Building a Natural Backlink Profile

I keep hearing about the relevance of links now. Some people think they’re less, some people think they’re more, the truth is that some are less and some are more. Everybody reading this no doubt knows what Penguin is so there’s no point in repeating it. Nobody wants to relive the heartache of watching their clients plummet in rankings as a result of the algorithm update.

As the dust settled a few truths were revealed. There were survivors and so we analysed what made some sites less affected than others. The discovery was no real revelation and so building thousands of poor quality links in a day was no longer an SEO tactic.

But what some people fail to grasp is that these sort of links are still incredibly important, especially for large clients who are trying to rank for competitive keywords. The fact is, if something is relevant and gaining natural links, Google will recognise it by the backlink profile. And a natural backlink profile has a hell more than just strong, relevant links.

Low Quality Links Are Links Too

Think about it from the perspective of a new blogger with a low authority domain who is trying to get their name out there. They will be writing content on everything, especially on things that are relevant to their niche. If you were a sports blogger in Australia right now you would be all over the big doping scandal. So if something all of a sudden is getting backlinks for high authority domains and charging up the rankings, without receiving backlinks from lesser places too, then Google knows something is fishy.

No Relevance, No Problem

Okay not quite no problem but having a few links in your backlink profile from stuff outside your niche also makes your backlink profile look natural. There are bound to be tech bloggers out there that commented on the Grammy’s the other day for instance. Having a really solid backlink profile without a couple of things that aren’t relevant is akin to being a suspect for murder without having any record whatsoever, you’re just a little bit TOO innocent.

Strong Links Aren’t Just Strong Sites

You might think that if you get your client a guest blog link from a PR6 site by outreach is great no matter what, but really getting a PR6 link from an online shoe shop that links to a butcher is akin to getting a PR1 link from a meat blog. Unless that particular shoe shop talks about meat a lot and has some Google cred in meat related keywords anyway.

After Thoughts

Think of your PageRank like your own puppy. It’ll get bigger if you feed it more. And not just more links either, different types of links. Puppies don’t just eat biscuits, they wouldn’t mind eating a whole steak now and then, and so too does your PageRank enjoy getting a backlink from a video or an infographic.

Basically every you link create is a little bit naughty, so you have to think about link building a backlink profile in it’s entirety, because that’s what Google will ultimately see.