Clients want to use link building to get to the top of SERPs- but they either don't know how to do it or are doing it all in the wrong way.
Some of them focus more on quantity thinking that more the links they build, would be better. However, this is not always the case. Not even Quality of links is always the top factor that determines the success of them.
Furthermore, even the highest quality links that are most relevant to the business aren't created equal.
Here, the point to understand is- just one link of high authority could substitute hundreds of other links and could make a huge change in your SEO performance.
Now, the question arises here is how to get those links that will really make a change in your SEO visibility?
The answer to this question lies in understanding the vital concept of Link Gap and Link Velocity, to see where you stand compared to your competitors.
Determining Link Gap
Link Gap is the number of links that your competitors have versus the number of links that your site owns.
Now, before we start searching for links, we need to know how many of them we need. This is where a quick formula from Alan Silvestri comes into play,
Average number of reference domain of competitor's pages - number of reference domain of your page = Link Gap
i.e. if, Top 3 ranking pages have 10 reference domain on average, you (ranking #4) have 5 = the link gap is 5.
Let's understand this with an example:
Some XYZ Technologies company wants to rank their page on Google SERP by the search term " Best Payment Gateway for Online Payments", the top 4 competitor pages with the same search term have referring domains 100, 2258, 58, 10, for instance, while the XYZ Technologies has 45 referring domains.
If the top search result page that has 2258 ref. domains is some Govt Org or an NGO that is not a tech service provider directly, we can ignore the same.
Now, the average of referring domains of remaining Top 3 pages 100, 58, 100 comes out to be 86. Thus, as per the Link Gap definition the Average number of reference domain of competitor's pages - number of reference domain of your page, i.e 86 - 45 = 41 = Link Gap
However, it's quite doable to get the page at the top 3 results. All we need is to build roughly 40 more links to get there. But the thing that is worth mentioning here is the Quality of links.
So, before aiming for the next 41 links, we need to carefully check the kind of sites that are linking to those URLS in terms of their Domain Authority.
Lastly, apart from the gap on the page level, you have the gap on the domain level. For instance, if the XYZ Technologies company site has domain rating 60 while the domain rating of the competitors page is way higher, in that case, we need to build additional links to close the gap on the domain level as well.
To summaries this up, even after calculating all the gaps and building a sufficient number of links, your site still could not reach the desirable SEO visibility. The primary reason is that Google takes into consideration more than 200 ranking factors, and behavioral one is among the most important. So, possibly, your link building won't help if your site has insanely high bounce rate compared to other domains in your industry.
The next prime concept to keep into consideration before working towards minimizing the gap on the page and domain level is Link Velocity.
Understanding the Link Velocity of Rival Pages
Link Velocity is the number of links that your rivals are building per month.
The average number of referring domains that your competitors acquires on a monthly basis is what we would be looking for. For instance, in May: 77, June: 45, July: 65, the average is 62.
Thus, the number of links per month required by us in order to outperform our competitors in SERP is 62. This is something we need to build in addition to the Link Gap, otherwise our competitors will always be one step ahead of us.
Now, as we have learnt the concepts of Link Gap, Domain Rating, Link Velocity, it's time to move to the primary topic of:
How to Build Links That Actually Help Outrank SERP Rivals
For this lets consider the pages to build the links for that are already at the top of the Search results:
1) Build links on Pages that have currently acquired some presence in SERPs
Get a list of such pages with the help of SEOquake or any other similar tool.
2) Analyze the Referring Domains of the Top 10 URLs that Outrank You
To outperform your SERP competitors, build links that are similar in quality compared to them, point to note here is, only if your Domain Rating is nearly the same as what your competitors possesses.
Be Ready To Build 10 Times More Links In Case Your DR Is LOWER Than That Of Your Competitors
Link Intersect Tool by AHREFS could be used to list out all the sites where your competitors have already built links on. This tool allows us to see the number of common links for the pages that you're trying to outrank.
3) Don't Stick With One Link Building Strategy
Try to have a diverse Link Building Strategy. We could use a combination of different strategies like Guest Blogging, Link Insertion and so on. Be creative in building links.
Again, AHREFS tool can help you find the link building approaches your competitors are following, to gain this piece of information look for Ahrefs report: Best Pages by link growth. And, if you click on one of the URLs, you'll be able to see the links and how they have been acquired- through Guest Blogging, Email Outreach, or any other strategy.
If you're into guest blogging, try to get a link connecting your post from the high ranking blog post, negotiate with the author.
Best Pages by Incoming Links by AHREFS: A tool to find the most powerful pages of any site. In this report, we can find the ranking of the top-performing pages on the given website, with the number of referring domains, followed links, and nofollowed links.
Check if they are relevant to your site. Secure links on sites that don't accept guest posts, like Corporate Blogs, and try to avoid overly popular sites with an inflated rating, to get a high SEO value.
Conclusion
Links continue to be one of the most important ranking factors.
Focus on Quality of links rather than Quantity.
Not all the links that Top-Ranking sites have are of High Quality, even though the overall number of links is high enough to get to the top of search results.
Focus on getting Relevant Links, try to acquire links on same-industry sites that are already ranking high.
Diversify your link building strategy
If Guest Posting is your link building strategy, search for sites that don't usually accept such contributions, in this case, there's a chance to get to the top of Google search results.
Comments