@tjrobertson52

If you know anything about SEO, you probably know that backlinks matter for ranking in Google. And yes, this is still true even with AI search. However, you probably don't need as many backlinks as you think.

And if you don't understand why backlinks help and which backlinks help, you're likely to waste a lot of time and money.

I'd like to just get into how we think about backlinks at our agency. If you don't know, a backlink is just another website linking to your website. It's one of many factors that search engines use to determine how high you should rank.

The idea is pretty simple: if a lot of other websites online are linking to your website, you must be a trusted, authoritative source.

But of course, SEOs are gonna SEO. It's pretty easy to throw up a website linking back to yours, or pay another website to link back to yours. And so over the years, Google and other search engines have had to become more and more sophisticated at detecting which links are natural, authentic backlinks and which have just been placed for SEO purposes.

Nowadays, the vast majority of backlinks are ignored. If the link is easy to get, or if it's placed on a site that's known for soliciting backlinks, Google's gonna ignore it. This is why for most websites, if you go to a link building agency and just start building a bunch of links, you're unlikely to see a significant benefit.

But links still do matter. So what are you gonna do? The thing to understand is, even if you aren't actively building links, websites just naturally get links.

If you're running a business and creating content, people are gonna link to you. Not very often, but occasionally. And like I said before, links are just one factor that Google uses.

When you're doing SEO the right way, the signal you're trying to send to Google is that your business is growing, you're becoming more of an authority in your space. And Google has a pretty good idea of what this looks like when it happens authentically. You're publishing more content to your website.

More people are searching for your brand by name, people are more likely to click on your website in the search result. People are talking about you online. And yes, more people are linking to you.

And so if your business is truly becoming more of an authority, Google expects all of these things to rise simultaneously. You suddenly get a bunch of links, but no one's talking about you online. Your brand search didn't go up, you're not producing more content.

That just looks unnatural to Google.

So a good link building campaign isn't about getting as many links as possible, it's about getting enough links to keep up with all the other efforts. And as I mentioned before, you're naturally gonna get some links, so you probably don't need to build a ton of additional links. But you do wanna build some.

And specifically, you wanna build links that look natural, that Google's gonna trust.

Let's talk about how to do that. If you're a brand new website, you're gonna wanna get some foundational links. These are things like setting up your social media profiles and identifying the top directories in your industry and submitting your business there.

These links are very easy to get, and so they don't carry a lot of weight, but Google expects to see you in these places.

The next thing I recommend doing is building links with existing relationships. Try to think of every person or business you know with a website. You're then gonna reach out and ask if they can link to you.

But don't worry, you aren't asking for a favour. You're gonna do this in a way that's mutually beneficial. There's typically three approaches.

1. You offer to write them a testimonial that they can place on their website with a link back to yours. 2.

You offer to write them an article they can put on their blog with a link back to yours. And 3, you offer to put them on your partners or resources page if they'll do the same on their website.

Don't assume you're gonna get a lot of links this way. But if you can identify 10 websites and get two of them to link back to you, you've done a good job.

And the last method: instead of going to these websites that are actively soliciting links, go to the websites that Google is telling you they trust. Go to Google's AI mode and search for the kind of things that your customers would search for when they're looking for your products and services. Start making a list of all the articles that Google sites in those responses.

Try to collect 20 to 50 of these articles. Then just reach out to each publisher and say, hey, I loved your article. What would it take for you to recommend our brand in your article?

In our experience, 95% of them are going to ignore you. But it's okay. 5% is enough.

If they respond, they're gonna want one of two things. They're gonna want payment, usually something like one to 3 hundred dollars, or they're gonna want a reciprocal link you link back to them. In either case, it's well worth it.

These are websites that Google is telling you they already trust.

Then if you still need links, you can reach out to a trusted link building agency. Let me know if you need a recommendation. I'll put you in touch with my friend Scott over at outreacher.

But of our 40 SEO clients, I only recommend this for two of them.