SEO 101: Everything You Need To Know About Backlinks

Over the last few years, search engine optimization professionals have been chasing backlink strategies in an almost obsessive manner. No one knows for sure what the Google search engine algorithm actually shows in terms of assigning page rank for backlinks, but SEO professionals still believe that they play one of the most important roles these days.

Backlink checker tools such as the one provided in the Ahrefs SEO suite are being used just as often as advanced keyword research. Freelancers are becoming disheartened when they use this tool and discover that their competitors have generated more than 2,500 backlinks as part of their local SEO efforts. Is there any way to compete against agencies that have the time and resources to create that many inbound links?

Turns out that there are multiple ways of dealing with this kind of competition. There is simply no way that a local hardware store has attracted the attention of so many websites; what many agencies are doing is taking advantage of blog platforms and directories that have a somewhat decent domain authority and seasoning. We are talking about online platforms such as Netlify, About.me, and others. More often than not, agencies are coding scripts to automate as much of the backlink generation process as possible; in other cases, they simply offshore the work at pennies on the dollar.

Remember the keyword stuffing techniques of yesteryear? Backlink spamming is becoming similar, which means that Google will surely tweak the search engine algorithm to dissuade this kind of lazy SEO strategy. Some SEO professionals have already figured out that solid structured data coded with the schema markup often results in higher page rank than random backlinks.

For all their perceived importance, backlinks are only one part of SEO. It is better to focus on the overall SEO picture of a project before concentrating on backlinks. The key point to remember is that a single high authority backlink could trounce hundreds of dubious ones. For an Iowa hardware store located in Salisbury Oaks, for example, a single backlink coming from the Des Moines Register website is worth more than dozens of business directory links. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/hffint/afreelancercompetingwithamassiveagency_how/.