Learn how to cultivate a natural backlink profile that builds audience demand and trust for your SEO strategy. While backlinks can help establish domain authority, they’re not as critical as some link-building advocates might suggest.
Understanding the Role of Backlinks
Backlinks are traditionally seen as trust signals that can improve search rankings. However, it’s possible to rank a website without relying on backlinks by focusing on your audience and driving organic demand for your brand. Building demand for your brand directly engages more potential customers, creating a foundation where backlinks can occur naturally.
Building Backlinks Through Demand
When you’ve established demand and created valuable resources, organic backlinks often follow. A strong, engaged audience from other marketing channels can also help you discover which pages are “link-worthy.” You can then build pages that journalists and bloggers find compelling, increasing the chance they’ll link to your site naturally.
That said, a healthy, natural backlink profile can make a difference in competitive niches. In some cases, it’s the factor that can help push you to the top of search results, provided all other SEO elements are on par.
What Makes a Healthy Backlink Profile?
A healthy backlink profile looks natural. Search engines expect to see a range of link types in your profile, including a small percentage of links from directories, site monitors, and even potentially spammy sources. These are expected and part of a well-rounded backlink profile.
On the other hand, unnatural backlink profiles often lack any organic reason for the links they contain. If there’s no unique content, thought leadership, studies, or viral material on your site, there’s little reason for others to link to it naturally. Backlinks with no apparent purpose can signal a questionable backlink profile—especially if they are mostly dofollow links.
Elements of a Healthy vs. Unhealthy Link Profile
- Healthy Profile: Includes a balance of dofollow, nofollow, sponsored links, and genuine mentions from users in forums, social media, and community platforms.
- Unhealthy Profile: Characterized by links from irrelevant or unrelated sites, mentions alongside large brands without context, and links from private blog networks (PBNs), link farms, or link schemes. These methods are outdated and no longer effective.
Scholarships, Grants, and Sponsorships
Using scholarships, grants, and sponsorships as backlink strategies may not yield the SEO benefits expected. Google often identifies when these are used purely to acquire .edu or .gov links, or links from charities and events, and they may not count toward SEO. In cases where these links dominate a website’s profile, they can even result in a manual penalty for unnatural link building.
If you’re doing a sponsorship, consider requesting a “sponsored” tag rather than “nofollow” to keep the link transparent and compliant. For scholarships or grants, spotlight the winner on your site with detailed updates, following up on their progress to showcase authentic engagement. If your intention is truly to support, then sharing the individual’s journey helps foster trust and engagement.
Citations and Broken Links
Media mentions and broken links on competitor sites can present opportunities for natural link building. For broken links, contact the site owner and offer your resource as a replacement, explaining how it could benefit their visitors. For citations without links, suggest that adding your link enhances the reader experience, potentially encouraging repeat visits to the site.
Topically Relevant PR
Using PR strategically can help generate natural, industry-relevant backlinks:
- Local Businesses: Target links from local news, blogs, and niche sites.
- Service Providers: Focus on trade publications, industry blogs, and social networks.
- Retailers: Seek coverage from niche bloggers, media outlets, and industry publications.
When brainstorming PR ideas, consider what might be genuinely newsworthy or valuable in your niche. Partnering with a PR or SEO agency that can craft content tailored to your industry is a good approach for a successful campaign.
For additional link-building opportunities, create original studies or surveys relevant to your audience. This can lead to coverage from topically relevant publications, which not only enhances SEO but also resonates with your target audience.
Keeping links aligned with your industry helps avoid penalties and devaluations. Links from irrelevant publications might look unnatural to search engines, potentially resulting in penalties or reduced authority over time.
Press Releases
Press release and syndication backlinks generally don’t contribute positively to SEO. However, press releases can still be valuable for link acquisition if done strategically. To make the most of press releases:
- Share data points as teasers that highlight insights from your study, inviting editors, journalists, and industry experts to reach out for more details.
- Make the full study accessible for free, but request they cite or link to your site as the source.
Ensure your study offers unique insights that set you apart from competitors. If you’re covering the same topics with similar data, editors have little reason to reference your release. Consider the reader’s perspective: what information is missing or could add value?
Comments sections can provide inspiration for content. Use questions from readers to develop data-backed resources that fill these gaps, then pitch your content to editors as a fresh take on an existing topic. Even without a backlink, getting cited can build brand trust, and you can feature these mentions in your marketing.
Blog and Forum Commenting
Avoid using blogs and forums purely for backlinks. Search engines are adept at recognizing and discounting spammy comments. Instead, engage genuinely in communities where your customers are active to build brand trust and authority.
Meaningful contributions in forums can lead to organic mentions over time, creating natural backlinks as part of genuine conversations.
Social Media Profile Links
Social media profile links generally don’t contribute to SEO since anyone can add them. However, social media is still valuable for driving audience engagement and bringing traffic to your website.
There’s a minor exception: active social media profiles can prompt search engines to crawl your site if you’re struggling with indexing. By keeping profiles active and engaging, you may encourage faster discovery of new content on your site.
Focus on Being Worth Linking To
The most effective way to build backlinks is to create valuable, link-worthy content. Links that are easily obtained, like those from directories, don’t significantly impact SEO and can be detrimental if they lack relevance to your industry.
A healthy backlink profile includes a natural mix of links that reflects the quality of your content and its relevance to your audience. Instead of pursuing links indiscriminately, focus on creating unique content that others will naturally want to reference.