Dotty Scott explains what backlinks are and why they matter for SEO. Get them through online profiles, reviews, directories, and guest blogging. Skip bought or low-quality links, use tools like BrightLocal to track them, and create content people actually want to link to.
Amazing Itty Bitty Visibility book, 15 chapters to marketing made easy, and chapter 4 is all on backlinks. A backlink is a link from another website to your website. That's all it is. It's very simple. These can be mutual, but they don't have to be. When other websites link to yours, it counts as as a backlink. Some places where you can quickly get backlinks, we talked about these in some of the other videos, but online profiles. Are your online profiles linked to your website? Please go back and do that if you haven't already done that. Writing reviews. Do you give other people reviews? Uh, this would be services that you use in your business, outside of your business, with your home, wherever. Are you giving them reviews? You can do them on Google, which would be fantastic for that business. But also if you email them a review and ask them to put it on their website, then they can link to your website. Of course, you give them the page you wanna link to. It doesn't always have to be the homepage. In fact, it's best if it's not always the same page. Directories. Are you using online directories? Well, you probably are, whether you know it or not, because a lot of them are automatic. So there are 4 main hubs of data worldwide, and they're huge. And believe it or not, Google is not one of them. Um, but your information in those 4 hubs need to be the same. It needs to be accurate. It's called NAP, name, address, phone number, which also includes your website address, your email address, your physical address, whatever it is that you have online, all the same. Once it gets into those 4 databases, then there's directories. All over the internet that pull the information down from those databases and they create profiles for you. Isn't that wonderful? It's only wonderful if the information is actually correct. I personally use a tool called BrightLocal that keeps all of my information synced and, um, correct in all of these databases. Another method, guest blogging. Do you blog for yourself? Could you tweak that article and let somebody else post it on their website or on their blog? Could you create an entirely separate article and let them post it on their blog? I've done this throughout the years. Um, I am a member of the Holistic Chamber and they publish several of my blog posts on their blogs and every time they just link to my website. So it's a great way to show your authority, to educate people that are in your market, you know. So obviously you wanna do, if you're gonna do a, a guest blog post, choose a company who has the same shared market as you. Best way to do that. So those 4 ways that you can get backlinks, and they're all simple, easy, and for the most part free. Why are backlinks important? Search engines count the links, physically count them, um, that go to your website from anywhere. Resulting in a score based on that number. So the higher the number, the higher your rank in the search engines. So if everything else was equal, which we know that rarely happens, but you and your competitors, say everything else is equal, you have 1 backlink and they have 100 backlinks. The 100 backlinks is gonna get ranked higher. Than the one backlink. The one that has 1,000 backlinks is gonna get ranked higher. So over time, your backlinks need to be growing. It shows that you're involved in the community. It shows all kinds of stuff, but it's super, super important for your search engine optimization. A link to your website is a vote of confidence. It's another business saying, yes, I vote for that business. I would do business with them. I would promote them. It's a vote of confidence and it shows in your search results. And search engines will recognize you as an expert when other websites link to your content. That is so, so true. Now here's a question I get asked often: are all backlinks equal? No, they are not. Not all backlinks are equal. Link farming or link exchanging is viewed as gaming the system. Avoid linking to sites that don't contribute to the quality or reputation of your site. So what exactly does that mean? For one, never buy links. There are tons of companies out there that will gladly sell you links, um, but you know what, if you do business in Washington State for me, or anywhere in the United States technically for me, and I have a ton of links coming from India and the Philippines? Uh-uh. Those aren't going to do me any good. In fact, they will hurt me. Uh, avoid links from websites that are not relevant to your industry or don't even have your same target market. They're not gonna help. Avoid links from websites that are considered poor quality to the search engines. So if If you have a backlink coming from a website that's on page 10, it ain't gonna do you any good. And avoid links from countries that you don't do business in. Again, they're not gonna do you any good. So what is the best way to get quality backlinks? Create content that people want to link to. Become the authority in your industry. Offer quality reviews for, um, for your vendors to put on their websites. Share your expertise in articles. These are all really good ways to get backlinks. Um, you can hire an SEO company and they will gladly give you backlinks, uh, from sites that they control, but these are methods that you can use yourself to get those without paying for them. Um, that's one of the things that I truly believe in, that you as a business owner should be in control. You shouldn't have to pay a fortune to optimize your website, to get SEO, to do any of these things. And it's simple enough. If you don't have time, maybe you can have a VA do it for you. Maybe you have an employee that can do it for you, you know, or yes, you can pay a company. But anyway, that's all about backlinks. And tomorrow, oh, tomorrow is going to be a super cool day when we get to Chapter 5 because it is all about Google Business Profiles, one of my favorite topics. So I will see you tomorrow. Oh, and if you want your copy of this book, I will put the link, uh, where you can buy it on Amazon, uh, in the notes here or in the comments so that you can do all of this wonderful stuff for yourself.
