Q&A: The Importance of Backlinks for SEO and How To Do It Right

We received this question recently from a local business client:

I’m curious to know how you guys implement backlinks/dofollows in order rank up the website? A few marketing buddies mentioned this and that it was extremely important.

I thought it was a great question, and one that we get asked a lot from local businesses who have heard the term “backlinks” from their friends or family members in marketing, so I thought I’d post my answer here. Backlinks are a very important part of our SEO process, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about getting them.

Some SEO agencies will employ more risky grey-hat or black-hat tactics to get links pointing to their clients’ websites. But at Fleek Consulting, our general stance on that is:

via GIPHY

Seriously, if you’re an SEO agency and you’re getting spammy backlinks to rank your clients’ sites quickly, please … just STOP.

It’s not cool. It might provide results in the short term, but the long-term effects could be disastrous. It could result in said website being pushed back to page 100 of Google – or worse – deindexed altogether. In that case, all the time you spent procuring those bad links will end up being a colossal waste.

For that reason, we generally recommend “playing it cool” when it comes to backlinks.

Are Backlinks Still Valuable?

Some SEO’s will try to tell you that backlinks are dead and that getting them doesn’t really work anymore. I’m not sure where that assertion came from, because in all of our experience and research, backlinks are still very much alive and kicking. It’s all about how you implement them. It’s all about creating a natural backlink profile that doesn’t make it obvious that you’re doing SEO.

This reminds me of a memorable quote from the 90’s sitcom, Full House. In one episode, Stephanie and DJ Tanner start experimenting with makeup and end up putting way too much on, to the point where they go to school looking like clowns and the other girls make fun of them. Their aunt Rebecca (played by Lori Laughlin), steps in to rescue them from this act of self-destruction, and says:

The secret to wearing makeup is to make it look like you’re not wearing any.

The lesson is that women are supposed to wear makeup to enhance their natural beauty.

In a similar sense, the secret to good SEO is to make it look like you’re not actually doing SEO.

Basically, that means that we build backlinks to our clients’ online properties in a natural way, slowly and strategically, with a mix of nofollow and dofollow links from different sources with varying metrics, in order to improve their rankings over time. The goal is to create a backlink profile that looks natural to Google and that Google loves. We have varying methods of procuring those links, none of which are spammy or negate Google’s terms of service.

But I’d say that the #1 thing that sets us apart in terms of our backlink strategy (and our SEO strategy as a whole) is that it’s custom-tailored to each business. We don’t just randomly build a bunch of backlinks and hope they’re gonna influence rankings. We look at each client and their competitors to customize an approach that will get them the best results in the shortest amount of time.

Our SEO Link Building Strategy

Without further ado, here is our answer to this client’s question (edited for anonymity; we’ve removed any references to the specific client name and their niche):

Hey there … great question!

Our backlink strategy involves building a comprehensive, natural backlink profile that is custom, based on an initial investigation of your top competitors on a local level.

We use various SEO research tools to investigate your top competitors and compile a list of the best backlink opportunities for your business based on the ones your competitors have. Then, we set out to build a similar profile (but better) in order to help you outrank them.

We build dofollow and nofollow backlinks to both your Google My Business (GMB) listing and your website. Having a mix of both looks natural – if all of your backlinks were dofollow, it could raise a red flag and result in lower rankings or even penalties if the links were spammy. (We don’t do spammy links, though.)

As far as creating content and actually getting that link real estate, it all depends on the type of link it is. Sometimes we write fresh content for placement on various niche-specific article directories or blogs. Or we also have established connections with thousands of websites that get real traffic (from real people, not bots), where we are able to get links placed in niche-related content that has already been written and established. Sites that actually get real traffic and have good trust and authority metrics are good places to get dofollow links from (and even nofollow links in some cases), because if they’re authoritative, and they’re pointing to your website or GMB, then Google will in turn view your online property as more authoritative.

In addition to building links directly to your website and GMB, we also build links on other properties that point to your website and GMB (such as the citations that we build on various local and national directories. A citation is essentially a directory link or profile page that includes your name, address and phone number, along with a unique description of your business and your website URL. They’re free to set up on hundreds of different directory sites. So, for example, if you were to create a free profile page on Yelp, YP, Foursquare, Manta, or even a Facebook local business page – these would all each be considered a citation.) We build links that point to the citation pages that we set up in order to help them index and gain more authority, and since those pages all point to your website, it helps your website to gain more authority (even if they are nofollow links – I have a theory that nofollow links still count for something even though Google says they “don’t follow” them.)

We use a mix of different keywords, including brand-specific search terms that include your business name (i.e. BUSNESS NAME – SERVICE, along with short-tail and long-tail keywords like “SERVICE/PRODUCT #1”, “SERVICE/PRODUCT #2” or “SERVICE/PRODUCT #3”.

Our strategy is clean and “white-hat” when it comes to link building and we do it over time. But we’ve found that the custom approach, where we research your competitors’ links first and build links based on what their profile looks like, really helps to boost rankings, especially in the local space.

I really appreciated this client’s question and the opportunity to explain a bit more about what we do as far as link building goes. Hopefully this has helped you gain a bit more insight into our process and how we work to get our clients’ websites and various online properties to be more visible in the search engine results.”Do you have a specific question about how things work in the SEO world? Please send us an email, and we’ll post the answer as a Q&A here!