Quality Manual White Hat Link Building

Quality Manual White Hat Link Building

White hat link building refers to above-the-board and trusted methods of getting quality backlinks to point back to your website from relevant third-party sites.

As there are many different ways to gain links, some methods are of higher quality than others. Very often, easy ‘fly by night’ methods are aimed at gaining a large number of backlinks very fast however, this form of low-quality link building does not work.

The infographic below shows you (on a high level) what is involved in rolling out a high-quality white-hat link-building campaign. Find out more about the link-building sprint method we use.

 

Best Link Building Software Tools in Use By Industry Leaders in 2022

Best Link Building Software Tools in Use By Industry Leaders in 2022

 

Man has made tools and in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), we cherish the use of tools in running various marketing campaigns to collect data, analyse, report and act on their findings.

Lucky for us in the current digital marketing industry, we have options on what tools to use. 

Tools are devices used to carry out a specific function in a way that makes that function or task easier to manage. Similarly, intangible software tools help to fix and manage errors, updates, forecasts and understand big data that cannot manually be computed.  

There are numerous tool options that can become overwhelming and confusing to understand. 

Fortunately for you, this article has streamlined and will shed some light into the top and best link building tools efficient today. Tools for SEO enable marketers to run smart campaigns that result in achieving various business goals. 

A Recap: The Important Role of Link Building to Businesses

If you are one of the million people looking and searching for an answer on Google. We can safely say that you are one of the beneficiaries of SEO and link building. 

Link building is an essential process towards Google’s ranking algorithm. It is the process of acquiring and building quality links, (also known as backlinks) from other websites and getting them to also link back to your website. 

What are backlinks? And are they all the same?

Backlinks can be an ”inbound link” or an ”outbound link”. A backlink comes from a connection of two different websites linked together. Look at the image below. 

Backlink Example

Courtesy of Moz

The image shows the relationship between a website and backlinks. These links are an essential element in a Link building campaign. They produce signals to search engines that vouch for your page. If there are many websites linked with yours, these backlinks will positively boost your site’s ranking.

Benefits of using white hat link building strategies

  • Effective link building earns higher SEO scores. SEO scores like Domain Rating, Domain Authority, Page Rank, and more are metrics that get affected when there is positive fluctuation in the campaign. The higher the results, the wealthier the website. 
  • Promote your website’s credibility and reputation. Google ranks pages or websites depending on its Website Authority. A website with high authority is more likely to be promoted and recommended by the other sites. 
  • Link building establishes a good relationship with your niche. Google says you must focus your link building strategy in your chosen industry niche. Being connected with people or organizations in the same industry allows your business to get new opportunities in the future.
  • It builds your brand awareness and visibility. Being placed on the first-page result of Google, attracts more people to visit the site. You earn most of the audience’ views.
  • Links build the continuous flow of website traffic. Building quality links will give you a lifetime of website traffic or brand visibility as long as they will not be removed. 
  • Link building helps better brand exposure and visibility. With different link building techniques, you can develop and give better brand exposure to your niche. Social media and other platforms can be your new market to advertise your company.
  • Link building can offer good quality content for your audience.  It provides informative and educational content that helps the audience to drill for further detailed information.

Is Link Building Still More Productive Today Than Before? 

It’s a big yes! Link building is still fruitful today. Previously,  website content was composed poorly with random links attached to its body. Google’s update geared users to rectify spammy and low-quality content or risk being penalized. 

Google aims to rank up pages that follow white hat techniques with a natural flow of keywords in its content and those that strive to offer the best page user experience.

Modern Link building is now more creative and competitive than when it started. It keeps the race phase challenging and artistic as marketers learning more day by day.

Which Types of Links are the Most Valuable?

Some links are more valuable than others, such as Dofollow links. These are links directly from another site recognized by Google. They make worthy links that pass authority down to your site.

On the other hand, Nofollow links do not contribute to your site’s rating. They do not boost  pagerank and do not support a page’s placement in the search engine results page. 

They do however allow you to prevent spam sites from using comments to improve search rankings. Nofollow link is a fundamental tool in ensuring that spam websites do not take advantage by cheating their way to the top of search rankings. 

Other link types such as Co-citation links and Text attributions can contribute to the growth of your campaign. However, Dofollow links earn the title of being the most valuable link. 

 

Which is the best link building strategy?

In previous years, the core part of link building was about obtaining as many links as one could get to one’s website regardless of the relevancy to one’s web content or source. 

This strategy and its techniques have over the recent years become redundant. Google realised that this offered poor user experience, spammy, unbeneficial to the user and quite frankly a nuisance. 

As a result, the pursuit of quality links has become one of the most important factors for a webpage to stand a chance on ranking at the top in google’s search engine results page. Earning links from relevant website sources, White Hat Link Building, especially those with a high domain rating, enhances one’s web authority and instills trust in its users.

There are several tactics in white hat link building. The following are our chosen and recommended among the rest. 

Guest blogging

HubSpot stated that businesses generate an average of 97% more inbound links because of blogging. Guest blogging earns popularity among businesses. 

Blogging Stats Image

Courtesy of Neil Patel 

Writing a blog can be a good source of earning links but make sure to do it the right way. Conduct research on what you need to know before writing your blog to avoid getting penalized. 

Here are samples you need to study: 

  • Study your audience’s wants. What are your audience preferences and intentions? 
  • Study what the trendy topics are. Know which contents are famous and easy to get shares.
  • Study how blogging affects user’s experience. It can help you to write influencing and well-structured content. 

Create Infographics

Infographics are rocking social media platforms such as Instagram. They generate influence on the growth of every campaign. 

Pictures and infographics are eye catching.  A study has further proved that more people learn through visual text than reading. It’s a good step to reach out to how your audience perceives things. 

Get involved in social media groups and communities.

Social media plays an essential role in boosting your brand awareness and exposure. It  can also give you links that can help to strengthen your campaign. There are a lot of opportunities you can get from engaging your brand to different social media platforms among others;

  • boosted social engagement between your brand and your audience.
  • Establishes relationships between new and prospective clients.
  • Ability to increase website traffic. 

Use Trusted sites as your resource links.

Aim to link to websites that are well-known and have already  earned the trust of their audience. Such trusted links  make your content a reliable source of information. Using resource links to include in your article can give you more backlinks. 

After writing and having inserted their links on to your content, you may reach out to their moderator to seek that they share your content with their readers. From there, you can earn links from your resource page.

Level up your broken link strategy.

Although chasing broken links is an old-style technique to earn links, it’s still fruitful today. Its process is very straight forward. You have to look for a broken link and ask the webmaster that you have the best option to fix and bring it back to life. 

Develop your branding.

Your branding is one of the link building strategies that should be growing over time. The company’s branding should talk about its mission, goals and perspective. It is the idea that will remain in your audience’s mind if the content is consistent.

Check your competitor. 

In this business world, checking your competitor is not a bad thing to do. It is a smart move to conduct studies and analyze tactics of your opponents, monitor areas that need improvement and plan how to outplay them. 

Monitor your existing Backlinks. 

It’s not just about earning links but also monitoring your existing backlinks. Set a monthly audit to your campaign so you can monitor your metrics as well as your remaining backlinks. From the results of your campaign audit, you can identify lapses and broken links that need fixing.

    Why Use Tools in Link Building After All?

    It only leads to one answer, maximizing time, working smartly. Tools help us to use our time productively. There are a lot of tasks to do in running an SEO campaign. Choosing the right tools for your campaign can run your business smoothly. Here are few more advantages you can get from using Website link building software tools in your campaign.

    • They help you to extract results for analyzing and check if your strategy is effective or not.
    • Tools can give you straight-forward graphs, figures and numbers of your campaign enabling you to understand the status of your link building strategy.
    • They offer you suggestions and recommendations on how to deal with declines. 
    • They guide you to the latest updates of how Google ranks up a page. 
    • Reports extracted are real-time so that you can take necessary action towards the declines.

    Top SEO Link Building Tools Picked by Experts in 2021

    Ahrefs

    Ahrefs earns the spotlight among marketers. It is an all-in-one SEO tool that gives you multiple features that is very helpful. The software tool is known for fast and accurate reports of your profile. 

    Besides being known in backlink Analysis, it can also perform different unique features that only Ahrefs can do. 

    We listed the things that you can only see using Ahrefs. 

    Keyword research for ten different search engines

    This feature is pretty unique because some of the tools can only show metrics for Google. We cannot deny the fact that we also need other search engines to get traffic. Ahrefs supports the following search engines below.

    • Google
    • Yahoo
    • Amazon
    • Youtube
    • Bing
    • Yandex (Russia);
    • Baidu (China);
    • Daum & Naver (South Korea);
    • Seznam (Czech Republic)

    You can toggle the drop-down button to switch between the choices. It will allow you to view the results of the keyword in different search engines.

    Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer ”click” feature

    Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer has an incredible feature that you can extend beyond the search results. It can give you numbers of search volume same as the estimated quantity of clicks on a search engine result. This feature helps marketers to determine if the keyword is worth targeting. 

    Ahrefs Clicks Overview

    This image above gives us 64,000 search volumes for a specific term. And there are only 9,000 clicks for the same word. That means Google shows a quick answer related to the keyword resulting in a low rate for clicks. Unlike the image below, there is a lesser search volume than click results. Therefore, there are many clicks because people are looking for an answer using the same keyword

    Ahrefs Overview for Clicks
    You can get the expected total search traffic for the top ten ranking pages. 

    Most SEO experts examine the search volume of a keyword to foretell the site’s organic traffic capability. And here comes the problem, pages don’t lead to rank using a single word keyword. It ranks according to its variations. Based on Ahrefs’ studies, long-tail keywords are much possible to rank up than single keyword terms.

    To estimate the number of possible traffic of a keyword, you can use the ”SERP overview” report in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. It can give you a monthly traffic number for the top-ranking pages. 

    It can give you graphs related to your backlink’s growth and declines.  

    Ahrefs is also excellent for web crawling, as they invest in new technology and infrastructure to give users an updated backlink graph every day

    Ahrefs Referring Domain Graph

    With the use of graphs, you can identify the increase and declines of your domains. Moreover, you can spot negative SEO attacks. 

    ”Top Subfolders” feature

    The tool allows you to check and understand your competitor’s website structure using the ”Top Subfolders” feature. This feature allows you to view yourself in international traffic. 

    ahrefs all countries traffic image

    Analyze SERP history.

    This feature allows you to investigate and analyze the SERP history of a particular keyword. It can give you a glimpse of the search battle among companies. Here’s an example: 

    SERP position History

     

     

    The page will give you the top 5 pages ranked in the ”Link building” keyword for the past few months. It is worth analyzing as this will give you cues on how your competitor came up with their current ranking and how you will outplay them.

    Content analysis gap for content strategy enhancement

    Ahrefs can give you a content analysis gap for content strategy improvement. Other software tools also offer content analysis, but this one is different. 

    If Google finds your content not enough for its niche, this feature can help you reveal subtopics to include in your article. It will develop your content structure in your future writings.

    Track and monitor your website’s outbound links.

    Links are your campaign’s soul. It is essential to keep track of your external links like broken links. You can check your broken links under the outgoing links. 

    Sometimes webmasters accidentally remove the link or have something changed on the page. You can email the webmaster and ask to re-live the link. 

    Content Explorer for link prospect

    You can use the ”content explorer” to look for your link prospects. It has a searchable database of over 1 billion web pages with the complete established metrics such as: 

    • Domain Rating (of the parent website)
    • The number of referring domains
    • The volume of organic search traffic
    • The word count
    • Live/broken links
    • Publish date
    • Updated date
    • Author

    How to utilize this feature? 

    1. Search and look for relevant terms or phrases in the content pages
    2. Then, sort or filter pages with zero referring domains with more than 500 monthly search visits.
    3. From there, you can select and determine topics that you can rank up even without building backlinks.

    Internal backlinks analysis

    It can create a quick analysis of the backlinks of any website. Ahrefs can give you the website’s internal links. You can check these by heading to ”The Best Pages by Incoming Links” under the Site Explorer, then select the ”Internal” tab option. It will allow you to view the number of internal links on each website’s page.

    ahrefs Best Pages by Internal Links

    You can explore the actual URLs and the linking anchor texts by tapping the blue numbers. Also, it is an easy way to do an internal links audit. To determine what things you should adjust.

    After all, it does not yet include Ahrefs ranking tracker and site audit tools. Ahrefs can offer a lot of features to help you run your operations. These features make the software tool win fame among the rest. 

    Ahrefs trial offer, Pricing, and Plans

    Depending on your neds, Ahrefs does get pretty expensive. However, the amount of value this tool will provide you and your agency will be totally worth the investment. Quick shout out to Tim Soulo – CMO at Ahrefs, you guys are awesome.

    There are four different plans that Ahrefs offers for the subscription.

    • Lite: $99/month
    • Standard: $179/month
    • Advanced: $399/month
    • Agency: $999/month

    Ahrefs Plans & Pricing Image

    They have a seven days trial period that costs $7. You can access Ahrefs Lite or Standard plan without limitations. Although there are free tools that can help you run your operation, It’s good to invest in something that will help you run your campaign. Aim at least a standard plan for a smooth support system for your link-building operation. 

     

    HubSpot

    Hubspot  Overview

    HubSpot is an SEO tool that can assess your links and their contributions to your campaign. This software tool can tell you how effective your links to your brand are. HubSpot allows you to track domains links to your website, the total number of links from that website, and it can show you sites connected to your competitors so you can add them to your target websites.

     

    Screaming Frog

    Screaming Frog

    Screaming Frog is also one of the SEO expert’s tools. Use this software in monitoring backlinks and producing accurate reports. Its reports allow you to go completely checking and understand the status of your backlinks. Screaming Frog secures that your links are working fine

     

    Majestic SEO 

    It is an SEO software tool dedicated to backlink analysis. What makes it different is it specializes in backlinks. It does keyword research, SEO website audits, and On-page analysis, totally 100% backlinks-related jobs.  

    Majestic Link Building Tool

    In this photo, you can notice backlink’s metrics easily including,

    • Trust Flow
    • External Backlinks
    • Referring Domains
    • Referring IP Addresses
    • Citation Flow
    • Topical Trust Flow
    • Indexed URLs
    • Crawled URLs
    • And more

     

    You can expand and explore each metric for in- depth understanding of the analysis. Here are some of the reports that Majestic can give you:

    • Topics Report. It is an analysis of where your backlinks came from another website. 
    • Backlinks Report. Just like most SEO tools, you can extract the data as CSV or in an Excel spreadsheet. 
    • Context Report. It is a unique feature that many haven’t discovered yet. This report is about the density and the location of most of the links located on a page.
    • New and lost links Report. It is where you can find the recently acquired links and links that were lost. 
    • Anchor Text Breakdown Page.  It is the page where you can check the most common anchor text that people use to connect to a page. 
    • Pages Report. It includes the pages on the website that earns the most backlinks. Pages Report is the counter-part of ”Best by links” in Ahrefs and ”Indexed Pages” to SEMrush.

    Majestic SEO Pricing 

    Here is the Majestic’s pricing for your reference:

    Majestic Pricing Plan Image

    We can say that Majestic is way cheaper than Ahrefs. Although it doesn’t have a trial plan, you can start purchasing the lite plan.

    SEMRush

    SEMRush is a software tool that helps marketers to optimize websites on search engines. It has over 6 million users and one of the most popular SEO tools in the market. Here are the features of SEMRush that can help you to improve your website ranking. 

    SEMrush Backlink Analysis tool

    The backlink analysis portion in SEMRush allows you to get and view a list of backlinks, including:

    • The anchor text in every backlink
    • The number of the website domain links to yours.
    • The information of your backlinks like IP addresses.

    The page lets you see every piece of information laid on the page. From there, you can tell the status of your campaign. 

    SEMRush Backlink Gap Tool

    SEMRush Backlink Gap tool gives you an idea of how backlink profiles differ from one another. It allows you to compare five websites at once. By doing this, you can identify gaps between competing sites. Here are the steps to use the SEMRush Backlink Gap tool:

    1. Add your competitor’s root domains, subdomains, or URLs. At the same time, you can compare multiple subdomains. It can be a domain with the same URLs, domain to a subdomain, URLs to a subdomain, or any combination between the options. 
    2. Look for the Backlink Gaps. SEMRush will give you a graph and table representing the relation and comparison between the website’s backlink profiles.
    3. Check missed opportunities. You can view the backlinks opportunities you are missing and use them as your next link-building objective. 

    The good point of using this is the user can transfer up to 100 domains directly to the SEMRush Link building tool. By adding them, you can do outreach to these domains to help them with their backlinks opportunities.

    SEMrush Link Building Tool

    For many SEO tools, everyone is looking for a wow factor in how it differs from the usual. But how does the SEMRush Link building tool differ from the others? Here’s a glimpse of its Features and Reports:

    1. You can configure, set up, and personalize your Link building Tool. You can add up to ten target keywords as well as your competitors. Also, SEMRush will give you a list of links opportunities and prospects related to your keywords. 
    2. After configuring your Link building tool, SEMRush will pull out data to analyze your campaign. It will give you an overview report about your progress. This report allows you to review and add your prospects. 
    3. Link building Email Outreach. Now you have an idea of opportunities that you can pursue. You have to pitch for links by doing your email outreach. What’s good with SEMRush is you can connect and access your mailbox. It supports Outlook, Gmail, Exchange Online, and Office 365. 
    4. Monitor your backlinks over time. You can Filter your links, Import Domains, Update data in the report result, and Export Backlinks to a CSV file. 

    SEMrush Brand Monitoring Tool

    SEMrush Brand Monitoring Tool

    Just like Ahrefs, SEMRush is an all-in-one SEO tool that helps marketers in their campaigns. It has an in-depth analysis of your current link building strategy status. It is highly recommended and used by well-known organizations and SEO experts due to its usage.

    The tool lets users trace, tag, and sort the mentions of their brand whenever it pulls out of the web. Your brand mentions can be sort of like an email inbox. 

    Also, you can search your brand mentions by date, phrase, and assign sentiments. Tagging sentiments like positive, negative, and neutral will help you to interpret your brand reputation. 

    SEMRush helps marketers with their link building strategies with its PR tools, ability to track trends in a specific industry and distinguishing opportunities for improvement. 

    SEMRush pricing, plans, and options

    There are four different plans available for SEMRush:

    • Pro: $119.95 per month
    • Guru: $229.95 per month
    • Business: $449.95 per month
    • Custom: negotiable

    SEMRUSH Pricing

    There is a 16% discount for users that will avail of an annual plan. What’s good about SEMRush is, they have a seven days trial for Pro and Guru Plans. You can explore the tool before subscribing to it.

     

    There is a 16% discount for users that will avail of an annual plan. What’s good about SEMRush is, they have a seven days trial for Pro and Guru Plans. You can explore the tool before subscribing to it.

    Google SEO tools 

    It may sound like a monopoly, but it’s not what you think. Google releases different kinds of tools for the market to keep in track. Google tools are to help webmasters’ audiences to feel the best customer experience whenever they browse Google.  

    Here are the several Google tools that are still welcoming 2021.

    Google Search (Search Operators)

    You might wonder why some people use special characters when searching for something in a search engine. But what is the essence of using symbols in using Google?

    Google search operators are symbols, characters, and commands that help users to narrow down results. In this way, Google can give you the most relevant answer to the query. Furthermore, it is also helpful to marketers for SEO research. 

    Google Search operators character sheet

    There are 25 different special characters and split into three categories: ”Basic”, ”Advanced”, and ”Unreliable”.

    Basic Google Search operators

    ” “ – Used in phrases to look for exact-match.

    OR –  is used to find similarities between terms.

    | – this pipe character is equal to ”OR”.

    ( ) – It uses as to control in which they shared in the same group.

     – –  Place between keywords to exclude the term from the results.

    * – Use to get a result will match on it in any words

    #..# –  Are used alongside a range of numbers to find answers in between.

    $ –  Used to search prices in a dollar currency.

    – Used to search prices in a Euro currency.

    in – It is used to convert between two equal units.

    Advanced Google Search operators

    intitle: – Use to find exact quotes, phrases, or page’s title.

    allintitle: Same as various intitle, uses to find every page title for a single term. 

    inurl: – Uses to find a word or a phrase within the document URL.

    allinurl: -Same as various inurl, uses to find URL in every single term. 

    intext: – Uses to search a word or phrase within the body of a document text.

    allintext: Same as various intext:’s. Used to look for the text in the body of the document.

    filetype: -Uses to find a matching file like PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, and TXT.

    related: – This only works on larger domains. Uses to get back sites connected to the target domain.

    AROUND(X) – Returns results in which two terms are within the stated (X). 

    Unreliable Google Search operators

    ~ – Uses to include synonyms.

    + – Uses to look exact-match on a phrase but is deprecated with the launch of Google+.

    daterange: – Use to get a result within the stated date range.

    link: – This Google search operator deprecated in early 2017 and used to search pages linked within a domain.

    inanchor: – Use to look for linked pages with a defined phrase or an anchor text. 

    allinanchor: – Uses to look for all single terms after using ”allinanchor” in the inbound anchor text.

    Google search operators tricks and tips

    Google search operators are much more powerful when used with other operators. Here are some tricks and tips on how you can combine operators to get better search results.

    1. Chain operators together. You can use different operations in a combo style to come up with good results. 
    2. Trace plagiarized content. You can track down your content if someone is plagiarizing you. Extract a unique phrase from the body of your content. Then, put the quotes after the ”intext:” operator, and except your site using ”-site:”
    3. You can use operators to Audit your HTTP to HTTPS switching. Transitions from HTTP to HTTPS is quite challenging to some, but you can use the ”site:” operator on your domain root and exclude the page with ”-inurl:”

    There is a lot to explore using the Google Search operators. It helps you to get the most relevant answer from millions of pages.

    Google Alerts

    Alerts and notifications give us the updated happenings on what they are into something. Just like Google Alerts, it is a free notification by Google that sends emails to subscribers. 

    How Google Alerts help marketers? 

    There are a lot of advantages you can get from activating Google Alerts, such as: 

    1. You will know every time the company’s name is mentioned and by what site. 
    2. You can stay aware of comments and suggestions about the products and by whom. 
    3. When a company’s executives are mentioned, they can affect the reputation of the organization. It is good to know if a content tagged them.
    4. It increases customer’s activities awareness that helps businesses in supporting them.
    5. You can also receive notifications of your competitor’s progress and developments.
    6. You can get the latest trends in the e-commerce business by following influencers.
    7. You will receive alerts on up-to-date happenings in specific industries and technologies. Don’t lose sight of what is new in the market. Being involved in trendy topics builds expertise in the eye of your customers.

    Google Sheets

    Google Sheets is a free access spreadsheet program by Google. It also comes with Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites, and Google Keep.

    It is very famous among the users. Aside from being free, it has the same powerful computations as an excel file best for businesses. What’s best is that it has an access level that everyone can use. Perfect for school and businesses. 

    Scrapebox

    If you are into black SEO before, you might know Scrapebox as they are well-known as the first automated black hat SEO tool. But now, after five years, they are clearing all the spam issues related to them. 

    Now, Scrapebox is working with link audit, on-page SEO, and White hat SEO. This tool does what it’s named. It scrapes information out of the web. Here are its several features:

    • Collect proxies
    • Sitemap scraper
    • Can make you an RSS feed
    • Gather keyword ideas
    • You can massively comment on a blog.
    • Find long-tail keywords.
    • You can harvest keywords or phrases for your Outreach Guidelines.
    • It can harvest up to 1,000 backlinks in a few clicks. 
    • WHOIS scraper used to lookup multiple URLs at the same time.
    • You can check outbound links lost from your website.
    • Scrapebox can check websites with Malwares and Phishing websites.
    • Scrapebox is an excellent tool for rapid indexing a page.
    • It can identify total page rankings.
    • It can remove duplicate contents.
    • Meta Scraper

    Scrapebox pricing

    Scrapebox is the cheapest tool out in the market. It is $97 for lifetime use. Also, some users bought Scrapebox in Blackhat Market for a discounted price of $57 only. Cheapest right? But don’t let the darkness get you. Repentance is always at the end.

    Spammy techniques are already there, and that may lead you to get penalized. You can utilize the good things that this tool can do and leave behind bad practices that can harm your campaign. 

    HARO or ”Help A Reporter Out” 

    HARO or ”Help A Reporter Out” is an online service that collects information and knowledge from those with more experience in a particular subject. It aims to help journalists, bloggers, and writers to save time from sourcing. 

    How HARO contributes to the success of Link building? 

    We all know that HARO can give you the best sourcing of information for creating quality content. Contents are needed for Link building development, especially if you are into a Content strategy. 

    Benefits you can get from using HARO. 

    • It can boost your website traffic with the help of quality content.
    • An increase in website traffic indicates a positive pull in other metrics, such as getting more leads, brand awareness, and more.
    • Build your website authority due to positive metrics.
    • HARO can give you relevant topics. In which Google is into when ranking a page.

    HARO pricing, plans, and trial period

    HARO has four different plans including:

    • BASIC for Free with three times a day media opportunities sent to your mail. 
    • STANDARD for $19/mo with everything in the BASIC, plus one Keyword alert for better media opportunities, one more profile for pitches, Text Alerts, and Search online get the active media opportunities.
    • ADVANCE for $49/mo with everything in the STANDARD, plus three keyword alerts for better media opportunities, three more profiles for pitches, and a Head start alert for a perfect pitch.
    • PREMIUM for $149/mo with everything in the ADVANCE, plus Unlimited keywords for better media opportunities, Unlimited profiles, and active supports thru phone and email. 

    As content strategy earns the most of the backlinks, it is good to know which tools can help you gather the best information for content enhancement. 

    Related Links: 

    Hunter

    Hunter is the best tool for looking and finding contact information. It is convenient and reliable to use. A good reason why a lot of marketers use this tool. Here are the other highlights of what Hunter can do:

    • It has a Chrome extension that you can activate on your prospective site to pull out their email address. 
    • Hunter can validate emails in bulk before sending your outreach campaign to the incorrect emails.
    • You can get your prospect’s email addresses from their LinkedIn URL.  
    • You can validate sources of email addresses if reliable.
    • You can do a bulk view of email addresses with Hunter’s Google Sheets add-on. It is perfect for big organizations and companies.

    Hunter pricing, plans, and trial period

    Hunter has five different plans including,

    • FREE. Hunter has no trial period, but you can enjoy the tool with 50 search results and 50 email verifications for $0/mo.
    • STARTER for $49/billed monthly with 500 searches and 500 email verification plus, domain search full results and exports, and campaigns premium features.
    • GROWTH for $99/billed monthly with 2,500 searches and 2,500 email verification plus, domain search full results and exports, and campaigns premium features.
    • PRO for $199/billed monthly with 10,000 searches and 10,000 email verification plus, domain search full results and exports, and campaigns premium features.
    • ENTERPRISE for $399/billed monthly with 30,000 searches and 30,000 email verification plus, domain search full results and exports, and campaigns premium features.

    You can always start with the FREE and upgrade your plan to any when you are ready.

    GroupHigh

    GroupHigh is an online program that helps individuals to look for the best influencers and bloggers in their chosen niche. It looks similar to Buzzstream, but it has a tool for outreach management and builds a relationship with prospective links.

    How does GroupHigh help you with your link building? 

    With their over 15 million profiles, GroupHigh helps you select the best blogger to write for your campaign. We all know how contents impact the growth of an operation. 

    GroupHigh pricing, plans, and trial period

    GroupHigh doesn’t post or publicize its pricing, plans, or trial period. However, they are active to speak with each customer to give them the best package based on their needs.

    BuzzStream

    BuzzStream

    BuzzStream helps marketers who are struggling with the outreach process. It is a must-try tool that provides you an inbox to check and make follow-up messages. What makes it cool is that you can use this BuzzStream to find blogs.

    Check My Links

    Check My Links is a Google Chrome extension that crawls in a site to look for broken links. The creator invents this extension for content creators, web designers, and developers a better user experience.

    What is best about this tool is it serves as a content marketing tool that gives you cues to opportunities because of dead links and broken links. Here are the other features of Check My Link:

    • The extension tool is straightforward.
    • You can pull out links from a specific domain.
    • You can set an auto-check option to study the domain’s URL in your current tab.
    • You can search broken links with hashtags, URLs with #, empty links, and anchor texts without href attribute.
    • It can check new and previously broken links.
    • Check My Link can scan Nofollow links.

    What can I get from using Check My Links?

    We can’t deny that we always look for what we can get from something. It is why people get interested in something. Just like Check My Link, I often hear about it. But you can get something out of using it. Here are the things you can get from Check My Links:

    1. It can help you to enhance your Link building and your user experience. Broken links and dead links hinder crawlers from getting to your website. Also, pages with errors increase the bounce rate of the page. Therefore your metrics and your SEO are at stake. Monitoring your broken and dead links can prevent you from future damages.
    2. Check My Links can help to suggest your content to various popular websites. 
    3. It can give you opportunities to create new content. You can create or repurpose content to cover a deadlink.

    Check My Link pricing.

    This Google extension is free to use. You can’t compare Check My Link to other Large SEO tools out in the market. However, it is a cool SEO tool for beginners that are learning and starting their SEO journey. 

    Linkclump

    Linkclump is a functional tool for faster acquisition and analysis of your links found on the web. A Google extension that looks like a bridge that transfers links and domain search results to your CRM, spreadsheet, or outreach tool.

    Steps on how to use and install Linkclump

    Remember that Linkclump gathers all data from around the web for your prospecting. It is surprisingly easy to use. 

    1. Go to the Google Chrome web store and download Linkclump. 
    2. Install the extension, and add it to Chrome. 
    3. Set up and configure your Linkclump.
    4. Start gathering links.

    Linkclump pricing, plan, or trial period

    Linkclump is free to use. It is a productive tool excellent for starters and on low-budget. It is an extraordinary tool that can save you time, especially money. You can take a deep breath from the manual listing of URLs for your outreach.

    SEOquake

    SEOquake is also a Google Chrome extension for SEO parameters. It can give you quick access to analyze data of a specific site. Here are the other things that SEOquake can do:

    • A fast on-page SEO audit
    • It can check your internal and external backlinks.
    • Can perform a real-time comparison of domains and URLs.
    • You can export data into a .csv file or print it.
    • It can give you a detailed report of all the keywords found on the page.

    How to configure SEOquake?

    For any tool, you must understand how to utilize its features for more productive results. Here’s how and which options to configure SEOquake.

    • Quick options. This option is the drop-down choices you can find after clicking the gear icon. 
    • General preferences. In this tab, you can find the usual options of SEOquake. 
    • SERP overlay preferences. It contains the arrangement options for SERP results.
    • SEOBAR. In this tab, you can find the configuration for the toolbar.
    • Parameter configuration. In this option, you can select what parameters you want to get on the web.

    Basic usage of SEOquake

    Once you perfect utilizing your tool, you can take advantage of it. Here’s how to use SEOquake’s options.

    • SEObar – once enabled, it can give you a quick analysis of all parameters found on the page.
    • Panel – is where you can expand and see the information well. 
    • SERP overlay – provides the parameters found in each listing. The overlay can be found under the SERP results along with the sidebar option. 
    • Page SEO audit – is a section where your page will analyze its encoding, characters within the URL, title tags, meta description, ALT attributes, and HTML heading.
    • Keyword density – is an analysis report of how many words are there on a page.
    • Internal and External links – where you can find link reports to transfer as CSV files.
    •  Compare URLs and domains – This is a portion that gives you a quick comparison of domains and URLs. 

    SEOquake pricing, plans, trial period

    Good news! This excellent tool for free. What’s also impressive is it supports other browsers like Internet Explorer, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox.

    Top and Best Tools for Specific SEO Elements

    Here is the table to give you a better understanding of software tools and what SEO elements suit their purpose. 

    SEO Element Best Software Tool
    Keyword Research
    • Google Keyword Planner,
    •  Ahref’s keyword Generator, 
    • Google Trend
    On-page SEO
    • Google’s Rich Results,
    • Merkle’s Schema Markup,
    • Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar,
    • Rank Math (WordPress SEO Plugin) 
    Link building
    • Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker
    • Hunter.io
    • Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker
    • Scraper (Google’s Extension)
    • HARO
    • SEMRush 
    Technical SEO
    • Google Search Console
    • Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
    • Screaming Frog
    • Cloudflare
    • GTMetrix 
    •  Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
    • Robots.txt Generator
    • Chrome DevTools
    Rank Checking
    • Ahrefs’ SERP checker
    • BrightLocal’s Local Search Results Checker
    • MobileMoxie’s SEParator tool 
    Analytics
    • Google Analytics
    • Keyword Hero
    • Google Data Studio
    • Ahrefs’ WordPress SEO Plugin
    Local SEO
    • Google My Business
    • Whitespark’s Google Business Review Link Generator

     

    Wrapping up

     

    In this Link building software review, we can say that different tools share one goal. It is to provide all SEO services that can help businesses grow. Ensure to understand that certain software tools have all in one capabilities and while others are best for specific elements in search engine marketing

    To achieve success in the modern era, you need to create sustainable relationships, earn high quality links and a synergy of backlinks across all relevant web sources

    Link building is not as easy as a blink of an eye. It needs time, effort and patience. You will reap results in the medium to long term after your campaigns are finalised.

    Take a look at our content consulting service here

     

    How to assess good quality backlinks

    How to assess good quality backlinks

    How will you know if your backlinks are truly adding value? Should you really still be putting a lot of effort into quantity as opposed to quality links? 

    Here are tips, benefits, and how to assess your link building strategy.

    Why is SEO important?

    Before we dig into assessing your campaign, let us review SEO, and why we need to build an effective and stable strategy. 

    The Internet is the most accessible way to find answers to any questions that people may ask. And for you to have the best-related answer, you have to click the top result on the search engine results page, SERP.

    That is how SEO works. Search engines rank websites that offer the most relevant content to the search query.

    HOW TO ASSESS

    SEO strategy offers an inbound traffic approach as opposed to a traditional marketing strategy which has interruptions and somewhat force to gain leads.

    SEO targets an audience that takes an initiative to know more about your product or service. 

    SEO is cost-effective and efficient as you consequently produce good results without incurring hefty costs in promoting your product or service.

    Build a good link building strategy.

    Establishing a good and stable link building strategy makes you earn more fruitful results in the long run. The results of your campaign may be noticeable in the medium to long term. 

    What are the impacts of having a good link building foundation? 

    Credibility

    Build quality links which will give your company better credibility. This is a good indicator of your website domain’s authority. The more authoritative a website, the more quality links will direct to your website.

    Links help you with your ranking

    Google uses links to rank up your website. Links are essential to Google. Without link building, it is impossible to rank your site even if you have well-composed content. For you to be on top, have more quality links than your competitors.

    Increase your website traffic

    Link building is one of many ways to lure audiences. Choosing the right and relevant audiences to link from, will improve your website traffic. Website traffic is the number of visitors to your website.

    If you have good website traffic, it surely implies your backlinking efforts are working.

    SEO pulls other site metrics

    Establishing link building will not just result in high web traffic but also will hit other metrics like your Domain Authority (DA), Domain Rating (DR), Page Rank (PR), Alexa Rank, and many more.

    Hitting your metrics will lead you to a successful campaign. Sales opportunities

    There are more sales opportunities for your product or service. Being ranked above the fold in SERPs gives you more visibility to potential customers. 

    Visibility increases the click-through rate on your webpage which in turn increases your business conversions.

    Increase your brand exposure.

    By engaging with an online audience through social media portals, your brand can easily get new inbound links.

    Social research and reach out to potential power users that are fans of your company on your Facebook fan page, company Twitter account, or other social assets. This will in turn expose your brand to those in the same circle. 

    Good and Bad links 

    How will I know if links are good or bad? What will be the result of having a bad link?

    SEO will show how links are necessary for your campaign and why you need it. Quality links are not easy to get. Remember, the harder it is to get one, the more valuable it is likely to be. 

    Checklist for good quality links

    1. Links from websites with real organic traffic
    2. Links from sites which have good amount of rankings keywords
    3. The referring domain has a good domain rating
    4. The referring site is HTTPS secure
    5. Links from sites which are mobile friendly and load fast
    6. Links from complementary and relevant industries
    7. A natural mix of anchor text
    8. Using exact match keywords naturally and not too often
    9. A backlink that flows naturally in the content
    10. Links from websites which are not spammy and low quality
    11. Backlinks from websites which do not have too much advertising and pop ups
    12. Backlinks from relevant web pages
    13. Links from trustworthy websites

    quality link image

    What makes a bad link? Here are the examples:

    • Links from link directories with no value content
    • Links that are associated with explicit content or unethical practices.
    • Links from irrelevant websites
    • There are too many links in the body of content. It can distract the main links.
    • Broken links or 404 links
    • Unnatural links 
    • Global links that connect to your website.
    • Links from a low Domain Authority website
    • Links from a thin content page or low-quality content
    • Backlinks from penalized website 

    Assessing your Backlinks

    You can always use a different SEO tool to know if you are dealing with a good or bad link. Here are some tools that can help your assessment process much simpler.

    Conduct your assessment.

    Ahref is one of the SEO tools you can use to conduct an assessment. You can follow these steps to check if your backlink is good or not.

    1. Create and log in to Ahref
    2. Do a simple analysis using site explorer. You can use both prefix and domain under dropbox.
    3. Compare your backlink profile. It will show you the result of Backlinks and Referring links. 
    4. Check your Backlink acquisition rate. The graph will let you know the historical profile of your backlinks over time.
    5. Look for wasted backlinks to your site. Check your Referring domain as well as 404 not found pages. 
    6. Review the full report. Take immediate actions to fix sites.

    It is not easy to conduct a backlink assessment. However, Often doing it, you will learn a lot and might discover new techniques.

    Dofollow and Nofollow links

    Links are references of data where users follow by clicking. It is the essential key in Link building.

    There are two kinds of links: Dofollow and Nofollow links. What makes them different from each other? 

    Dofollow links

    Dofollow links are an HTML property used to allow search bots to follow the links.

    If a webmaster created a link connected to your site, the search engine bots and people who visit the site can follow you. It makes your website credible.

    Google can figure out the number of users linked to your website. This way, Google can identify which website is good and not. The more Dofollow links, the more points you will earn to be on top rank.

    Dofollow links will help you to increase your ranking, earn points, and raise your link juice. Those will help you to get your website highly ranked in SERP. However, gaining a follow link from a reputable website is more fruitful.

    H3 Nofollow links

    On the other hand, Nofollow links do not allow search engine bots to follow your links. And this link does not pass on link juice for your website. However, It can help you to increase your website traffic. 

    Nofollow links will not harm your website if you want to use them. They help to boost PR for your page. But it depends on where the link is and the quality of it. It is best to place it at the beginning of the content as it gives impact and emphasis to it.

    How to identify a link type

    1. On the web page, right-click and select the view source. In the source code, find your site name and comments. You can now tell what type of link is there.
    2. You can download useful extensions for your browser to check whether it is Dofollow or Nofollow.

    Google 2020 update for Nofollow links

    Before, Nofollow links used to be a command. Currently, it is a recommendation. Google considers Nofollow as necessary. It gives links credit, identifies them as spam, or uses them for several ranking purposes. 

    The update included: 

    • Nofollow links are not for rankings or indexing.
    • Nofollow links are used as hints for ranking a website as of September 10, 2020.

    As of March 2, 2020, Google uses Nofollow links as a hint for crawling.

    Benefits of links

    Any link will help you to get traffic for your website. Quality links are your pathways to show your content.

    Also, it can give you a better amount of traffic. The more traffic you get, the more benefits you can get from it.

    Some links will allow you to get a better conversion, sales lead, and even a Dofollow link. 

    Links from Authoritative sites and Social Media are a good source of traffic

    Ways to build high-quality backlinks 

    Building quality links for your campaign is not that simple. It will take effort and time investment to earn a better result. Here are some ways to help you build quality backlinks.

    Build public relations.

    Establishing a relationship with the audience will help you produce backlinks. Joining groups and communities related to your niche will give your website exposure. Guest blogging is also a better way of earning backlinks.

    Write well-structured content.

    A well-composed content is your key to generating backlinks. Content should be pleasing and compelling to the readers. Also, it should be lively by use of infographics or related photos. In that way, you may help the readers understand your message.

    Study your competitors.

    It is not spying on your competitors but to give you an idea of how backlinks work. Studying the techniques will help you decide which field you should work on more.

    Create infographics

    Most of the people prefer to look at a summary. Creating infographics for your website will help the audience to understand your message in a single sight. You can add a link to your infographic connecting to your website.

    Testimonies

    Product/Service reviews or Testimonies will give your website credibility and trust. Somehow, it allows you to increase the number of prospective customers. You may include your website to generate links.

    Engage with a relevant blog post.

    It is another better way to build a relationship. Commenting on a blog post will help you in the future. They might help you to share or promote your website. They may be your instrument to gain more traffic and increase your brand awareness.

    Create your Social Media account.

    People spend more time on their social media account. Therefore, it is a better medium to promote and expose your business. Visibility will help you earn more traffic and backlinks.

    WHITE BLACK HAT

    Whitehat Link building 

    You might read and hear the word white hat link building. It is the approach of giving the website more traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

    It includes SEO methods with positive strategies for increasing traffic and an audience in a natural way. White Link building follows the rules established by search engines like Google.

    Using the white link building allows you to flow your ranking smoothly without the feeling of worry. Websites get penalized if they did not follow the rule.

    What is the importance of White Link building?

    What does a white hat SEO do with your backlinks? It has a lot to do with your backlinks. Everyone will benefit from using the White hat SEO.

    Google encourages people to use the Search engine to look for answers in a quick snap. Here are some advantages you can get from using White link building.

    • It can improve your rankings. Following best practices will give you a good result. Best practices like matching keywords to your landing page, writing good content, and receiving quality backlinks will increase your SERPs ranking.
    • Cost-effective marketing strategy. White hat SEO saves you money in the long term. Running a Digital marketing campaign requires investment both time and money. The result will not show immediately.
    • Prepare your site for updates. As time passes by, we do not know what Google’s next big update will be. But keep in mind that Google always aims to provide the best customer experience. 

    Ignoring White Hat SEO

    What will happen if you ignore the White Link building? Your business might suffer or lose. All of your time and investment in building your backlinks will be useless. That is something that we do not want to happen. 

    Black hat SEO 

    People use Black hat SEO tactics for their website to achieve the result in a short period. They ignore the rules and guidelines for building quality links.

    It is very tempting for some that do Black hat SEO since you do not have to wait for years to see the results. 

    However, you might get penalized. 

    Google algorithm update has ways to determine these actions. Here are some techniques you should not use:

    • Duplicate content. Aside from Plagiarism, having the same content is not a good practice.
    • Irrelevant or meangless content. These contents are not helping the audience and will lead to a high bounce rate.
    • Keyword stuffing. It is considered web spam and not advisable to use.
    • Spamming links is posting out-of-context links everywhere like websites, discussion forums, and blog comments. It can harm your website.
    • Irrelevant landing pages. It is to make the page rank, but the keywords do not match or are irrelevant.
    • Hidden text is a text displayed in such a way as to be invisible or unreadable. It manipulates Google’s search rankings and recognizes them as spam.

    There is no such shortcut in every success. Building a business yields overtime. At the same time, you are establishing characters like credibility, reputation, and trust. 

    Do not try the black hat practices. Google can crumble all of your time and effort in a few minutes. You can try the following best practices to include in your campaign.

    • Build a relevant landing page and keywords
    • Compose content that is helpful and unique
    • Seek out backlinks from reliable sites only
    • Know your audience and what they need
    • Stay updated with Google’s guidelines and updates

    Following Google’s guidelines will not harm you but will help everyone grow and benefit from it.

    Content and Backlinks

    As you notice, content always drops in every backlink topic. What is their connection? In acquiring quality links, you need a full stuffed article or content that will satisfy the audience. 

    Content Relevance and its usefulness

    Content is your linking relationship to your audience. If your content gives the information that your audience wants, it builds trust. Trust from your audiences makes your site gain credibility. 

    Content relevance is about your audience’s understanding of your content. Also, it is how the web user finds the content.

    In SERPs priority is given to content that is informative, engaging, and helpful to the search intent. 

    Always remember that users who visit your site have one goal. It is to learn something about that keyword. 

    What can SEO metrics tell you about your backlinks.

    SEO metrics are your guidelines to measure your campaign progress. Also, metrics used to compare and track performances. Here are some of the SEO metrics that you need to monitor.

    Organic Traffic

    Organic traffic is those visitors from a search engine like Google that you attract without an advertisement.

    It is one of the powerful indicators of backlink performance. An increase in website visitors will result in improving your ranking. The quality of search traffic will depend on keywords. 

    How to track Organic traffic

    SEO tools make our work simple and effective. There are platforms for managing backlinks. One of the tools that you can use is Google Analytics. 

    For tracking your Organic traffic using Google analytics: 

    1. Log into your dashboard.
    2. Then click ”Add segment.”
    3. Choose ”Organic traffic” and hit ”Apply.”
    4. You will see organic traffic as a percentage of total traffic.

    Organic Conversion 

    Next is to monitor how many of those visitors will turn into leads? You may include the following goals to track, identifying which visitors are leads.

    • Purchase
    • Email signups
    • Phone call inquiries 
    • Form submissions queries

    Knowing what the visitor’s intention is, you can help them decide by highlighting what they can get from your product or service.

    How to track your Conversion rate

    Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors converted to become lead. To track your Conversion rate using Google analytics:

    1. You need to set up your Goals
    2. Add the organic sessions segment to see organic metrics.
    3. Navigate down to Conversions -> Goal Overview. 

    Keyword rankings

    The search engine will show a list for that keyword search when an audience searches for a specific keyword. Keyword rankings give you more than information on your domain’s performance. 

    How to track your keyword rankings

    You can track and analyze your keyword ranking using  Keyword Explorer

    1. Paste in your website URL into Keyword Explorer
    2. Choose the country where your audience is
    3. Hit the ”Analyze” button
    4. You will see the result of Top Ranking Keywords.
    5. On the left panel, Click Ranking Keywords to view more keywords.
    6. You will see all the keywords your site is ranking.
    7. You can add your competitors to see how you’re doing against them. 

     Referring Domains

    One of the indicators to show if your SEO is working, is the number of your backlinks. Tracking your backlinks and referring domains will get you an idea of how effective your strategy is. 

    You can use SEMrush to check your Referring Domains:

    1. By clicking the number in the ‘Backlinks’ column next to a specific anchor, you will see the referring domain. 
    2. You can check the ‘Backlinks’ report and see a complete list of backlinks used as anchor text.

    Authority metrics

    You might hear the familiar word ”Domain Authority”. It is how they determine the trustworthiness of a site.

    Websites scaled from f 0-100 based on links, brand mentions, etc. The higher the site’s DA, the more authoritative it is. You can use Moz or Ahrefs to check the DA of a specific website.

    Organic landing page

    If you are working to improve your backlink, you may consider your landing page. It is the destination page that appears in response to clicking a result in SERPs.

    Tracking your landing page will help you to discover more opportunities for your campaign.

    How to track your organic landing page

    You can use a Google Analytics account for this: 

    1. Log on to your Google Analytics account.
    2. Go to “Behavior” > “Site Content” > “Landing Pages”

    Page Speed

    Audiences look for a website with a page that pops out the page in a flash rather than waiting. If they might think that the page is not working. You can lose that opportunity. 

    Page speed is essential to users because it becomes the first impression of the user. That is the first experience that you can offer to the users. 

    Don’t confuse  ”site speed” and Page Speed. On the other hand, Site speed is how quickly users can see and interact with your site’s content. 

    How to track your page speed

    Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is one of the tools you can use to monitor your page speed. Also, it gives suggestions and improvements that you can follow.

    Crawl errors

    DNS Errors and Server errors are an example of site crawls errors that hinder your website ranking up. If you encounter crawl errors, fix them ahead of time.

    Fixing site errors will help your website improve the site’s readability

    How to track Crawl error

    You can use the Google search console to check if you have crawl errors. 

    It is good practice to include checking crawl errors in your site’s maintenance schedule to avoid further damage.

    Conclusion

    As days and years pass by, SEO is getting complicated in assessing and measuring success. It takes persistence and creativity, the results will follow.

    But always remember that any strategy or plan executed for development is an advantage. Time and patience are the most effective investments in digital marketing. 

    How To Manage And Optimise On Your Existing SEO Backlinks

    How To Manage And Optimise On Your Existing SEO Backlinks

    This post was updated with fresh research and statistic in June 2022

    We all know how essential it is to embark on quality and consistent outreach campaign to gain relevant external links to boost the authority of your website.

    You spend large amounts of time, energy, and budget sourcing great ink prospects and making contact with publishers – but what happens next? How do you know if you actually get backlinks from your hard efforts?

    I’m going to go back to the roots of managing a project from start to finish, with an easy process, that can be repeated over and over again.

    The beauty of this system is that you can use it on any client niche and any website, large or small.

    NB – there are some great dedicated link checker tools such as Monitor Backlinks (and many more similar tools), however, we do not use any of these specific tools.

    Why Should You Keep Monitoring Your Backlink Profile?

    Every link you get that points to a page on your website passes a certain amount of ‘link equity’. According to an article by Moz on link equity, this equity passes authority from one page to another within your website.

    The value, and authority of the link equity (aka link juice) will depend on many factors of the referring page such as its own authority, link profile, etc.

    Therefore, if each and every link pointing to your website has a direct impact on the amount of link juice or link authority you stand to gain – you have to monitor every aspect of these links.

    Also, link building takes a huge amount of effort, resources, persistence, and budget.

    If you have to report on how many website links you have won in a month to your boss, or, a business owner – best be sure that you have everything documented to show your value!

    Also, without effective backlink monitoring, you can easily lose touch with the progress of your campaign and cause a lot of confusion if you are working in teams.

    Reasons Links Get Lost

    Below are a few of the common reasons why links get lost and this can happen so easily. That’s why monitoring your backlinks on an ongoing basis is so important.

    • The referring page is broken (404 error)
    • URL times out due to extremely slow page speed
    • The referring page has crawl errors
    • The link gets lost or demoted due to Google’s algorithms
    • The referring page gets redirected by the site owner to a different page
    • Webmaster removes your links
    • The referring site goes down due to server issues
    • The referring page goes down due to server or 5xx errors
    • Your page gets a 404 error

    Keep in mind the loss of link equity that could potentially cause a page to drop in visibility and traffic.

    Is Link Equity The Same As Page Rank?

    Some old-school SEOs think of link equity as ‘PageRank‘ which was Google’s historical calculation that would determine a page’s rank based on how many links were pointing to that website.

    This is not the case anymore, and in modern SEO, you will not hear about Page Rank being a factor in an SEO campaign (although it is good to know about it).

    PageRank still definitely exists somewhere within Google’s systems, but I prefer to focus energy on gaining the most relevant and quality link from a real website in order to drive real link authority to a target site.

    Here is a great visual example of how PageRank works (passing of link equity) from which Ahrefs published:

    Illustration of how how Google Pagerank works

    Illustration of how how Google Pagerank works

    Understanding Google Link Penalties

    Google changes all the time. In 2020, Google had roughly 4,500 updates and changes to their algorithm.

    They are always trying to refine the search criteria in order to provide the best quality results and information for readers and therefore run a variety of updates that often result in a Google penalty.

    Link building can often include a large number of spam tactics and link manipulation to try to increase domain authority in an unnatural manner.

    Due to this, Google is always monitoring, demoting and penalising websites that are purely adding backlinks just for the intention of selling links or are trying to manipulate the authority of a site. Generally, these are all bad links.

    In July 2021, Google announced a rollout of their link spam update that would last roughly 2 weeks. Google mentioned that their systems are now even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam on a broader scale and can cover multiple languages.

    Websites that are not following working to gain high-quality backlinks will see ranking changes (negative changes) in search results.

    You can read the exact Google guidelines on the link spam update here.

    Overview of Google Link Spam Update - Affiliate links done in the wrong way are dangerous links

    Overview of Google Link Spam Update – Affiliate links done in the wrong way are dangerous links

    Backlink Management of Existing Links (Practical Steps)

    Everyone will have a specific method that works for them. The steps below are just some of the way that we keep in touch with our campaign status and backlink management.

    One of the best tools in the SEO industry (especially for link building) is Ahrefs.

    Once you have set up your profile and added your website, you can sign up to receive weekly notifications as well as more frequent notifications.

    We get 2 to 3 email notifications from Ahrefs each week that give us a link profile overview that shows us:

    • Total number of backlinks
    • Any links gained or lost
    • Reasons for the loss (link dropped or broken etc)
    • Notifications of single backlink or multiple links gained
    • A high-level overview of the metrics of each link gained or lost

    Step 1: Email Notifications from Link Monitoring Tools

    Make sure that you or your team are signed up for all notifications from Ahrefs and that you are getting the weekly overall updates.

    Ahrefs will send a weekly update on the overall link profile updates

    Ahrefs will send a weekly update on the overall link profile updates

    By clicking on the email or checking manually on a regular basis (suggested), go into the referring domains report and select a date range.

    Select whether you want to see all links, new links or lost links.

    Using Ahrefs domains overview to see new links or lost links

    In this example, I have looked at new links over the last 30 days and have both Dofollow and Nofollow links showing. At this stage, I like to see the full picture of the backlink profile and not just focus on the link attributes yet.

    By updating the date range to 6 months and the filter to show me lost backlinks, I can see that over the last 6 months, we have lost 61 backlinks.

    However, the majority of these links seem to have been irrelevant links that got picked up along the way and I am not too worried about these ones getting lost.

    In this example, I have looked at new links over the last 30 days and have both Dofollow and Nofollow links showing. At this stage, I like to see the full picture of the backlink profile and not just focus on the link attributes yet.

    By updating the date range to 6 months and the filter to show me lost backlinks, I can see that over the last 6 months, we have lost 61 backlinks.

    However, the majority of these links seem to have been irrelevant links that got picked up along the way and I am not too worried about these ones getting lost.

    Analysing new or lost backlinks over a set period of time using Ahrefs

    Analysing new or lost backlinks over a set period of time using Ahrefs

    From here you can decide if a lost link was actually valuable and if you should contact the site owner to try to re-add the link.

    Initially, when I added this image I noticed a lost link here that showed a monthly organic traffic value of 2,200 users. This caught my eye as it may have been one that I would want to keep.

    However, when checking the link, I saw it was actually more of an online directory site that was generic and would not drive quality traffic to my site nor is it relevant.

    In this case, I am happy for the link to be lost and no more action will be taken.

    Step 2: Look for Lost Backlinks Often

    Drill down to page-level metrics and analysis the backlinks report in Ahrefs to find any lost links.

    Below shows us that we actually had a really great link from CMS Wire that has been lost due to the referring page not being the canonical version anymore.

    Basically, the initial page that was linking to my website has had a change in the canonical tag or the initial canonical tag has been removed.

    This has then impacted my link as the referring pages attribute is no longer canonical.

     Backlink report showing lost links due to canonical issues or removal

     Backlink report showing lost links due to canonical issues or removal

    I can also see that the link to my home page has been removed by the referring page, meaning, the webmaster removed the link, or removed the page that my link was on.

    If this happens and it is a valuable link, the n I would suggest getting a few email addresses from the referral site (Use Snov email finder or Hunter IO to get email addresses) and email them directly.

    You could say something simple and to the point like this:

    ‘Hi there,

    It seems our link {yourlink.com}} has been removed from the following page on your website {{theirpage.com}} and we feel our contribution has provided value to your readers.

    Would you mind re-adding the link, or letting me know if I can suggest another to add?’

    Fight for natural links! If you know that a set of links that have been lost were links that you gained naturally just because your content was awesome and you gained links, you need to protect those as much as possible.

    Therefore, if one of the lost links is this type of high-quality natural link that was gained without specific outreach or networking on your part, you must make contact with the webmaster and try to get the link re-instated.

    Sidenote: I have not used this tool personally but it has come up a lot in my research for this article and it may be worth investigating it – monitorbacklinks.com/blog/seo/backlink-management

    Step 3: Monitor and Manage Backlinks with Project Management

    Having a basic project plan in place for any outreach campaign (or anything SEO related) is absolutely crucial.

    I am going to show you one of the most effective ways that you can monitor all of your live links, dead links, as well as links that a ready to be published. PS: you do not need to be a project manager or have insane people management skills to do this – just trust the process.

    Copy this Google Sheet and open it in a new tab.

    This project management file is a way for you to track all of your link prospecting and link-building efforts and tracking.

    This is a screenshot of the file (we will talk through columns next)

    Our link building project management file

    Our link building project management file

    In the link monitoring template, you will keep your entire link-building process up to date and ensure that your team are always managing the document too.

    Breaking down the link management file:

    Status: This is the status of the link, is it live, pending, waiting for a reply, ready for publishing or dead. You can label the link status as you seem fit.

    Be sure to keep the status updated all the time and ensure your team members keep it updated.

    Date: This is the date of the initial outreach email sent. Whether the prospect replied or not, add the date of the first outreach.

    Link-type: Is it a guest post? Resource link or a niche edit? The link type column should label whichever type of link-building tactic it is that you are using.

    Link niche: This is the industry of the page that you are wanting a link from.

    Website: The domain of the website you are wanting the link from.

    Name and Email: In this section, add the name of the person you are in touch with while prospecting and add their contact email too.

    Ahrefs DR and Ahrefs Traffic: The domain rating (DR) and monthly organic traffic of the prospect.

    Live Article URL: Place the live link of the article that went live.

    Target Page: This is your page that has got the referring link.

    Anchor text: The anchor text used.

    In terms of managing your existing backlinks, this Google Sheet system should tighten up your processes, and help you to monitor links that have been gained and manage any links that have been lost.

    Document absolutely everything to do with your link-building campaigns in this sheet and keep looking for ways to improve.

    We have a dedicated link-building manager who owns the document and adds new link prospects and contact details all the time.

    He will also update the status of each link so that we have accurate data when it comes to monthly reporting.

    Tools you can use to Manage your existing links.

    Tracking and monitoring your campaign needs a lot of understanding and critical thinking.

    Therefore, tools are the right hand of every marketer. There are a lot of tools that you can use to keep track of your campaign.

    Google Search Console

    Google Search Console or Google Webmaster Tools gives you the site’s performance like link data, organic search traffic, and other recommendations for your website to grow.

    Buzzstream

    BuzzStream is a tool that everyone can use. This tool offers fast-tracking of contacts and information dedicated for outreach purposes.

    Majestic SEO

    Majestic SEO has a lot of things to offer. More likely related to the backlink profile analysis such as external backlinks, backlink history and more. The tool will give you an insight into building your strategy better.

    Moz Link Explorer

    Moz Link Explorer is a helpful tool that measures your backlinks, pages, domain and anchor text. It is for you to formulate a better strategy for competing online.

    Ahrefs

    Ahrefs is one of the most accurate tools in terms of backlinks analysis and managing inbound links. It has a large backlink checking solution, best for a competitor backlink analysis.

    SEMrush

    SEMrush is an all-in-tool used for SEO audits and monitoring. Also, it gives you marketing insights and opportunities to improve your online visibility. It is one of the recommended SEO tools for Campaign Management.

    Conclusion

    If you need link-building acquisition, look at how we can help you right now.

    Managing your existing backlinks will give you more expertise and new learnings. Learning never stops. Always allow yourself to acquire new from what you have on your hands.