The simplest definition: backlinks are links from an unrelated website to your website. A little more detail: a backlink campaign is a strategically planned SEO (Search Engine Optimization) program of creating links from other websites to your estate planning and Elder law website. Backlink campaigns can be a strong part of your digital marketing toolbox, when handled correctly. Done badly, they can bounce your website into cyber-oblivion. Here are some basics for backlink campaigns:
Quality matters. Google’s search engine algorithms, which we call “bots,” travel across the web, evaluating websites for their quality, relevance and authority. Backlinks give the bots another opportunity to measure these metrics and how they relate to your linked website. The bots evaluate how many backlinks connect to a website, if the websites are high quality websites or spammy sites. How these other sites rank for quality and authority is very important.
Backlinks campaigns are a process, not a set-it-and-forget-it task. Successful backlink campaigns require management and updating. Some SEO pros advise a weekly review, others work on a monthly basis. They require time and content preparation, whether the content being shared is an article or an infographic.
Don’t forget about traffic. It’s easy to focus on the backlinks as just a link building exercise, but at the same time a backlink campaign should be about the user experience as well. Look for websites that you think that your clients would find informative or relevant. That may include a magazine focusing on travel for seniors, for instance, or a personal finance blog
Building backlinks is not easy and takes time. It requires submitting content to other websites, which must be compelling and useful enough to be accepted. This includes articles, press releases, blogs, reviews and testimonials from clients.
Be wary of big promises for backlink campaigns. Anyone who promises to put you immediately on Google’s first page simply by creating a huge number of back links (think quantity, not quality) is putting your practice’s digital life at risk. Back link spamming holds the potential to get your website knocked out of Google’s search index.