What Is A Backlink?

Backlinks shmacklinks.

What the heck islinking all about? We're gonna talk about that today.

Let's talk backlinks – doesn't that soundexciting? They're so important as part of the findability mix.

There's a lot ofmisunderstanding around backlinks or just links, so let's talk a little bitabout what a link is, what are the different kinds of links, and how can Icheck to see who's currently linking to me.

There are three different kinds oflinks there are gold, silver, and bronze.

So let's talk about the differencebetween all three of these links.

The first one is the bronze standard thebronze standard is when someone's looking to you and you link to them.

Soit's it called a “reciprocal link”.

I link to you, you link to me, and we kind ofscratch-scratch each other's backs.

That's fine, but Google's like, “you're incahoots, we see you”.

So those are fine but they're not really the best – they're thebronze standard.

The silver standard is going to be inside of your content onyour website.

You're linking from your source out to another reference.

So thatcould be a word, or a study, or a stat.

And you link to where that stat resides onanother website.

That's a silver standard.

If you are a professor and expert inyour space, of course you're gonna cite your sources.

That's what links are all about.

Links are meant to validate the content thatyou're talking about on that page.

So make sure that when you're writingcontent that you're linking inside of your body copy.

That's considered asilver standard or when you're linking from your website to another site.

Nowlet's talk about the good stuff.

Let's talk about the gold standard of linking.

The gold standard of linking is going to be Harvard.

A .

edu links their paperor some content from their domain to you.

Now those are going to be pretty hard toget but .

edu's are the bomb.

So you want to make sure you can get them.

If youlike maybe you present to a class, maybe you write an article for a newspaper, maybe you made someone a blog – .

edu's have atremendous amount of credibility for Google.

Because clearly, if you're ifyou've got an amazing educational institution and they're linking to youthen you are an expert in your field.

Also any news site – so CNN, Forbes, any ofthe big sites that pick up a quote from you, pick up a stat.

There's a wonderfulwebsite called Haro.

H-A-R-O.

com.

It's help a reporter out.

I watch reporterswho go in there and they'll say i need to speak to someone on SEO; or i need anSEO expert; or i need to know how businesses can grow online.

I will gointo Haro and I will write a quick note to that reporter and saying here's likehow I can help you.

Now this is why this is so cool is because if that reportertakes my quote I sent him, I get a backlink from wherever he's creatingcontent back to my website.

Remember that's the gold standard – one-directionalfrom a news, educational site back to your website.

I'll take any link thatcomes from a third-party site back to you.

But don't reciprocate.

Remember Idon't want Google to think I'm in cahoots.

I have a lot of people that arego in like the last their cousin and all their uncles and all their clients tolink to them and then they'll link back.

It's fine, but it's not good enoughreally for Google to say, “mmm that's good, I could trust that they're clearly anauthority”.

So be very careful about how you select your links.

Let me show youone of my favorite tools.

I talk about it a lot kind of like a broken record herebut I love SEMRush.

Now I've logged into my account – if you don't have an SEMRush account, there's a lot of other backlinks.

I'm gonna show you a freebacklink audit tool here in a minute, but I want to show you SEMRush first.

SEMRush has a tool called Backlinks.

Now the problem is, is when you get all theselinks and they're all being generated, sometimes those links are toxic.

Kind ofa dramatic word for saying, “I didn't ask for that link, ” or maybe “that website isis participating in deceptive practice, ” meaning they're just linking toeverything, hoping that hoping they'll create this book is called a backlinkprofile to Google that makes a lot of traffic alert their website.

You may havea lot of links that create overtime that you had nobusiness in creating and we want to make sure that we watch this.

So we want to dowhat's called a backlink audit and make sure that we tell Google that if theseare all toxic links, I don't want to be associated with that.

I didn't endure that, endorse that or approve that, you need to then tellGoogle that you don't want, you don't have nothing to do with these links.

Because those could be affecting your ranking and you'd never know it.

So whenyou come in here you're gonna run a backlink audit.

And you'll see right herethat I have 1, 700 links from other sources back to my website.

I have ahundred and ninety-six referring domains meaning of those 1, 700 backlinks they'recoming from 196 different domains.

And of course then I have recurring IPaddresses.

Don't worry about that that's just geek talk.

Okay, so then we want tocome down in here.

We're gonna take a careful look at which ones areconsidered toxic and which ones are good.

Now what I want you to see here is asyou go down you'll see this a little button right here that says disavow.

Thiscreates a beautiful little Excel spreadsheet.

So as you're looking throughhere and you're looking at where these are coming from, if I see anything inhere that I'm like “what?” Let's see, let's see here.

Oh no no no no no.

I'm goingthrough here I see speaking places I've spoken at let's see where else I can seehere.

Lots of printer hub, thank you.

So now I see Napa-net.

org.

Now you have acouple things you can click on that link see where it resides.

If you don't wantit then you're gonna hit the plus sign now what this does is it adds that URLfor that one link to an Excel spreadsheet then it will submit it toGoogle on your behalf.

So what happens is you're saying look I am great at what Ido but all these links have shown up over time that I had no business increating I don't want to be associated with those, and Google's like okay great.

And you submit this document to Google and that will help to clean up yourbacklink profile make sure those gold, silver, and bronze links are reallygiving you the benefit of lifting your website.

So when you do create a piece ofcontent Google's like, “they got it going on.

” Allthese are the people are linking directly to that content and they thinkit's amazing.

So another quick tool to look at, it's not as fancy as SEMRush, but it's free.

Free is nice.

This is a website tool like I found called Ahrefs – ahrefs.

com/backlink-checker and I'll make sure to put it in thenotes below in the in the description of this video.

You're going to come in, you're gonna put your domain name, you're gonna hit check backlinks.

Alright sowhat it's doing is it's going in there and taking a look now at what are allthe pages that I'm ranking for, what are the backlinks I'm getting from thosepages, and then of course referring domains.

this is a wonderful way juststart looking through these links.

If you see any links in here you're like, whatthe heck how did that ever, like here's one called Beauty Store Business.

I don'tknow what that is I don't know why anyone would link me, but maybe if I go and check it out so I'm gonna click on that, let's see wherethis goes.

Yeah so this is clearly a link bait site.

A link bait site is where theyput a bunch of links on here and then of course they're hoping that Google willsee those links and give them credit for it I don't want to be on this website, you'll see it's clearly a spam site.

So I'm going to go back and then I'm gonnago into my SEMRush and say, uh-uh I don't want to be associated, I'm gonna disavowthat link.

So I know this is a little geeky post your questions in thecomments below or email me – heather@findability.

com and we can take alittle bit of a geek deep dive into backlinking.

It's so important whenyou're trying to establish trust in a robotic setting in search.

So remember, gold, silver, bronze.

Stay true to creating content.

Link out to expertsand make sure you give them credit and your backlink profile would become abeautiful example of why people love you and ultimately link to you.

If you lovenerding out over search engine marketing, findability, then make sureto ring the bell and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I'm committed tocreating daily content that moves your business forward to become the mostfindable business online.

.