere? Are you a NASA scientist, or the CEO of Amazon? It’s not going to happen then, is it.

Back to reality with a bump!

The alternative is to buy rubbish backlinks from Super Billy’s dinger backlinks emporium – guaranteed first page rankings and CNN backlinks for $50! Billy knows they’re rubbish, but he’s hoping you won’t. What you’ll get is low domain backlinks from low quality sites. You want to rank well with backlinks from adult sites and knitting circles? Billy is your man.

If Billy can’t get himself backlinks from Amazon, why do you think he can do it for you? Equally, do you really believe that if your site gives a link to CNN they’ll return the favour? Are you serious?!

So how do you get quality backlinks?

You publish high quality specialized content over a period of time, especially on sites which have a higher authority than yours.

Even if those sites have a ‘no follow’ backlink policy, quality content attracts quality people and those people will start to quote you on their own sites and source the references back to you.

In other words, it’s not about quantity backlinks, it’s about quality and it happens at a snail’s pace.

I have a small blog site. It’s part of a sub-domain, a freebie with no time limit that I could come back to in five years’ time and it would still be there. It’s simply a place I store articles on that I’ve published elsewhere so that I don’t lose them. To date I have 7,507 backlinks, 9 referring sites linking in, plus 3,335 backlinks to my landing page alone and I’m not even trying.

Check your own site https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker

I can understand the attraction of wanting to rank on Google’s first page. You’ve put a lot of effort into building a site and you expect instantaneous results, but it doesn’t work like that. If you can’t write a 1k word optimized article every month that will blow your readership away with your expertise, you’re going nowhere. You can’t buy your way out of that for $40 and that’s the bottom line.

If your site isn’t getting rankings or backlinks it’s not anyone else’s fault. Take away the bells and whistles and learn about infographics, SEO and write quality articles and your site will grow and the backlinks with it.

 

[OlafRustle]

To date I have 7,507 backlinks, 9 referring sites linking in, plus 3,335 backlinks to my landing page alone and I’m not even trying

9 referring sites? Good job

 

[John V]

9 referring sites? Good job

I don’t know if that’s meant sarcastically, but I was impressed for a free sub-domain site that’s not trying to sell anything and isn’t desperate for backlinks. They’re mainly from others who have quoted and linked back to source and not from sites that have a domain ranking of six!

I realized years ago that trying to compete against the big names was a pointless exercise. Brand yourself, because people remember names, write good content and the links will slowly build. Don’t and they won’t. It really is that simple.

One thing that isn’t going to happen is that everyone drops what they’re doing and rushes off to link to a site because the person who made it thinks they should.

 

[NO-CLUE-SEO]

Link building, here is how it works in reality

Before you begin you have to ask yourself a question. What knowledge or product do you have that would make people pay you for what they can get elsewhere? Are you a NASA scientist, or the CEO of Amazon? It’s not going to happen then, is it.

Back to reality with a bump!

The alternative is to buy rubbish backlinks from Super Billy’s dinger backlinks emporium – guaranteed first page rankings and CNN backlinks for $50! Billy knows they’re rubbish, but he’s hoping you won’t. What you’ll get is low domain backlinks from low quality sites. You want to rank well with backlinks from adult sites and knitting circles? Billy is your man.

If Billy can’t get himself backlinks from Amazon, why do you think he can do it for you? Equally, do you really believe that if your site gives a link to CNN they’ll return the favour? Are you serious?!

So how do you get quality backlinks?

You publish high quality specialized content over a period of time, especially on sites which have a higher authority than yours.

Even if those sites have a ‘no follow’ backlink policy, quality content attracts quality people and those people will start to quote you on their own sites and source the references back to you.

In other words, it’s not about quantity backlinks, it’s about quality and it happens at a snail’s pace.

I have a small blog site. It’s part of a sub-domain, a freebie with no time limit that I could come back to in five years’ time and it would still be there. It’s simply a place I store articles on that I’ve published elsewhere so that I don’t lose them. To date I have 7,507 backlinks, 9 referring sites linking in, plus 3,335 backlinks to my landing page alone and I’m not even trying.

Check your own site here

I can understand the attraction of wanting to rank on Google’s first page. You’ve put a lot of effort into building a site and you expect instantaneous results, but it doesn’t work like that. If you can’t write a 1k word optimized article every month that will blow your readership away with your expertise, you’re going nowhere. You can’t buy your way out of that for $40 and that’s the bottom line.

If your site isn’t getting rankings or backlinks it’s not anyone else’s fault. Take away the bells and whistles and learn about infographics, SEO and write quality articles and your site will grow and the backlinks with it.

Sounds like it's taken quite a while to build your site.
I read lots of threads about quality content and quality backlinks. Problem with quality backlinks is they are either very expensive or take a long time to get.
There's lots of threads saying about guest posting for backlinks. Here's the thing, more and more people seem to advercate white hat methods.

If I wanted to wait months to rank a site, that would be fine, but I look to rank my sites in 3 months, so for me, it's a black hat world of backlinks.
If you choose carefully the niche and keywords, blackhat links still work.

If you choose whitehat, well that's fine for you.

 

[surfer30]

All i know about backlinks. They are the backbone of the SEO and the best way to get high quality backlinks is from guest posting on authority sites and media outlets. For instance you write a great article on CNN and link inside the content. How? You link to a specific web page on your website. Not the homepage. Google ranks web pages.

If you keep doing this consistently you will get organic traffic. What people do. They write a few articles on their sites and complain.... no traffic.

I have no organic traffic. Well.

Diversify your marketing strategy and use even social media platform to get traffic. Even medium.com platform is a great place for hot visitors. You can contact large publications to publish your content.

Hope this helps

 

[John V]

Sounds like it's taken quite a while to build your site.
I read lots of threads about quality content and quality backlinks. Problem with quality backlinks is they are either very expensive or take a long time to get.
There's lots of threads saying about guest posting for backlinks. Here's the thing, more and more people seem to advercate white hat methods.

If I wanted to wait months to rank a site, that would be fine, but I look to rank my sites in 3 months, so for me, it's a black hat world of backlinks.
If you choose carefully the niche and keywords, blackhat links still work.

If you choose whitehat, well that's fine for you.

Yes it does take a long time, but I didn’t build it, it built itself. I simply concentrated on time and effort in content and promotion. The backlinks, shares and followers came naturally over time.

Right from the beginning, I never thought I’m clever enough to fool myself or Google. It’s not exactly a secret that keyword stuffing and buying low quality backlinks in quantity went out the window years ago. Who on earth still believes that backlinks from a golf course or real estate agent gives their site authority?

If something works keep doing it, but if it doesn’t there’s no point in continuing and hoping it will.

 

[John V]

All i know about backlinks. They are the backbone of the SEO and the best way to get high quality backlinks is from guest posting on authority sites and media outlets. For instance you write a great article on CNN and link inside the content. How? You link to a specific web page on your website. Not the homepage. Google ranks web pages.

If you keep doing this consistently you will get organic traffic. What people do. They write a few articles on their sites and complain.... no traffic.

I have no organic traffic. Well.

Diversify your marketing strategy and use even social media platform to get traffic. Even medium.com platform is a great place for hot visitors. You can contact large publications to publish your content.

Hope this helps

Sound advice, but the chances of getting CNN to link out to you very likely isn’t going to happen. Yet there are lots of other sites. The main one I use to post on has a domain authority of 91 and 22 million plus backlinks. Yes, I wish but if it’s attracting so many, then that’s where I’ll go for maximum exposure.

I also publish on international sites and have a widget on my own that translates my whole site into any one of around 30 languages with the click of a mouse. There are lots of little tricks that will promote without resorting to failed practices.

You hit the problem nail on the head. ‘I wrote content, never mind about SEO and promotion, I demand many backlinks immediately, why isn’t it happening!’ That mindset is almost guaranteed to produce failure.

 

[John V]

All i know about backlinks. They are the backbone of the SEO and the best way to get high quality backlinks is from guest posting on authority sites and media outlets. For instance you write a great article on CNN and link inside the content. How? You link to a specific web page on your website. Not the homepage. Google ranks web pages.

If you keep doing this consistently you will get organic traffic. What people do. They write a few articles on their sites and complain.... no traffic.

I have no organic traffic. Well.

Diversify your marketing strategy and use even social media platform to get traffic. Even medium.com platform is a great place for hot visitors. You can contact large publications to publish your content.

Hope this helps

 

[John V]

Understandably, people tend to focus on countable backlinks, but there are also shares and followers to consider. This is what I see for my articles every week on a site with a domain authority of 91 and half a million backlinks. I want people to mention me and quote from my articles, not join a crazy competition for countable backlinks.

This is an international site that has a domain ranking of 65 and four million backlinks.

I write, SEO and promote it and leave it for a month. If I don’t get around a few hundred views and fifty mentions or shares I don’t fool myself. It’s obviously not good enough, or I missed the niche audience and I try another post.

I know that I’m good at what I write about in my own niche, but I don’t pretend I’m the best so why bother trying to compete? Make yourself known, write quality content and the backlinks will come without trying to game the system.