Worked out a robust SEO strategy but still not getting enough traction? You might need to work on how to get backlinks which can, in turn, boost your SERP ranking and this will surge your website traffic once you’re within this loop, you’ll be able to manage your Google ranking with minimal efforts.
For SaaS companies, SERP ranking is the pinnacle of their online success and since it’s not just the traction they are fighting for but also the title of Sifu and Sage, it’s important their knowledge is validated by the Masters out there, only then will these SaaS businesses receive due recognition. To achieve this Backlinks are the way to go.
Backlinks, also known as external or inbound links are hyperlinks on an external or third-party website that leads to your website. These help search engines understand the degree of relevance of your content to a search query.
As you can see, GrowthHackers is backlinked with the FP Growth site.
But one key point to remember here is that in the case of SaaS, it’s not about quantity, high quality backlinks should be from an authoritative site and should be relevant to your content, only then will it be able to boost your web traction and move you to the top spots in a search engine result.
Follow links are the ones that pass link equity and are guaranteed to help you rank
better. If a link is followed and that too from a top relevant website, then that particular link is the best one for you. By default, links are followed on the internet.
Nofollow links are ones that are tagged and do not pass link equity and are not crawled by search engines. These types of links may not be editorially controlled by the site administrators.
All no-follow link profiles have a no-follow link in them.
Here’s what you need to keep in mind before you build high-quality backlinks:
Being amongst the top ranking factors for Google, backlinks help generate referral traffic and boost your SEO, it also works amazingly the other way round. Here’s how to create a backlink that can affect your SEO and web traffic:
Familiar with the word – Domain Authority? Well, it’s the strength of a domain that can give insights into the possibility of it being ranked by search engines.
An indispensable aspect of backlinks is the value that seeps into your site from a high DA website when linked with it. That’s what we call Link Juice. The higher the domain authority of the website your site is linked with (backlink with a dofollow attribute), the more link equity or link juice it carries, which means the more value passes to your website. This also acts as an add-on to your domain authority which is valued in the range 1-100, which means that you need to critically evaluate and pick the sites you want to link to.
Indexing is more like putting a website or web page on a map, and for search engines, this task is completed by crawlers, they discover pages and index them. But what if your web page isn’t discovered? Well, unfortunately, that means it won’t rank at all.
Consider this scenario, your website (Website A) is linked (dofollow) with another site (Website B) that has good authority. What will happen is when bots crawl Website B they will discover your link and discover your website (Website B). Although Google will discover your website without backlinks too, this can take a while. Having a backlink is like having a VIP pass, you can cut through the long queue and sit right in the front row.
For SaaS companies, it’s not just about having the best-in-market product, but the knowledge that you share in the form of content is also crucial for lead generation and web traffic. And since backlinks represent the relevance of your web content, they can do wonders for your online reputation, especially if the linking sites have a high domain authority and are trusted by your target audience.
On the flip side, backlinks can harm your online reputation as well, this can happen if the site you’re linked with is irrelevant or spammy. Assume you’re in the food industry, and you have backlinks from fashion influencers. That doesn’t make any sense, does it? Some websites want to leverage every linking opportunity, but as a company, you need to properly analyze and evaluate the linking opportunities.
Sites with a great online reputation and high domain authority are what will help become Google’s favorite brand in the industry. Google keeps an eye on these factors and since these factors are great signals, it will go ahead and crown your site as the king of your industry.
However, a key thing to remember here is that you don’t need to run after quantity, it’s the quality of the backlinks that matter for search engines, so you need to place your focus on that. Other key factors are the anchor text of the backlink, linking domain age, the authority of the linking domains, and the number of linking pages.
Taking a shortcut will not only help you trick Google but will also work to surge traffic – qualified traffic. If linked to websites with a bigger audience and trust in the industry, you will be able to generate qualified referral traffic. This is another reason why you must scrutinize and properly assess the sites you’re linked to and also why getting backlinks from relevant websites is crucial.
Referral traffic also plays a key role in determining your page rank and is a representation of your site’s popularity, it’s like a self-growing loop; more visitors through backlinks SEO means relevant content which means better rank in the SERPs which means more sites with a good DA are likely to link to your site and so on.
A great product or service isn’t a guarantee that people will find you and your web traffic graph will go up. So instead of just waiting around, grab your toolkit and build a vigorous backlink strategy to move ahead of your competitors in stealth mode. The ball is in your court now!
Shivam Kumar
