Getting started with backlinks
It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. A short on-ramp to backlinks for teams who have not touched it before.
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
Why it matters
A handful of relevant links beats hundreds of irrelevant ones. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Bought links are a risk that eventually gets priced in
- Change one thing and measure it
Being genuinely useful is still the most durable link strategy. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
How to tell if yours is fine
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Three things worth confirming about backlinks before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Bought links are a risk that eventually gets priced in — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.