If you have already heard of SEO backlinks, you already understand what I am going to talk about in this article. In a referencing strategy, obtaining high-quality backlinks is essential. This is what will allow to increase the reputation index of a site, and therefore increase its chances of ending up in the first positions of Google. But more concretely, what is a backlink?
WordPress SEO Consultant in Nice, I use the term “recommendation” which is simply a term in French much simpler to understand than “SEO backlinks”. I will explain this right away.
First of all, the SEO backlink strategy or link building strategy represents the 4th great pillar of SEO, the other 3 are:
What is an SEO backlink for Google?
An SEO backlink or incoming link in French is a clickable text that brings the person who clicked to your website, it is placed on any other website external to yours. It is a link from site A to site B (yours). Not to be confused with links internal to your website (links that lead to other pages of your website) or outgoing links (links from your website that lead to an external site). It’s never too clear, so to summarize:
- Backlink (external backlink): an external link to your website that leads to your website
- Internal link (internal backlink): A link present on one of your pages that refers to one of your other pages
- Outgoing internal link: a link present on your website that refers to a website other than yours.
Links are very important for Google because they allow it to navigate from page to page. Each link has a certain SEO weight:
1 link from an external site to your site = a recommendation
These recommendations, also called backlinks, can come from many sources: forums, blogs, e-commerce sites, social networks, or any other type of website. They can be added manually — for example via blog comments or messages on forums — or published directly by the administrator of a partner site, in a link page, a guest post or a sponsored article. The goal is clear: to obtain a maximum of quality inbound links pointing to your website. This is what is called working on your SEO backlinks, in other words, deploying a link building strategy. Link building consists of implementing a series of targeted actions aimed at increasing the number of external links pointing to your site. This approach aims to improve your positioning on search engines like Google or Yahoo, while generating qualified traffic from referring sites or directly from the SERPs. It is a strategic lever in organic referencing, which requires long-term planning. Well executed, it strengthens the popularity, relevance and authority of your site in its semantic universe.
Why is it important?
Having high-quality SEO backlinks is essential for the visibility of your website. In an SEO strategy there are several methods to obtain them, we will see more than 20 techniques. Google takes recommendations into account. Just like in real life, a recommended person will have more chance of being taken to a job interview than a non-recommended person. For Google, the more your site receives good recommendations (links) and the more your site will be qualitative for Google. It will become an authority site. As a reward, Google will favor you more in search results.
Logical, the more people talk about you, the more you will be known. It is good for your referencing but also good for your traffic because internet users will click on the link and arrive on your site. This will give weight to your site and your web pages. For example, if you want to position yourself on the first page on a competitive keyword but you cannot despite all the optimization put in place internally, you will be able to give your page a boost thanks to SEO backlinks. That’s for theory, in practice, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Before, the more SEO backlinks a site had, the more Google ranked it on the first page of search results, it was easy and it was the wild west because everyone understood the trick and made any link from any site. Today, Google has grown up and has become much more intelligent. Deceiving it becomes almost impossible and it is no longer enough to make thousands of links to your site anyhow.
The criteria of a good SEO backlink
The more recommendations you have, the more you will be visible. That is the theory. In practice, Google evolves its algorithms quite often and becomes more and more intelligent. Today, it is no longer a question of having plenty of links pointing to your site to increase your authority. You need quality links. Criteria of a good SEO backlink:
- A good link is related to your theme
- A good link comes from a quality site
- A good link is relevant to its destination page.
- The anchor of a link (the clickable text): Think about your keyword study to optimize link anchors.
- A good link is natural
- A good link is DoFollow
- A good link must bring you traffic
There are two types of links:
- DoFollow: followed by Google, that is to say that Google robots will visit your site = top quality for Google
- Nofollow: not followed by Google, it will take it into account but will not go to your site = less good
Here is a small Chrome extension that will surround links in red when they are in nofollow. By default, all links on your site are dofollow. Dofollow links are those placed by a site administrator. For example, blog comments are generally nofollow.
What is a quality link/site?
Your goal is therefore to have maximum quality links to your site so that Google considers you an authority site. To identify a quality site, there are two key indicators: Trust Flow and traffic. Trust Flow is a quality score out of 100 given by the Majestic SEO tool. The free version is very limited, to circumvent it, you can install their chrome extension.
Each time you arrive on a site, click on the extension icon to see the Trust Flow of the root domain. A good Trust Flow starts at 20/100. Quality therefore counts more than quantity, but if you have a large quantity of quality links, it’s the jackpot. Google will therefore evaluate your link profile based on:
- The total number of backlinks
- The quality of each backlink: the trust flow of each link
- The overall quality of the site linking to you: the general trust flow of the site
- The number of different sites linking to you
- The quality of anchors: optimized or not
- The number of different anchors: maximize variety
- The link attribute: dofollow or nofollow
- The traffic of this link
Traffic is very important, it is easy to manipulate the backlink profile of a website. In order to find a good SEO backlink, you must rely on Trust Flow but also on the global traffic of the website. Several online tools exist, you can use Yooda Insight to see a website’s organic traffic. If it has thousands of visitors, that’s a good sign.
Example of low SEO traffic
Note that we always come back to user experience, the more naturally a link integrates into a text, the more qualitative it is in the eyes of Google. So that’s what you need to find as a link. Now let’s see how to find a good SEO backlink.
20 techniques to find a good SEO backlink
1. Nofollow blogs
Any comment in a blog will bring you a backlink. Nofollow means that Google bots will not follow this link. It is less good than a Dofollow link but it is still a good point in referencing.
2. Dofollow blogs
By default, article comments are Nofollow. But some aren’t. This gives you a better quality SEO backlink with every comment. Very hard to find, simply comment on blogs and use the site http://openlinkprofiler.org/ to see which blogs are Dofollow. Then, go back to these blogs to place links in comments.
3. Buy links
The easiest and fastest tip is to buy links on popular blogs. Instead of writing a guest article, you will simply ask for a link to your site. The lowest prices start at 30€/link. You have to negotiate, there is no rule in this area. Still count on 150€ minimum for a good SEO backlink. You can also buy links on specialized sites like SEM Juice. Links from bloggers are much more qualitative and you can also gain traffic and notoriety. This is not the case if you buy a link on a specialized site. Use websites like Getfluence or Rocketlinks which put you in touch with bloggers.
4. Link exchange
Find a blogger in your theme and ask them for a win-win link exchange. The trick is to find quality and old blogs. Look at the number of article comments, their traffic, link quality and social networks to see their popularity. Careful: you must not exchange links between two identical articles because Google hates that. You must do A to B but C to D and not B to A.
5. Write guest articles
This requires a bit more work than a simple link exchange. The principle consists of publishing an article on a blog of the same theme containing 2 or 3 links to one’s own website. It’s a technique that can bring a lot of traffic if you choose the blog or media well. For example: my guest article on Livementor’s blog.
6. Write collaborative articles
An article written by several people, we saw that you can use this technique on your own blog but you can also use it for your backlinks. You need to find bloggers who implement it. Look on Facebook groups or propose the idea to a blogger. My example with SEO quotes.
7. Pinterest
Pinterest offers great SEO backlinks, every re-pinned post offers a top-quality backlink. Switch your profile to professional for this to work. I also advise you to add a link to your article in the comments of the pinned photo. Also think that 75% of Pinterest audience are women. 
8. Register your site in quality directories
Today, this has very little SEO impact and you must pay attention to directory quality. One of the best is Costaud.net and there is also Francesurf or Webrankinfo. I offer others in my advanced SEO training.
9. Comment Luv blogs
Comment luv is a WordPress plugin that allows a blogger to leave a comment adding a Dofollow link (followed by Google bots) to their latest article. A way to get more comments. To find blogs that have comment luv: type in Google “your theme + commentluv” or “commentluv enabled blog”. You can also use technique #20.
10. Forums
Forums are a very good way to get backlinks. You can put a link in your profile signature. For each post or response on a forum, you will have a backlink to your site. The trick sometimes consists of commenting on very old posts on forums because they are better referenced by Google due to their age. Commenting on forums is also a good way to get recognized as an expert in your field and gain more traffic. However, moderating a forum takes a lot of time. Don’t forget you need to find a quality forum on your theme.
11. A backlink for a service
You can send one of your products or perform a small service for an influencer. When I started, I did SEO audits of influencers’ sites, I asked them for a review to publish on my site and/or a link to my site.
12. An interview for a link
This only works on someone who is not famous in your theme. You interview a blogger or entrepreneur and in exchange you ask them to post a link to your site. This works well when your site already has good SEO traffic.
13. Thematic platforms
Borderline content curator and directory, specialized sites that can reference your blog articles. This is the case of Géo (travel) or Hellocoton (fashion, lifestyle…). Try looking on Google if there are any in your theme.
14. Pass a press release
Media sites are sites packed with popular links highly appreciated by Google. You can send a press release but only if you have done something crazy or have something great to offer. You can also get interviewed or be part of a case study by another blogger or magazine. In general, you easily find contacts on Twitter.
15. Produce highly qualitative content
The Google method, you publish content so beautiful and interesting that everyone links to your site. No, we are not in Care Bears world, thank you Google.
16. Create an infographic
With the site PiktoChart or Canva, you can create infographics without technical knowledge. You can then send this infographic to lots of bloggers in exchange for an SEO backlink to your site.
17. Use an expired quality domain name
Specialized sites offer the possibility of buying expired domain names with already a good SEO backlink profile. Warning, this technique is risky.
18. Use footprints:
https://www.seo-footprints.com/ allows you to use Google commands to find sites that use WordPress or comment luv. Bonus:
- Wp backlinks: the wordpress plugin that allows you to monitor your backlink profile.
- Affiliation: another great way to find links.
- Use dead links: go to Buzzsumo or Google to find non-competitive articles in your theme. Use the Chrome extension Link Miner to find dead links in the article and offer one of yours in exchange to the author.
Conclusion on SEO backlinks
You have understood that every link is a recommendation. The more good recommendations you have, the better your natural referencing and therefore your visibility. As with internal linking, identify your most important pages and find maximum good recommendations towards these pages. Finding SEO backlinks takes time, it is an SEO strategy that is appreciated over the long term. Always stay focused on:
- Relevance
- Trust Flow
- Traffic
To go further, I reveal my strategy to improve the referencing of a WordPress site.
