Chapter 06: Backlinking

Is backlinking useless or “dead”?

No, backlinking is not useless.

In fact, it still works really well. Think of backlinks as a vote of confidence from a different website to ours.

If I link to a porn site from the speargrowth.com website, even in a blog, and you find it, you’ll perceive our company in a way I wouldn’t want you to. 

Conversely, if I’m linking to a website, there must be a positive reason for me to do it, even if it isn’t me directly recommending them as a business. Google and other Search Engines look at this link and use it as a vote of confidence.

There are two reasons why there are so many debates on whether backlinking is useful or not.

1. You can get SEO results without backlinking, but you’ll hit a performance ceiling, because it’s consistently worth only about 40% of your entire effort. It’s like an exam where you score just 60 out of 100—good now, but future top performers might overtake you (when they surpass 60 & work on the remaining 40 too). The potential is just around 40%, so it’s not useless, just limited.
2. Any benefits you see from backlinking are the hardest to attribute to the activity.

Benefits of backlinking

Now that you know how backlinks work, let’s look at the benefits again, at a deeper level. 

Imagine there are 10,000 keywords in your industry. Without backlinks, you might only rank for 2,000 of them, even if you’ve nailed everything else on your site. 

But here’s where backlinks come in: as you build more backlinks, you can start to rank for a larger number of those keywords. Each backlink is like a vote from another website, saying, “this site is worth checking out!”. This helps you attract more visitors and gives you a broader reach.

Here are three key ways backlinks help us:

First: In the chapter on developing pages, we discuss selecting keywords based on what we “can” rank for, and that is based on the pages in the SERP that we can outrank. One big factor in this is your domain authority (DA), which I’d say carries about 40% of the weight in search engine rankings. If you ignore this, you’ll eventually run out of good topics. It’s like playing a game in hard mode.

Second: It’s usually easier to get backlinks to your homepage. But if you can get a backlink to a SPECIFIC page you want to rank, that’s where you’ll see the biggest impact. Target links to pages focused on essential, but tough, keywords.

The third way is almost like a side effect…

Third: As a business grows, you create a lot of pages. A lot of these pages don’t  rank for anything. As you get more backlinks, your DA goes up. As your DA goes up, all pages on your website get the benefit of that. Which means, a lot of pages might just start outranking the competition because of the boost in DA.

When should you do it?

Backlinks are hard to show results from but require a lot of time, focus, and monetary investment. So they’re hard to get approvals for. It’s best to start working on backlinking when your SEO program is already getting results for the company, and you can ask for some budget for a longer-term activity like this more easily.

Let’s talk about authority (taking a step back)

Re: Backlinks are like votes of confidence from other websites. 

They show that someone thinks your website is interesting or valuable. But not all votes are the same. Some backlinks are more important than others. Here are a few criteria to look for when getting good backlinks. 

Before we get into how it’s really useful to understand another topic first: “Authority”

Your website has two types of authority:

1. General Authority
2. Topical Authority

Let’s go through each of these.

General authority

Your website’s general authority increases based on a lot of things like:

1. Age: Older websites usually have more authority because they’ve been around longer and have built trust.
2. Low tech issues: If your website has lots of problems or is hard to use, it’s harder to get backlinks.
3. Brand search: If people are searching for your brand, that helps too! It means people already think your website is important.
4. # of pages on your website: The sheer volume of pages you’ve published.
5. Existing rankings: How well your website is already ranking for different search terms and bringing in traffic (i.e. the existing value you’re providing to Google’s users).
6. # of backlinks: Of course, another important factor is the number of backlinks you have. The quality of these also matter along with things like: Which page does it go to? Which website is it from? What was the anchor text? 

Topical Authority

Topical authority means being really good at one specific thing. If you have a lot of backlinks about one topic, you become an expert in that area. For example, if Spear Growth’s website has many backlinks from websites that talk about ads, it will rank better for ads than for other topics like if we were to start selling Kombuchas. That’s because Google sees it has more backlinks about ads, so it thinks that the website is more trustworthy for that subject.

Backlinking is not just about quantity. It’s also about quality.

 For example, if you run an agency like us, Spear Growth (that does both Ads and SEO), and focus mainly on ads, you’ll gain a strong authority in that area. Google recognizes this expertise. When someone searches for ads-related topics, your site is more likely to show up because you’ve established yourself as a trusted source.

But if you haven’t built up as much authority in SEO, you might struggle to rank for those keywords. That’s why it’s crucial to not only focus on getting backlinks but also to align them with the topics you want to be known for. The more relevant backlinks you have, the stronger your authority becomes in that specific area.

Creating a backlinking authority strategy

Don’t try to create a backlinking strategy in a silo; Create an authority strategy.

Method 1: Align with business direction

The first step is to think about what you want to achieve. 

Taking Spear Growth’s example, if you have 200 pages about ads and only 20 pages about SEO, ask yourself,

“Is SEO important for my business this year?”

 If it is, you should focus on getting backlinks for those SEO pages.

Method 2: Look for quick wins

Another method is to check your pages that are ranked between 4th and 20th place in search results. If these pages have a few backlinks, they might jump up in ranking with just a little extra help. This is a great way to get quick wins for your website. More on this in the next chapter.

Method 3: Backlinking for critical keywords

Sometimes, you need to focus on important keywords that matter most to your business(Eg: SaaS SEO Agency for us.) Backlinking can help you improve your ranking for those keywords too, which means more people will find you when they search. More on this in the Critical Keywords chapter.

Which backlinks are good or bad?

Let’s keep this simple. 

Here are 4 important things to check when looking at backlinks:

1. Domain authority (DA):
   Higher is better. Think of DA as a score for how trustworthy a website is

• 0-20 is low.
• 20-40 is good.
• 40-60 is great.
• 60-80 is awesome.
• 80-100 is insanely good.

2. Spam score:
   Lower is better.
   This shows how likely it is that a website is spammy or not trustworthy.

• Less than 5% is okay.
• Less than 3% is good.
• 1% is ideal.

3. Relevance of the website: 

The website giving you the backlink should be in your industry. For example, if you sell shoes, a link from a shoe blog is good. But a link from a gambling site? Not so much.

4. Traffic drop: 

Check if the website has had a sudden drop in traffic recently. If yes, it’s better to avoid it because that might mean the website is losing its value.

What are all the ways I can get backlinks?

You can find many guides on how to get backlinks online, but here’s a quick list of popular ways:

1. Guest posts
   Write articles for other blogs.
   This way, you can include links back to your website.
   
2. HARO (Help a reporter out)
   Share your knowledge and help reporters with information they need.
   
3. Collaborations
   Work with other websites or influencers to share links and reach new audiences.

4. Image credits
   Create high-quality infographics relevant to your industry so others can use it and credit you.

5. Unlinked mentions
   Monitor the internet for any unlinked mentions of your brand name. Reach out to these websites, thank them for the mention, and request a link. To acquire the backlinks.
   
6. Embedded badges

Create embedded badges to showcase their achievements. Example – G2.

That’s a lot… which method to get backlinks should I pick?

Don’t stress about finding the perfect method. Instead, focus on what works best for your team. 

As mentioned, there are several ways to get backlinks.

The most important thing is to choose an approach that your organization can actually do. Don’t worry about technical details or finding the absolute best strategy. Pick the method that feels easiest for your team to implement. Once you find “your way”, creating backlinks will become much simpler and more natural.

Think of it like finding your favorite way to exercise. Some people love running, others prefer swimming. What matters is that you find something you can stick with consistently. The same goes for building backlinks—find your style, and the rest will follow.