How to get backlinks right
We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. The short answer to backlinks is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
The reason this keeps coming up
A handful of relevant links beats hundreds of irrelevant ones. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Bought links are a risk that eventually gets priced in
- Being genuinely useful is still the most durable link strategy
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Being genuinely useful is still the most durable link strategy. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
A reasonable first step
The short version
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
- Being genuinely useful is still the most durable link strategy — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.