The proof?

According to a legal trends report by Cilo, 74% of people use search engines to find legal advice. Also, research by Ahrefs found that 12,000 people search for the keyword ‘lawyer near me’ each month. 

These stats prove that SEO and local SEO are necessities for law firms, and one of the most important factors for both is link-building. 

The goal of link-building is to obtain backlinks, which are links on external sites that point back to your site. 

On search engines like Google, getting backlinks from trusted websites in your niche is how you:

1. Build trust and prove that your content is truly valuable 
2. Rank higher in the search results 

In our experience, backlinks are one of the most crucial ranking factors on Google. 

Without a robust backlink profile, outranking your top competitors (i.e., other law firms in your area) will become extremely difficult. 

This is because backlinks act as mini-endorsements of your content’s quality and accuracy. A backlink is another website’s way of saying, “This resource is valuable and enhances our content, so we’d like to link to it.”

You can think of backlinks as gaining ‘trust by association’ on search engines. 

For example, if a major website like CNBC or Forbes links to your content, it signals to Google that your content is high-quality enough to get featured in major publications that have rigorous quality control measures and fact-checkers. 

As a result, it’ll become far easier to outrank competitors who don’t have backlinks coming from such prestigious websites. 

That’s why law firms have every incentive to master the link-building process, which is what we’re here to show you today. 

In this guide, we’ll cover:

1. What backlinks are and how their quality differs 
2. Why backlinks matter so much for legal SEO 
3. Numerous techniques for building backlinks 
4. How to monitor and maintain your backlink profile 

We’re about to teach you absolutely everything you need to know about building backlinks for legal websites, so stay tuned! 

What is Link-Building All About?

First, it’s integral to understand what link-building is and its place in the overall SEO process. 

Link-building is the act of generating backlinks for your website. 

As stated in the intro, backlinks are simply external links on other websites that direct ‘back’ to your content, hence the name. 

As a quick example, here’s one of our backlinks found on the blog Best Keyword Research Tools by Rank Math:

As you can see, our free keyword planner tool scored a spot on their list, and they included a backlink to it as a resource for their readers. 

What does this have to do with SEO?

A whole lot! 

On search engines like Google, backlinks (like the one above) act as endorsements of your content’s quality, trustworthiness, and reliability. 

The reason why stretches all the way back to Google’s inception in the late 90s. 

A brief history of backlinks and their importance 

In the early days of the internet, search engine results pages (SERPs) were riddled with low-quality, spammy content. This was because site owners had long figured out the search engine ranking algorithms of the day, which were almost entirely centered around keywords (the terms you enter in the search bar). 

The more a website would use target keywords in its content (like ‘best lawyer near me’), the higher it would rank on search engines at the time. 

Google’s founders wanted a way to only rank the highest quality, most trustworthy content to provide their users with the best experience possible. 

This prompted them to develop the concept of using backlinks as credibility votes. It’s similar to how academics cite sources to back up claims they make on term papers. 

The idea is that if a bunch of trustworthy websites link to your content, it’s a sign that your content must also be trustworthy. 

Think back to the examples of CNBC and Forbes. These respected sites have quality control teams and fact checkers to ensure they only link out to the highest quality content. After all, their reputation is on the line, so they wouldn’t want to link out to shady websites that may steal user’s information (or scam them out of money). 

This is how the concept of using backlinks as a ranking factor was born, and it’s still very much in effect today. 

As a result, top-ranked websites on Google always have strong backlink profiles, which presents the need for the link-building process. 

Research has proven this is true, too. 

Backlinko found that the #1 result on Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2 – #10. 

So, if you want to rank in the top 3 on Google, you NEED to build backlinks. 

Why backlinks are essential for SEO 

Besides making it easier to achieve top rankings, backlinks provide a whole host of other SEO benefits. 

In addition to gaining more ranking power, backlinks also provide the following:

• Chances to generate referral traffic. While most SEOs build backlinks to rank higher, you shouldn’t forget that a link on another website is a great way to drive more traffic to your site. This is especially true if the backlink you generate appears on an extremely popular site in your area of law. If you’re able to build high-quality backlinks for your most important legal pages, you’ll be able to use referral traffic to acquire new clients! 

• Enhance credibility and boost your reputation. High-quality backlinks won’t just boost your reputation in the eyes of search engines; you’ll also gain clout with your target audience. Your readers will start to notice if your law firm begins appearing on the sites and social media platforms they frequent, which will help spread awareness. Backlinks from guest posts and helpful link insertions can also establish you as a thought leader in your area of law. This means that members of your target audience will come to your firm first whenever there’s a new development in your field (or when they need legal expertise), which is an extremely powerful position to hold. 

So, if you want to generate more traffic and become a trusted law firm online, you should invest in a comprehensive link-building campaign. 

Not All Backlinks are Created Equal: Targeting Quality Over Quantity 

Not every backlink will have a positive impact on your SEO. 

Backlinks coming from low-quality, irrelevant websites will have little-to-no impact on your rankings whatsoever. 

This is why it’s never a good idea to build lots of low-quality links, despite what other SEOs may tell you (some still swear by quantity over quality, but they’re usually trying to sell bulk packages of crappy links). 

Signs of a low-quality website include:

• Clunky navigation and user interface 
• Slow loading speed 
• Junk content that’s either A) stolen, B) AI-generated, or C) nonsensical 
• Infrequent updates 
• No loyal followers/readers 

Should you notice any of these signs on a website you’re considering for a backlink, you should forget about it and look elsewhere. 

Google’s algorithm is quite adept at identifying low-quality (even spammy) backlinks, and it’s trained to devalue their impact. This means you won’t see any changes to your rankings, either good or bad. 

For this reason, it’s important to not freak out if you notice some lower-quality links pointing at your site (especially if you didn’t build them). 

It’s completely normal for websites to accrue backlinks of varying quality simply due to existing online, which is why Google’s algorithm ignores low-quality links. 

This is worth mentioning because some site owners panic when they see crappy backlinks in their profiles, which leads them to use Google’s Disavow Tool to get rid of them. 

However, the Disavow Tool should be a last resort, as it’s deceptively easy to misuse it and wreck your SEO as a result. Unless you had a direct hand in building a shady backlink (which would count as manipulation), you can simply ignore low-quality backlinks that appear in your profile. 

When it comes to the backlinks you build intentionally, though, you should stick to high-quality backlinks, which leads us to our next point. 

What makes a backlink high-quality for law firms?

In order to generate high-quality backlinks, you need to know what you’re looking for first. 

Here are the most important factors that make a backlink ‘high-quality’ to search engines like Google. 

Relevance

The first and most important factor is that your backlinks must hold some type of relevance to your legal practice. 

Even if a backlink comes from an extremely trusted domain, irrelevant backlinks are immediately devalued by Google’s algorithms. 

This is because an irrelevant link provides no value to readers and may cause confusion instead. For example, you wouldn’t want to build backlinks for your law firm on Amazon, because that would make no sense (even if Amazon is one of the largest websites in the world). 

Instead, you need to build backlinks that are directly relevant to your legal practice, which means targeting backlinks from:

• Legal blogs 
• Bar associations 
• Legal directories 
• Legal forums and social media pages 
• News websites discussing stories related to your area of law 

As long as the site linking back to yours relates to what you do in some way (like a news story mentioning your legal area of expertise), then it’s fair game. 

Authority 

Next, the domain giving you a backlink must have authority, which refers to the ‘weight’ or trust given to a page in relation to the other pages trying to rank for the same keyword. 

The more authority your website has, the easier it will be to outrank your competitors. 

In the SEO world, there are a few ways to measure the amount of authority a domain has on search engines. 

The two most popular metrics are Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) and Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR). 

While they’re both third-party metrics (not from Google), they’re still great ways to measure the ‘ranking power’ of a domain before pursuing a backlink from it. 

The higher the authority score, the more likely a domain is to appear in Google’s search results. 

Both DA and DR scores are measured on a scale of 1 – 100, with scores of 100 being the most authoritative. 

For us, we like to check a domain’s DA and DR before we make the decision to pursue a backlink. 

This is because there are slight differences between the two metrics, which are:

• Domain Rating strictly looks at a website’s backlink profile. If they have a diverse profile with plenty of strong backlinks, they’ll have a good DR score. 

• Domain Authority takes into account more factors than backlinks. It also considers things like content quality, keyword usage, and social media presence. 

We find that checking both scores gives us the most comprehensive view of a domain’s ranking ability, which is why we encourage you to do the same. 

Naturalness and diversity

Here’s where link-building gets a tad tricky. 

In order to enjoy SEO success, you need a balanced, natural-looking backlink profile. 

We recently posted a blog focused entirely on the importance of natural backlinks, so don’t hesitate to check it out to learn more. 

Essentially, Google wants to make sure that you aren’t manipulating your search rankings by intentionally building backlinks from high-quality domains. 

But wait, isn’t that the entire point of link-building?

Yes, but Google has a famous love/hate relationship with most link-building tactics (and SEO in general). 

While they know they can’t stop businesses from engaging in SEO to market their products and services, manipulating the algorithm to rank higher (like by writing guest posts on high-quality websites) makes them nervous. 

This is because it could cause untrustworthy, low-quality content to rank high on Google’s search results, harming their reputation in the process. 

As an example, imagine if a website selling fake crypto was to buy loads of backlinks to artificially boost its search rankings. Suddenly, their scam would reach millions of people by ranking in the #1 spot, and Google would basically be complicit in it. 

This is why Google wants to see diverse backlink profiles. 

Whenever a website generates backlinks naturally due to the strength of its content, it’s normal for a few low-quality backlinks to appear, too. It’s also normal to see backlinks from forum comments, social media sites, and business directories. 

Building backlinks from a diverse range of sources and levels of quality will make your backlink appear natural, which is what you want. 

How Law Firms Can Build Backlinks 

Okay, now it’s time to start learning how law firms can begin building the backlinks they need to rank higher, generate more traffic, and attract new clients. 

There’s no shortage of link-building techniques available online, but we’re going to stick with the ones that generate the best results for our clients. 

In a nutshell, there are four ways you can build backlinks for your law firm, which are:

• Adding backlinks manually. There are some websites, such as legal directories and forum comment sections, where you can manually add backlinks to your website. These types of backlinks tend to have minimal impact on search rankings, but they’re still good for generating referral traffic and building a diverse backlink portfolio. 

• Asking for links (email outreach). Next, you can reach out to site owners via email to request that they place one of your links on their site. There are several ways you can use email outreach to build backlinks. First, you can email a site owner and request that they insert one of your backlinks in an existing piece of their content (like a link to one of your legal pages). You can also conduct outreach to pitch guest posts (another great way to build links), and to fix broken links you found (by replacing them with one of your backlinks). 

• Earn backlinks. This is Google’s preferred method for site owners to build backlinks (it’s pretty much the only one they accept). It’s where you earn backlinks simply by publishing outstanding content that provides genuine value to your audience. If your content is truly valuable, others will notice, and you’ll start acquiring backlinks without doing any outreach. 

• Buy backlinks. While buying backlinks technically violates Google’s search guidelines, it’s still a widely adopted practice by SEOs around the globe. There’s a right and a wrong way to go about buying backlinks, which we’ll discuss in more detail shortly. Do it right, and you’ll boost your search rankings without having to waste months conducting outreach. Do it wrong, and you could land a manual penalty that removes your content from Google’s SERPs. The risk is great, but so are the rewards. 

Let’s take a deep dive into each of these techniques and provide examples so that you can get a feel for how each method works. 

Method #1: Manually adding backlinks 

First, let’s explore all the ways you can manually add backlinks to relevant legal websites online. 

Most of the time, this means uploading one of your backlinks and your law firm’s NAP (name, address, and phone number) to a legal directory. However, it can also mean adding backlinks to social media profiles and forum comments. 

The top legal directories online 

We’ll start with legal directories, of which there are many, and they’re not all worth your time. 

However, you can and should upload your law firm’s information to highly regarded legal directories to build backlinks and boost your online authority. 

Here’s a list of the best legal directories:

• Justia. Besides providing a legal directory, Justia also offers legal resources, meaning potential clients also frequent the website. 

• FindLaw. Owned by Thomson Reuters, FindLaw is one of the biggest legal sites online, so you definitely want to get your law firm listed here if you can. 

• Avvo. Out of all the options here, Avvo has the strongest user interface. It features in-depth lawyer profiles, client reviews, and a helpful rating system. 

• Martindale-Hubbell. This is one of the oldest and most well-respected legal directories, and it’s highly regarded within the legal community. 

• Super Lawyers. This is a prestigious directory that only lists top attorneys thanks to its rigorous selection process. 

Here are some legal directories specifically for personal injury attorneys:

• Personal Injury Warriors. Based in Los Angeles, California, Personal Injury Warriors is a legal directory for medical providers and accident attorneys. 

• The National Trial Lawyers. While this is a high-quality directory with a section dedicated to personal injury attorneys, it has rigorous standards and operates on an invite-only basis. Still, if you’re able to land a spot here, it’ll likely be worth the hassle (i.e., referral traffic and increased authority). 

Remember, legal directories are great for raising awareness and diversifying your backlink portfolio. Sure, you’ll probably get more raw ranking power out of a guest post on a top legal blog, but it’s equally as important to balance those links out with more ‘natural’ looking ones like these. 

Engaging in legal forums and social media groups 

Next, it’s beneficial to add backlinks to your website on forums like Reddit and social media groups on platforms like LinkedIn – but you have to go about it the right way. 

What you SHOULDN’T do is randomly plug your law firm on semi-related threads without any context and without building any rapport. 

What you SHOULD do is become an active member of these communities, regularly commenting and contributing original posts of your own. 

Whenever it’s truly appropriate, leave one of your backlinks as a helpful resource for a commenter or fellow group member. 

This will ensure that your comments don’t come off as spammy, which will land you in hot water with both forum admins and search engine algorithms. 

Here are some more tips for building backlinks on forums and social media sites.

Only link to your site when it truly adds value. 

The perfect time to insert one of your backlinks into a forum comment or social media post is when the link serves as a helpful resource for someone. 

For example, let’s say you’re posting on a Reddit thread related to your legal services, and a user that you regularly interact with is looking for a divorce attorney. 

This is the perfect time to provide a backlink to your divorce services (or family law) page. 

Another opportunity would be to link one of your blogs to help a user who is looking for information that you’ve written about before, like clarifying what a certain law means. 

Build trust first 

Before you start leaving backlinks all over the place, you should establish trust on the platform first. This means taking some time to get to know the regulars. Start commenting on posts, giving relevant legal advice, and engaging in friendly conversation wherever possible. 

Once you’ve built some rapport, then you can move on to adding backlinks to your legal pages. 

This step is crucial because it lets users know that you’re not just there to blindly plug your services. Instead, you’ll be a contributing member who adds real value to the community as a whole. That will increase the chances that users will take you seriously, and it will help you dodge any accusations of spam. 

Method #2: Asking for backlinks (manual outreach)  

Besides directories and forums, you won’t be able to manually add backlinks on other websites without getting the owner’s permission first (it’s a bummer, we know). 

So, in order to build backlinks on reputable legal websites, you’ll have to reach out and say hello. 

In particular, you need to conduct outreach for:

• Guest posts 
• Broken link-building 
• Unlinked brand mentions 

These are all cornerstone link-building techniques, so let’s take a closer look at each one. 

Finding guest posting opportunities 

Guest posting is one of the oldest link-building tactics, and it continues to be one of the most effective. It’s also one of the most popular ways law firms build backlinks online.   

The technique involves reaching out to other websites to write guest blogs in order to:

1. Leave a backlink to your law firm’s website 
2. Expose your practice to potential clients 
3. Generate referral traffic 

As you can see, there are plenty of upsides to writing guest posts, which is why it’s such a common practice. 

Here’s an example of a legal guest post:

Here, the author is writing about the risks of inappropriate usage of ChatGPT at law firms for Legal Insider, a website specializing in legal tech news.

Pro tip: If your firm specializes in technology cases, this website could be a viable guest post target for you (as they clearly accept guest posts). 

Directly underneath the title of the post, the site owner credits the author and leaves a backlink to their website, which was likely the reason they wrote the post in the first place. 

Now that you know what a guest post looks like, here are some tips on how to find relevant sites that accept them:

Use Google Search 

Google’s search operators are your best friend when looking for legal guest posting opportunities. 

By wrapping a phrase in quotes after a keyword, Google will only display websites that carry that text. 

An example would be searching for something like law firm “accepting guest posts” or law firm “write for us,” but there are lots of variations you can use. 

Here’s what happens when we search for law firm “write for us”:

Thanks to the search operator, the top 4 results are all legal websites that accept guest posts, which is exactly what we wanted! 

Other search operator terms to use in combination with ‘law firm’ include:

• “Guest post”
• “Write for me”
• “Submit a guest post” 
• “Guest article”
• “Become a contributor”
• “Contribute to our blog”

After using a few of these, you should have a long list of relevant legal websites to target for guest posts. 

Leverage your network

Search operators aren’t the only way you can find high-quality guest posting opportunities. You can also leverage your network of colleagues, referral partners, and fellow legal firms to find unique opportunities that aren’t as well advertised online (or at all).

Let your colleagues know that you’re interested in contributing an interesting post to a legal website. You never know what you may find, so it’s at least worth asking! 

Finding what to write about 

Once you find websites that accept guest posts, the challenge then becomes deciding what to write about. 

After all, if you don’t pitch an interesting topic to the site owner, the chances of them accepting it are slim to none. 

Luckily, we know several ways to ensure this doesn’t happen. 

Here are some tips for always finding relevant topics that site owners and readers care about:

• Browse the website’s existing library of articles. First, you need to understand the kind of stories the website mainly publishes. Are they about hot legal cases in the news, or are they more concerned about educating readers on specific legal concepts? Poke around their blog’s archive to get a feel for their style. 

• Do some relevant keyword research. The next step is to use some tools to find trending keywords related to the website’s overall topic. A good choice is our keyword planner tool since it’s completely free. Enter some terms related to what the website posts about, and see which keywords are getting the most hits (search volume). This will clue you in on the type of content the site’s audience currently wants to see. 

Using a keyword tool for research 

Here’s a quick example of how to use our keyword tool to find legal keywords for your guest posts.

Let’s say that you want to write a guest post for Legal Insider, the legal tech news website we mentioned earlier. 

Using our keyword tool, you could enter something like ‘legal tech’ to see what’s trending:

Here are the results:

The most important metrics to pay attention to here are search volume and search trend. 

Search volume refers to how many users are looking for each term on Google. Search trend refers to the line graph presented for each keyword, and it represents the level of interest in a keyword over time. 

You should target keywords that have high search volume and currently have an upward trend. 

Going further down the list, here’s an interesting keyword that you might target:

It has a relatively high search volume of 70, and it’s currently trending. As such, a guest post about the legality of veneer technicians would be a great idea to pitch to a site like Legal Insider. 

Broken link-building 

Another link-building technique centered around outreach is broken link-building. 

It’s where you find broken links on other legal websites so that you can fix them with your content, picking up a backlink in the process. 

No link is set in stone, and it’s normal for links to break over time. This is known as link rot, and, despite the unsettling name, you can use it to your advantage. 

For instance, let’s say one of your competitors wrote a guest post on a legal news site that now leads to a 404 Not Found page. 

Well, by reaching out to the site owner, you can request that they replace the broken link with one of your blog posts instead. 

As long as you target relevant websites for broken links, you can find great success with this tactic. 

Here are some quick tips for finding broken backlinks on legal websites:

• Use a tool to make things easier. There are plenty of tools online that will display a website’s broken links for you. We recommend using Ahrefs’ free broken link checker tool, as it will definitely get the job done. Enter the URL of a legal website you want to check, and see if they have any broken links that you can easily replace. 

• Prepare replacement content. Before you reach out to site owners, you should ensure you have replacement content at the ready. Most of the time, this means knowing which blog post you plan to use beforehand. This will save you the hassle of scrambling to get alternative content together after you’ve already contacted the site owner. 

• Conduct outreach to site owners to replace broken links. The final step is to get in touch with site owners to request that they replace their broken links with your content. Site owners typically appreciate this, as no one likes having broken links on their website (they’re bad for user experience and SEO). We’ll dive into some specific email outreach tips in a bit. 

Unlinked brand mentions 

The last outreach-based technique we’ll look into is targeting unlinked brand mentions. 

What are those?

An unlinked brand mention occurs whenever another website mentions your brand but fails to include a backlink to your site. 

While it’s still great that they mentioned your law firm’s name on their website, the shout-out would mean a lot more if they hyperlinked it! 

The good news is there’s nothing stopping you from hunting down your unlinked brand mentions and turning them into linked brand mentions. 

Here’s how to hunt them down:

• Ahrefs (paid method). If you have access to Ahrefs, you can use its Content Explorer tool to find unlinked mentions. Enter your brand name in quotes, and then use this formula to ensure your own website doesn’t appear in the results: -site:(yoursite).com

Here’s what it looks like when we do it for our website:

Hitting the search button will provide a list of all our brand mentions online. However, we want to take things a step further by only highlighting the unlinked mentions, which you can do by selecting this filter:

This will highlight the URL for unlinked brand mentions. After applying the filter, we found an unlinked brand mention for our website (which we need to fix, by the way):

• Google (free method). You can also use Search Operators to use Google Search to find unlinked brand mentions. It involves using the same formula as you would on Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, just on Google Search. Simply enter “your brand -site:your brand.com” to bring up every website that mentions your brand. The only downside here is that you won’t have a way to filter the unlinked mentions out from the linked mentions, which can be a bit of a hassle. 

Like the other three methods, this is an outreach-heavy method, so let’s learn how you can perfect your outreach game. 

Email outreach tips 

Link-building has been important for SEO for a long time now, which means site owners receive hundreds (or even thousands) of backlink outreach emails each month. 

This means your outreach has to be particularly gripping in order to stand out from the crowd. 

Here are some of the best ways to do that:

• Personalize each pitch. Little things like including the site owner’s name and mentioning a few of their interests can go a long way, so it’s important to personalize your outreach emails. Do some digging on their website’s About Us and their LinkedIn profiles to learn more about what makes them tick. Also, here’s a guide on how to track down site owner contact information if you’re having trouble. 

• Be concise. It’s crucial not to overstay your welcome. You should A) politely greet the site owner, B) mention why you’re contacting them, and C) get out of there! 

• Include a strong value add. This refers to the ‘why’ behind your email. In other words, present to the site owner in very clear terms how your backlink or guest post will improve their website. If it’s a guest post, mention how the topic is trending (backed up by your keyword research). If it’s a broken link, bring up how your replacement article is even better than the one before. 

Method #3: Earning backlinks 

Okay, the next method entails earning your backlinks through the sheer quality of your content. 

As stated before, this is Google’s preferred link-building method. This is because earning backlinks through the merit of your content greatly benefits Google’s reputation, which is why they’re all for it. 

As a bonus, you won’t have to constantly look over your shoulder for manual penalties whenever you earn your backlinks. 

Yet, it’s the least reliable form of link-building since you have no way of controlling whether others link to your content or not. All you can do is produce the highest quality, most relevant content that you can and hope for the best (which is never a bad thing). 

Here are some important tips for creating content worthy of generating natural backlinks:

Embody E-E-A-T in your content

Law is a YMYL (your money, your life) topic, meaning Google treats it with more scrutiny than other topics. 

This is because legal websites can potentially negatively impact someone’s finances, well-being, or mental health, which is why they fall under the YMYL umbrella. 

To ensure your content is of the highest quality in Google’s eyes, you should live by the E-E-A-T algorithm that they teach to their human team of quality raters. 

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Therefore, your content should include first-hand experiences, demonstrations of your expertise, and authoritative external links. Including these three factors will increase your trustworthiness, which will bring you full circle. 

Research every topic and create authoritative content 

Just like with guest posts, every post you write for your own blog should be backed up by keyword research. 

You can use our free keyword tool to uncover the hottest keywords in your area of legal expertise. 

After that, create authoritative, long-form content to educate and eventually convert your readers. 

The most popular types of ‘thought leader’ content include:

• Long-form how-to’s and ‘ultimate guides’ 
• FAQs based on real client questions 
• Case studies exemplifying the legal problems you solve for clients 

These are all excellent content formats that will attract lots of shares. 

Use multimedia to make your content even more shareable 

Including visual content increases your sharing potential by 40%, so you should include high-resolution images, videos, and infographics in your posts. 

Also, legal podcasts are a goldmine for generating backlinks and referral traffic. 

There are hundreds of legal podcasts online, and appearing on them is a great way to boost your SEO. They’re also pretty easy to find, so you should be able to do some standard Google searches to find them. 

Here’s what happens when we search for ‘top legal podcasts’ on Google:

As you can see, Google itself has plenty of suggestions, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding the perfect podcast for your needs. 

Method #4: Buying backlinks 

Last but not least, you also have the option to buy backlinks, but this is by far the riskiest way to build links. 

That is unless you’re smart about it. 

We’ve written an extensive article about buying backlinks in the past, in which we reveal that most SEOs do it, even strictly white-hat marketers. 

The thing is, Google has no way of knowing whether you bought a backlink or built it naturally. 

So, if you’re smart and only buy high-quality backlinks from trusted vendors, you can get away with buying links if you release them one at a time. 

You see, lots of marketers get caught because they buy a bunch of cheap links in bulk and make them go live all at once. 

This is a surefire way to get in trouble. 

Instead, you should buy the backlinks that you need, but only release one or two at a time, and let several days (or weeks) pass in between. That will make it appear like you earned the backlinks instead of buying them, which is what you want. 

Monitoring Your Progress 

Now that you have plenty of ways to build backlinks, all that’s left is to monitor your progress to ensure you’re on track to meet your goals. 

Your best friends for tracking your progress are:

1. Google Analytics (GA)
2. Google Search Console (GSC)

Ahrefs is also invaluable if you have a paid subscription to it. This is because you can set up Ahrefs Alerts, which is a notification system that will email you every time you pick up a new backlink. 

The Links report in GSC will let you view your complete backlink profile (the way Google sees it). 

On Google Analytics, navigate to Report > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition. Here, you’ll get to see a breakdown of your most popular traffic channels. In particular, pay attention to how well your referral traffic is doing, as that’s the traffic that will come from your backlinks. 

Lastly, keep an eye on your keyword position rankings in GSC. If your backlinks are doing their duty, you should start to see an improvement to your rankings. If things remain stagnant, it could mean that you A) need to rethink your link-building strategy or B) something else with your SEO is off (such as the quality of your content). 

Master the Link-Building Process for Your Law Firm 

This has been a mammoth guide, so let’s briefly recap the main points:

1. Backlinks are a major ranking factor on search engines like Google. 
2. High-quality backlinks come from relevant, authoritative websites. 
3. Adding backlinks to legal directories and forum comments helps diversify your link profile. 
4. Conducting outreach to target guest posts, unlinked brand mentions, and broken links are some of the most popular ways to build backlinks. 
5. Buying backlinks is risky but can be worth it when done properly. 
6. It’s crucial to monitor your progress to ensure you’re meeting your SEO goals. 

Now that you know what to do, get out there and start building some high-authority backlinks for your law firm! 

Would you rather that we handle your link-building instead?

We’d love that, as HOTH X is our fully managed SEO service where we devise a complete strategy for your law firm (including link-building). Our experts know how to generate backlinks that deliver outstanding results, so don’t wait to reach out for a free consultation today!     

The post Advanced Link Building for Lawyers: Tips and Insider Secrets appeared first on The HOTH.

In other words, what does a user hope to achieve by searching for a keyword related to your business?

It could be they want to:

1. Find information (informational intent) 
2. Find a specific website or web page (navigational intent) 
3. Research products (commercial intent) 
4. Make a purchase right away (transactional intent) 

These are the four main types of search intent, and they happen to align with the stages of your sales funnel. Informational and navigational queries are at the top of the funnel (TOFU) because users are just learning about a new topic and aren’t ready to make a purchase yet. 

Conversely, commercial and transactional queries are at the bottom of your sales funnel (BOFU), which makes them high-intent keywords. 

They go by this cool name because these types of keywords represent users who are likely to convert or will be easy to convert into customers. 

In this article, we’ll teach you how to use high-intent keywords in your SEO strategy, so stay tuned to learn how to boost your conversion rates! 

What is Search Intent?

Search intent refers to the ‘why’ behind a keyword a user enters into Google. The user’s search intent is the underlying purpose behind their search, such as to find a product or learn more information about a subject. 

Satisfying the search intent behind the keywords you target is one of the most crucial aspects of SEO. 

Why’s that?

It all comes down to providing what a user wants to find online. 

For instance, let’s say a user searches for ‘affordable gardening tools’ on Google. This keyword has commercial intent because it’s clear the user wants to find gardening tools in their price range to eventually make a purchase. 

The #1-ranked organic result they see is a blog on your website called ‘The Most Affordable Gardening Tools for Beginners,’ and they click through to the page. It’s a helpful buyer’s guide comparing gardening tools from numerous vendors online, which is exactly what they were looking for. 

In this scenario, you successfully satisfied the user’s search intent, fostering brand loyalty and maybe even landing a conversion (if you carefully position your gardening tools as affordable and high-quality without being too pushy). 

If, instead, your blog post doesn’t compare affordable gardening tools and tries to hard sell the reader on one of your expensive products, you won’t satisfy their intent, and they’ll likely click off your page in frustration. 

Failing to satisfy your audience’s search intent can lead to:

1. Poor search rankings 
2. Low levels of engagement 
3. Missed conversion opportunities 
4. A negative reputation 

Even with flawless on-page and technical SEO factors, your entire strategy will fall apart if you don’t properly interpret the search intent behind the keywords you target. That’s why understanding search intent is a must for any search engine marketer (SEM). 

The 4 Different Types of Search Intent 

Most search terms fit into one of four categories of intent, which are informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. 

Here’s a table breaking down each type of intent using variations of the keyword ‘biotin.’ 

As you can see, each type of intent has specific types of content that cater to them, which is the key to mastering search intent. 

For your informational queries, you’ll want to hit them with educational articles, guides, FAQs, and how-to’s. These materials will inform and educate your readers, establishing your brand as an authority and earning the trust of your audience.

Commercial intent means users are considering making a purchase, but need more information first. Buying guides, product reviews, and comparison articles are all perfect ways to scratch the commercial itch. 

Lastly, if the intent is transactional, it means the user is ready to buy something right then and there. 

You should optimize your landing and product pages for these keywords, as well as pricing pages since these are the areas where transactions happen. 

The ultimate search intent hack 

Determining search intent isn’t always straightforward. While most keywords align closely with one of the four main categories (informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional), sometimes it’s unclear.

To confirm your assumptions, Google it!

Type your keyword into Google and see what pops up in the top 5 spots. Since Google’s algorithms are adept at deciphering search intent, the top-ranking pages will reflect the intent behind the keyword.

Next, assess the content. 

Are the top results mostly blog posts, product pages, review sites, or something else? 

This will clue you in on what people are really looking for.

Informational content may be suitable if your goal is brand awareness. However, if you want to make sales, you need to focus on keywords that scream, “I’m ready to buy!”  

That’s where high-intent keywords come in, and we’ll dive into those next. 

What Are High-Intent Keywords?

High-intent keywords are queries that have commercial and transactional intent, and they’re the keywords that are most likely to lead to sales. 

They also go by the name money keywords due to their high earning potential. 

Keywords that contain terms like ‘buy,’ ‘pickup,’ and ‘deliver’ indicate a strong desire to take action as soon as possible, so targeting them can connect you with customers precisely when they’re about to convert. 

As an example, the term ‘buy biotin online’ is a high-intent keyword used by users ready to purchase the supplement Biotin from an E-commerce store. 

Here are its top Google results:

As you can see, the keyword is undoubtedly transactional since it triggered Google’s Shopping Carousel, a feature that lists products related to the search. 

It’s a feature that only appears for transactional keywords, and the rest of the organic results are all product pages for Biotin supplements, which further proves our point. 

On the other side of the coin, informational and navigational queries are low-intent keywords. The difference has to do with their place in the sales funnel. Since informational and navigational keywords are at the top of the funnel, users are a long way from converting. 

They’ll require ‘nurturing’ via helpful content and informative emails, something which can take a long time. 

Does this mean that you should ditch low-intent keywords altogether?

Absolutely not! 

While they don’t lead to direct purchases, low-intent keywords are still incredibly important for:

1. Generating new leads 
2. Establishing your brand as a thought leader 
3. Building trust with new prospects 

Therefore, you need low-intent content just as much as you do high-intent, so don’t let the name fool you. 

Having said that, the better you are at targeting high-intent keywords, the better you’ll be at boosting sales, so let’s learn how to find them. 

How to Find High-Intent Keywords in Your Niche 

First, you need to know how to consistently discover high-intent keywords to target that A) are relevant to your niche and B) are possible to rank #1 on Google. 

There are several ways to hunt down these types of keywords, including the following methods:

• Understanding your buyer’s journey
• Using a keyword research tool 
• Analyzing competitor keywords, 
• ‘Seed’ keywords 

Let’s learn more about each method so you can find the one that works best for you. 

Understand your audience and their journey 

One of the best ways to nail search intent every time is to have an intimate understanding of your target audience. 

If you know what makes them tick, it’ll become way easier to understand the type of content they want to consume. This means you should do some serious research into your audience’s demographics, preferences, and pain points (i.e., what challenges do they face that your products and services can solve?). 

Try roleplaying as one of your potential customers. 

What information would you search for to learn more about your business? What problems are you trying to solve by searching for your products? 

Also, reach out to your sales team to learn more about how you’re currently acquiring customers. In particular, ask them for specifics about why customers choose you over your competitors. It could be that you offer better prices, higher-quality products, or a million other factors. 

The point is that once you know the main reason why customers choose your brand, you’ll be able to harp on that fact in your promotional materials. 

Identify high-intent keywords with research tools 

Our free keyword research tool is perfect for uncovering high-intent keywords. 

All you need to do is enter a general topic or keyword, and the tool will generate tons of results in seconds. 

Let’s try it out with the keyword we mentioned earlier, biotin. 

After entering the query into the tool, 50 results load for us (with the option to view more). 

Each keyword contains its search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC (cost-per-click), and, most importantly, search intent. 

Our tool provides tiny icons reflecting a keyword’s search intent as an easy visual cue for users. The small i encased in a blue circle means the keyword has informational intent. The tiny skyscraper means the keyword has commercial or navigational intent. 

In the example provided, ‘biotin for hair’ and ‘biotin for hair growth’ are both high-intent keywords and the rest are informational. 

This means you could target either keyword for transactional content like product pages and buyer’s guides to boost your conversions. 

Don’t forget about long-tail keywords 

You should also look for long-tail keywords with high-intent. 

A long-tail keyword is a search phrase that doesn’t have much search volume and tends to contain specific phrases and question-based queries. 

Most commonly, long-tail keywords are long strings of phrases related to a topic, such as ‘who has the most affordable Biotin online.’ 

Some search engine marketers mistakenly think that since long-tail keywords don’t have much search volume (they tend to receive only a handful of searches per month) they aren’t worth targeting. 

This isn’t true, as research shows that long-tail keywords have higher conversion rates than short-tail keywords. The average conversion rate for a long-tail keyword is a whopping 36%, while the strongest landing pages only convert at 11.45%.  

You should target long-tail keywords that contain:

• Specific phrases: The more specific a long-tail keyword is, the more likely it’ll be to land a conversion. For example, ‘buy biotin online’ shows higher intent than just ‘biotin.’
• Question-based queries: Keywords in the form of questions (e.g., ‘where to buy biotin’) often indicate a user closer to making a decision.

That’s how easy it is to identify high-intent keywords using our free tool, so don’t hesitate to put it to work for you. 

Researching competitors 

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool is extremely helpful for uncovering your competitor’s high-intent keywords. 

Here’s how it works.

Once you enter your competitor’s URL, select either the Top Pages or Organic Keywords reports. To find keywords with the highest intent, try adding the following modifiers to the reports:

• Best
• Review 
• Comparison
• Alternative
• Vs
• Top 

These modifiers all suggest high intent, so they should quickly uncover high-intent keywords the site currently ranks for on Google. 

From there, pay attention to the search volume and keyword difficulty for each query to ensure it’s feasible to rank for it. Also, pay attention to the content they create for each high-intent keyword, as it can help you spark your own ideas. 

Secondly, you should analyze their content to see what you’re up against. 

If you want to stand a chance at outranking their content, you’ll need to outdo them by a significant margin. 

That means adding high-resolution product images and videos, glowing reviews, and answering frequently asked questions. If your content satisfies the search intent better than the original post, you stand the best chance of outranking it. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide for using Ahrefs to research competitors. 

Step #1: Analyze the competitor’s domain 

1. Log in to Ahrefs. Go to Site Explorer and enter the URL of one of your competitors in the search bar.

2. This will take you to the Overview page where you will see a screenshot of your competitor’s SEO performance, including organic traffic, backlinks, and top-performing pages.

Step #2: Find competitor keywords

3. Click on the Organic Search tab in the left-hand menu to dive deeper into their organic keyword data.

4. In the Organic Search section, click on Top Pages. This will show you the pages on your competitor’s site that get the most traffic. By analyzing these pages, you can see which keywords are driving traffic to them.

5. Alternatively, click on Organic Keywords to see a list of keywords your competitor ranks for. This includes the keyword, its search volume, the position your competitor ranks at, and the estimated traffic it brings to their site.

Step #3: Filter and analyze keywords

6. Use the position filter to see keywords where your competitor ranks in the top positions (1-10). These are high-value keywords.

7. Identify keywords with high search volumes but manageable competition (KD means keyword difficulty score).

8. Review the list of keywords and select those that are most relevant to your business and have the potential to drive traffic. You can also download the keyword data as a CSV file. 

What Happens If You Can’t Find High Intent Keywords?

It’s possible that you may not find high-intent keywords if you operate in a very niche industry, are targeting a new or emerging product/service, or have exhausted the most obvious options. 

If that’s the case, here are some alternative strategies to explore:

Expand your keyword scope

It could be that you aren’t being broad enough with the keywords you target. Here are some suggestions for broadening your horizons:

• Consider informational keywords. As stated before, low-intent keywords are equally as important as high-intent keywords. They build brand awareness, generate leads, and establish your brand as a reliable source of information. 
• Use broader keywords: Start with more general terms and see what variations or related phrases people are searching for.
• Look for alternative modifiers: Instead of “buy,” try “compare,” “review,” “alternative,” “best,” “top,” “vs,” or even question-based modifiers like “how to” or “where to buy.”

Use Google autocomplete 

Google’s autocomplete feature has long been a secret weapon for keyword research. Here’s how to use it: 

• Start typing relevant keywords into Google and see what suggestions it offers. These aren’t random suggestions, they’re real keywords that users search for every day. 
• Look at the “Related searches” section at the bottom of the SERP for more ideas, as these are also real keywords.
• These features can reveal how people actually search and give you clues for keyword variations, which can help you crack your audience’s search intent code.

Leverage your existing data

You can use your internal data to discover high-intent keywords, like: 

• Google Search Console (GSC): See which queries are already bringing traffic to your site and identify potential high-intent variations or expansions. If you’re new to GSC, check out our guide on the platform. 
• Google Analytics (GA): Check which keywords drive conversions or engagement on your site, and explore similar terms. 

Look beyond search engines

You don’t have to stick with search engines like Google to find high-intent keywords. You can also leverage:

• Social Listening: Monitor social media conversations to see what language your target audience uses when discussing products or services like yours. Tools like Hootsuite are perfect for this. 
• Forums and Communities: Engage in online communities related to your niche and observe the discussions to gather insights. Reddit is a great place to start, but don’t stray away from more niche forums, either. 

Concluding Thoughts: High-Intent Keywords 

High-intent keywords are a massively powerful tool for converting organic traffic into paying customers. They signal a user’s readiness to buy, making them the golden ticket to higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

By mastering the art of finding and targeting high-intent keywords through effective keyword research and strategic content creation, you’ll attract qualified leads and skyrocket your sales. Remember, it’s not just about traffic – it’s about attracting the right traffic.

Are you overwhelmed by SEO or aren’t sure where to start?

HOTH X, our fully managed SEO service, is the ultimate solution. Our expert team will take the entire process off your hands, all while boosting your visibility and driving bottom-line results. 

Don’t miss out on this opportunity! Schedule a call today and let us transform your SEO into a sales powerhouse.   

The post High-Intent Keywords: How to Target Them for Increased Conversion Rates  appeared first on The HOTH.

What’s that?

It’s a search feature where generative AI summarizes queries at the top of the results page. If you’ve done any Googling since May, you’ve likely seen one of these appear:

As you can see, the AI Overview provides a brief summary of the search term, followed by a more in-depth explanation and the three search results that it got the information from. 

The AI Overview feature is a rethinking of the previously planned Search Generative Experience (SGE), something that had SEOs shaking in their boots since its announcement back in 2023.

We were among those concerned, as we published several articles speculating what SGE would mean for the future of SEO at the beginning of 2024. It was an uncertain time because it wasn’t clear how the introduction of generative AI technology would affect search engine marketing (SEM). 

In particular, the main fear was that generative AI would steal lots of organic traffic away from publishers. 

Well, AI Overviews have been live for a few months now, so what’s the verdict?

Was generative AI in search the death of SEO?

Not at all. 

In fact, the results are in line with the predictions we made at the beginning of the year: that continuing to optimize for page one is still the way to go. 

In this article, we’ll break down how AI Overviews work, what their impact on SEO has been so far, and what you can do to optimize for the best results – so stay tuned! 

What Are AI Overviews and How Do They Work?

An AI Overview is a concise summary of a search query generated by an artificial intelligence. 

At face value, an AI Overview’s purpose is to A) provide quick and easy answers to simple queries and B) make it easy for users to find the most trusted and relevant search results. 

However, AI Overviews stretch beyond answering simple queries. 

Overviews can take on many forms, including snippets, short articles, lists, and more. At times, users will have the option to ask follow-up questions, and you can do things like plan trip itineraries straight from the Overview tab. 

The most common type of AI Overview is definitely the short article summary, which tends to pop up for informational queries the most (more on this in a bit). 

Here’s what it looks like:

Notice that the top of the Overview contains the highlighted summary. This is the part of the feature that answers the primary question the keyword poses (such as ‘what is a guitar?’) and is the most succinct. 

Beneath that, the user gets to learn some brief facts about guitars presented in a short article format. 

On the right-hand side are the featured search results the AI used to generate the summary. These are called link cards:

They’re hyperlinked, so users will get directed to the page in question for further reading if they click on the card. 

Since AI Overviews tend to appear at the very top of page one (sometimes they appear beneath paid ads), getting featured in a link card is a powerful position to hold. 

In fact, Google claims there’s evidence that link cards generate higher click-through rates than traditional results. This would make sense, as these three links stand head and shoulders above the organic search results. 

As SEOs already know, users will almost always click on the results that appear at the top of the page due to:

1. The convenience
2. The perceived superiority of the top-ranked results 

So, it goes without saying that getting your website’s content at the tip-top of page one on Google is a good thing. 

What’s the secret to getting featured in AI Overview link cards?

Since it’s clear that getting cited in a link card is a valuable position for SEO, how do you optimize for it?

Well, if you recall the articles we wrote at the beginning of 2024 during the height of the SGE Scare (that’s what we’re calling it), we claimed that your best course of action was to continue to implement SEO best practices to try and rank on page one. 

Like many other things about digital marketing and SEO, we were correct. 

It’s already been discovered that high-ranking organic search results are far more likely to appear as link cards in AI Overviews. 

According to research, the #1-ranked organic result has a 55% greater chance to appear as a link card than the #2 results, and this trend continues for each succeeding position. 

This means if you’re already implementing SEO best practices in your content, the best thing you can do is maintain the status quo. 

SEO strategies to help rank at the top of page one 

If you’re a seasoned SEO, feel free to skip this section. For newcomers, solid SEO strategies to rank on page one include:

• Conducting thorough keyword research. If you want to generate lots of traffic, then you need to create what your audience wants. The #1 way to do that is to research the keywords your audience searches for the most. Our free keyword planner tool is a huge help with this process, as it will tell you everything you need to know about any given keyword (and will provide lots of solid recommendations). Look for keywords with a high search volume, low keyword difficulty score, and an upward trend. 

• Creating thought-leader-worthy content. Once you have a list of trending terms that your audiences search for online, it’s time to create content specifically tailored for them. This means writing informative blogs, shooting helpful videos, and designing appealing infographics to draw your audience to your website. 

• Building backlinks from high-quality, relevant websites. Backlinks are a top ranking factor on Google. A backlink is a link on an external website that ‘points back’ to yours, and it acts as an endorsement of your content’s quality. It’s the equivalent of a reference on a job resume. To rank higher on Google, you need a healthy backlink profile, which means engaging in link-building. 

While these are the basics of any SEO campaign, they’re all effective at ranking on page one and thus, they’ll help you get cited in more link cards. 

The Impact of AI Overviews So Far 

Okay, now that you know how AI Overviews operate, how have they been impacting SEO thus far?

The answer is not a whole lot. 

In fact, ever since rolling out AI Overviews in May, Google appears to be scaling back on them exponentially. They now appear for fewer searches than ever before, standing at a meager 1.28%:

The reasons for this vary, although the AI Overview feature’s rocky start likely has something to do with it. 

Shortly after the feature debuted, the internet was ablaze with humorous inaccuracies, hallucinations, and bizarre suggestions. 

Just to name a few, Google’s AI recommended that users put glue on pizza to help the cheese stick to the dough. In another instance, the Overview encouraged a user to eat rocks. 

These stories went extremely viral, which didn’t help the search feature’s reputation. 

Besides the rough start, generative AI responses take lots of energy and resources, which may have contributed to Google’s decision to cut back on AI Overviews. 

At the moment, Overviews most commonly appear for informational queries. 

According to research, 96.5% of all AI Overviews appear for informational keywords. This means very few Overviews will pop up for transactional, navigational, and local searches. 

Why is that?

First, informational queries tend to be where AI Overviews are the most helpful. If what you’re after is information (such as the answer to a question), then having an AI Overview provide you with a concise summary of your search query is extremely useful. 

Next, it could be that Google wants to avoid YMYL (your money, your life) keywords to avoid potential lawsuits due to inaccurate or harmful AI Overviews. YMYL is Google’s acronym that represents any website that could potentially impact your health, well-being, or finances. 

YMYL content requires a higher level of expertise than regular content, and inaccurate information can cause users to lose money, their sanity, or their lives. 

Do AI Overviews cause websites to lose traffic?

Before AI Overviews launched, it was predicted that they’d cause a pretty significant drop in organic traffic for virtually every website. 

This was especially true back when it was called SGE (which had far more robust features planned), which is why SEOs were preparing for the apocalypse in late 2023. 

So, were the urban legends true? Did AI Overviews cause a unanimous loss in organic traffic?

Once again, the answer is complicated and a bit underwhelming. 

Research found that when a website was featured in an AI Overview, it experienced an 8.9% drop in organic traffic. If the domain wasn’t listed in a link card in the AI Overview, it was a 2.6% loss in traffic. 

While this may seem alarming at first glance, this impact is actually minuscule. 

Back when we were stocking our SGE bunkers, we predicted that every website would lose 25% of its organic traffic, which is far more severe. 

Even then, we calculated that the traffic loss would be from low-value traffic that wasn’t going to convert anyway. 

We predicted that with a rock-solid on-page SEO strategy and a robust backlink profile, websites could still thrive on search engines by ranking in the #1 spot for queries with no AI Overview and appearing as link cards for queries that do. 

Now that AI Overviews are here, our advice hasn’t changed. 

Also, now that AI Overviews appear for fewer and fewer keywords, you shouldn’t lose much sleep over them. That’s not to say they can’t be a helpful tool when leveraged properly, it’s just that they aren’t the end of the SEM world as we know it. 

New AI Overview Features 

While the impact of AI Overviews is waning, Google still has new features on the horizon planned for it. 

Also, they recently introduced AI Overviews to six new countries. On August 15th, 2024, Google released a statement on its blog that they were bringing AI Overviews to Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and Britain. 

Around the same time, Google added a new feature to AI Overviews and began experimenting with a few others, so let’s take a look at them. 

More hyperlinks included in AI Overviews (no longer just three citations) 

When the feature was originally launched, Overviews only contained three search results, which were the citations the AI used to generate its summaries. 

That changed in August of this year, as AI Overviews now include more hyperlinks contained within the summaries. 

Let’s take a look at how these links appear using the example listed before:

Next to each sentence in the mini-article, there are hyperlink buttons that you can click on. Here’s what happens when you select one of them:

Clicking on the hyperlink button next to the Origin sentence brings up a new link card with a search result we can click on. 

This new feature is great news for SEOs because it means more search results will appear in AI Overviews (assuming users click on the tiny hyperlink buttons). 

So, instead of three results hogging all the glory, now more websites get to join in on the AI Overview fun. 

AI Overviews with links embedded in the text 

This feature is still in the experimental phase so it hasn’t launched yet. However, Google plans on eventually ditching the tiny hyperlink buttons (thank goodness) in favor of hyperlinking the text inside Overviews instead. 

This will make it a lot easier for users to click on other links inside the Overview, heightening the chances that other sites will be able to generate traffic from the feature. 

For now, SEOs will have to stick with getting their content featured in A) the initial three link cards or B) the hyperlink buttons listed alongside the text. 

Leveraging AI Overviews in Your Favor 

To recap, AI Overviews have had a marginal impact on search engine marketing at best. 

This is by no means bad news, as the introduction of generative AI to search engines had the potential to wreak havoc on every website’s organic traffic. 

So far, that hasn’t been the case, as AI Overviews are largely reserved for vague informational queries. 

This means your money keywords (that have transactional and commercial intent) will remain largely untouched. 

Also, targeting link cards in AI Overviews can help you generate traffic and raise brand awareness, so there’s no reason not to embrace them for your informational content. 

Do you need help forming a winning SEO strategy in the age of generative AI?

HOTH X, our fully managed service, is where we completely take the reins over your SEO strategy. You’ll get to sit back and watch the traffic roll in, so don’t wait to sign up now! 

If you’d like to discuss your SEO options in more detail, feel free to book a free SEO consultation.   

The post What’s the Deal with AI Overviews? How Do They Impact SEO? appeared first on The HOTH.

It was a huge win for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which has filed several tech monopoly lawsuits in recent years (Amazon, Meta, and Apple are also on the chopping block). 

Mehta claimed that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, a law that prohibits restricting competition in the marketplace. 

What was the court’s proof?

Their main area of focus was Google’s billion-dollar exclusivity deals with web browsers and smartphone manufacturers. 

The court also agreed with the DOJ that Google has a monopoly on search text advertising, and that the company artificially raises ad auction prices due to no ‘competitive constraint.’ 

Okay, now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s address the elephant in the room. 

What does this mean for SEO?

It’s unclear at the moment since the ruling dealt with Google’s liability and not remedies. A second trial will take place that will propose potential fixes to the problem, which may mean the dissolution of Alphabet (Google’s parent company). 

However, the ‘remedy’ phase may not take place until next year (or even 2026). 

In the meantime, Google plans to appeal Judge Mehta’s ruling. They feel that they haven’t maintained a monopoly and that their massive popularity is because they offer the best product on the market. 

What’s next? Will Google pull out a ‘get out of jail free’ card?

Stay tuned to learn more. 

Trust Busting is Back in Style: An Overview of Google’s Trial 

The court’s ruling comes after a 10-week trial that took place last fall. 

Throughout the trial, Google remained adamant that its actions were not anti-competitive. They also disputed the court’s comparison to other players in the search engine market, such as DuckDuckGo and Bing. 

To Google, they should be compared with major players where search is a major component, even if they don’t index the web. The example they provided is Amazon since the e-commerce giant has a robust search engine. 

Ironically, Amazon has a pending antitrust lawsuit with the DOJ, too, claiming it’s maintained a monopoly over the e-commerce market. 

Currently, Google accounts for 91.04% of the search engine market share, with its closest competitor (Bing) only maintaining a mere 3.86%. 

Mobile is even worse, with Google holding 95% of the market share. 

Such numbers don’t bode well when making the case that Google ISN’T a monopoly, which is something Mehta took notice of. 

He commented, “If there is genuine competition in the market for general search, it has not manifested itself in familiar ways, such as fluid market shares, lost business, or new entrants.”

He also noted that Google’s monopoly has been ‘remarkably durable’ since its grip on the market grew from 80% in 2009 to 90% in 2020. 

As stated before, this ruling only deals with Google’s liabilities, as the remedy phase has yet to take place. However, Google’s next antitrust trial with the DOJ begins on September 9th, and deals with its ad tech business. 

The Specifics: Billion Dollar Exclusivity Deals and Inflated Ad Auction Prices 

For a company to violate Section 2 of the Sherman Act, it must take intentional steps to eliminate competition within its respective markets. 

In the case of Google, Judge Mehta honed in on its billion-dollar exclusivity deals with major smartphone manufacturers and web browsers. 

How does this restrict competition?

The court claims it does because these deals make Google the default search engine on these wildly popular platforms, and the price tags are too large for anyone else to compete. 

For example, it was revealed in the case that Google pays Apple $20 billion each year to maintain its search engine as the default on iPhones and other Apple products. 

That’s not to mention Google’s exclusive deals with Samsung and popular web browsers like Mozilla Firefox. 

Not only do these deals ensure Google is the default search engine on popular devices, but they also keep competitors out due to Google’s deep pockets. 

For instance, let’s say you’re a newcomer in the search engine market, and you want to gain traction by striking an exclusivity deal with a phone manufacturer. Well, if you want your search engine to appear on Android or Apple phones, you’ll need about $30 billion (or more). 

That’s not exactly feasible for new entrants in the market, which is why the case came about in the first place. 

Mehta noted in his ruling that, “the default is extremely valuable real estate,” and that new players can only compete if they are willing to, “pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share.”

As far as text-based search ads, the court claimed Google’s exclusivity details provided it with a noticeable lack of competition. As a result, the company was free to artificially inflate ad auction prices since advertisers had no other options. 

Google attempted to rebuke this claim by providing evidence that their ad auction pricing has decreased over time, but Mehta said the evidence was ‘weak.’ 

He also notes that, “This evidence does not reflect a principled practice of quality-adjusted pricing, but rather shows Google creating higher-priced auctions with the primary purpose of driving long-term revenues.”

Actions Digital Marketers Should Take Next 

While the ruling paves the way for more trials down the line (i.e., the remedy phase), the future remains uncertain. 

Google will almost certainly appeal the court’s ruling, and it’s unclear what the results may be. 

Still, there’s no harm in getting prepared. 

If you haven’t already, consider expanding your SEO strategy to include Bing. 

This is because it will likely see a large uptick in market share if the remedy phase leads to the dissolution of Google’s parent company, Alphabet (which is a real possibility). 

In the meantime, Google SEO best practices still remain in place, and there’s much traffic to be generated before the next trial, so there’s no need to change anything just yet. 

Do you need help forming a comprehensive SEO strategy for your business?

HOTH X, our managed SEO service, is your ticket to simplified SEO success, so don’t wait to try it out.     

The post Google Declared a Monopoly by U.S. Judge: SEO Implications appeared first on The HOTH.

That’s right; pagination has returned to Google’s search results. 

On June 25th, 2024, Google put an end to its ‘continuous scroll’ feature and brought back the O.G. page-style results. 

Is this a reason to celebrate, or is it yet another Google UX change that will bring SEOs pain?

Only time will tell, but so far, it seems to be a double-edged sword. 

The upside of continuous scroll was that it improved visibility for web pages ranked outside of page one. Instead of having to click through to a new page, users could simply scroll down the page to view additional results. 

In a sense, everyone was on page one with the continuous scroll feature. 

Sadly, that is no more. 

Now that the old-school pagination system is back, ranking on page #1 is more important than ever. Page 1 accounts for 91.5% of all traffic on Google, which is where this classic joke comes from: 

Speaking of which, that joke is fair game again, which is a plus. 

Jokes aside, there’s a lot of speculation surrounding Google’s sudden decision to ditch continuous scroll. They claim it’s to serve search results faster, but is there more than meets the eye?

Stay tuned to find out how this change will affect your organic traffic. 

Continuous Search Results: A Short-Lived Feature 

Remembering the original page system isn’t too difficult since continuous scrolling only lasted for a year and a half on desktop.

Google implemented continuous scroll for mobile search in October 2021, and the feature landed on desktops in December 2022. 

At the time, Google claimed the change was to enhance its user experience – which, ironically, is the same reason they cited for removing it. 

Here’s what a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land back when the feature first launched in 2022:

“Starting today, we’re bringing continuous scrolling to desktop so you can continue to see more helpful search results with fewer clicks. It’s now even easier to get inspired with more information at your fingertips.”

At the time, infinite scrolling was (and still is) all the rage on social media, especially on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. 

It’s important to note that the feature wasn’t a true ‘infinite scroll,’ either. Instead, Google would load approximately 4 pages worth of search results at a time. Whenever a user reached the bottom of the page, it would buffer and load more. 

Here’s what it looked like in action:

Google was likely hoping to copy TikTok’s infinite scroll to capitalize on its popularity and provide a better user experience. However, Google now says that the feature was a failure based on data analysis. 

A Google spokesperson claimed that automatically loading more results didn’t lead to higher satisfaction levels with Search, which likely inspired the decision to get rid of it. Moreover, continuous scroll was more resource-intensive than the traditional page system. 

By returning to pagination, Google saves tech resources by not having to load 4 pages worth of search results at once. 

Can We Take Google at Face Value?

Ever since Google removed continuous scroll, the SEO world has been abuzz with speculation about why they decided to nix the feature. 

Google is famous for stretching the truth when it comes to their real motivations, especially when it comes to SEO and SEM. 

While the official story is that they removed continuous scroll to provide faster search results, not everyone is buying it. As we pointed out back when internal Google search documents were leaked, Google will say one thing but do something completely different behind the scenes. 

Due to their history of being less than truthful, it’s turned many SEOs into makeshift detectives (and some into tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists, but to each their own). 

Here’s a look at what some SEOs think may be the true reason for Google’s return to pagination. 

Glenn Gabe thinks it might have something to do with the recently introduced AI Overviews. 

It could be that the combination of continuous scroll paired with AI Overviews is causing Google to burn through too many resources (and putting a heavy strain on their servers). 

This would be enough of a reason to get rid of continuous scroll in order to A) save on resources and B) speed up AI Overviews. 

Conversely, Ori Zilbershtein thinks that Google genuinely spaced on this one, forgetting the lessons they learned in the past. 

Brett Tabke, founder of the Pubcon search conference (and the person who coined the acronym SERPs), had the most cynical take of the bunch. 

He believes it’s Google inching closer to phasing out organic search altogether in favor of answering every query with sponsored ads and Google property links. 

To quote Tabke:

“It effectively boxes more clicks on page one. That will result in a higher percentage of clicks going to Ads and Google properties. I think it is more evidence that Google is on a path to a new version of portal and away from search. 

Organic search itself will move to page 2, and I believe eventually to a new domain.”

While this is certainly a terrifying prospect, it’s still possible that Google made the change simply to save resources and enhance its user experience. 

What Does This Mean for Your SEO?

Now that pagination has made its grand return, what does it mean for you?

It means you need to double-down on your SEO efforts to ensure keyword rankings on page one. 

Continuous scroll caused some sites to see more organic traffic due to user choice fatigue, but that luxury is over now. 

This means a return to the old days of fighting tooth-and-nail over the #1 spot for crucial industry and long-tail keywords. 

If your content was ranking further down page one with continuous scroll, you’ll now appear on page 2 and beyond, which will likely cause significant dips in traffic. 

If you want to rank on page one, you’ll need:

• Thought leader-worthy content (and a lot of it!) 
• Backlinks from trusted websites in your field 
• Flawless on-page and technical SEO 
• Smart keyword research to identify the most promising content opportunities 

That’s a lot to keep up with, especially for smaller websites that don’t have in-house SEO experts. Moving forward, site owners will need to up their SEO game to remain competitive. 

Do you need help improving your search rankings to appear on page one?

If so, you need HOTH X, our managed SEO service. We’ll take the entire process off your hands to get you to page one (and done)!   

The post Google Ends Continuous Scroll: How Will it Impact Your SEO? appeared first on The HOTH.

On May 5th, Moz founder Rand Fishkin received an email from an anonymous source (now confirmed) containing thousands of documents leaked from Google Search’s Content Warehouse API. 

These documents spill the beans on more than 14,000 internal ranking features, which is a HUGE deal for the SEO world. 

For decades, we could only speculate how Google’s algorithms work, mainly going off the results achieved through experimentation and our work with clients. 

As any SEO can tell you, there’s always been a notable discrepancy between the results achieved through SEO strategy and Google’s public claims about what works. 

For example, last year, we wrote about Gary Illyes’ claim that ‘links weren’t a top 3 ranking factor’ and how the statement directly conflicted with the results we generated for our clients. 

What’s truly interesting about these leaked documents is how they vindicate what dedicated SEOs like us knew all along about things like backlinks, clicks, and domain authority. 

There’s a lot to go over here, so stay tuned to learn the stuff Google doesn’t want you to know. 

How Did the Leak Happen?

The leak is surprising considering how much emphasis Google placed on keeping its search ranking systems a secret. 

So what happened?

The documents first appeared on March 13th on the developer platform GitHub. They were accidentally placed there by an automated bot named Yoshi-code-bot (it’s still not entirely clear how this happened, but apparently, the bot mistakenly uploaded the internal version of the deprecated Document AI Warehouse). 

The documents were then emailed to Rand Fishkin on May 5th from an anonymous source, now revealed to be SEO practitioner Erfan Azimi. 

Azimi reached out to Fishkin in the hopes that he would publish an article sharing the leak with the public to refute notable ‘lies’ spread by Google. 

Naturally, Fishkin had his suspicions and went to great lengths to confirm the validity of the leaked documents. He shared them with Mike King, founder of iPullRank, who claimed the documents appeared to be legitimate and that they were from Google’s internal search division (a number of other Google insiders backed up this claim). 

So, what do the documents have to say about Google Search?

While we can’t dive into all 14,000 ranking systems, let’s take a look at the most notable findings. 

Yes, Backlinks DO Matter 

Google has been downplaying the importance of backlinks for a while now, likely in hopes of deterring would-be spammers (which is probably the reason behind all their untruthfulness). 

Yet, as we at The HOTH knew from our work, backlinks move the SEO needle. 

Documentation from the leak proves this, as Google’s PageRank algorithm is very much alive and well. In fact, every document has its homepage PageRank associated with it.  

This likely serves as a proxy for web pages that don’t have a PageRank yet, which reinforces the importance of backlinks. In other words, backlinks are considered for the ranking of every single web page!

Also, link quality and relevance matters, as the algorithm checks for relevance on both sides. 

Once again, we don’t have any data on how backlinks are weighted in comparison to other ranking factors, but this is quite vindicating for us link-builders. 

Here are some other interesting findings related to backlinks. 

Indexing Tier is Related to Link Value 

A metric called sourceType correlates the quality of a link to its indexing tier.

Google’s index is broken into high, medium, and low-quality tiers. 

Web pages in the highest tier are high-quality, frequently visited, and regularly updated websites that get stored in flash memory. 

Quality sites that are deemed less important and aren’t updated as often get stored on solid-state drives (medium tier), and low-quality sites that are rarely updated are stored on standard hard drives. 

This means that you want to target backlinks from websites in the highest index tier – which are trusted websites that publish accurate, up-to-date information (which are exactly the types of websites we’ve been telling marketers to target in our articles). 

Link Spam Velocity Signals (Spammy Anchor Text) 

Another thing we frequently preach is to have a balanced anchor text ratio, and this confirms that we were correct. 

According to the documents, Google has a whole host of metrics they use to measure spikes in anchor text spam. 

Note the first metric, phraseAnchorSpamCount, which says, “How many spam phrases are found in the anchors among unique domains.” This refers to exact-match anchors, which are typically a company’s ‘money’ keywords.

These metrics also demonstrate how Google identifies and devalues negative SEO attacks. 

Google Measures ‘Domain Authority’

Moz’s Domain Authority is one of the most popular metrics for determining the ranking strength of a domain, and SEOs have used it religiously for years. 

There’s also Ahrefs Domain Rating, which provides a similar metric. 

However, they were always viewed as ‘third-party metrics’ that had nothing to do with Google’s actual algorithm. Also, Google employees always claimed they had no ‘domain authority’ metric (we’re looking at you, John Mueller). 

The truth is Google has a metric called siteAuthority that it computes for every website, so we can finally put that issue to rest. 

Font Size Matters for Keywords and Backlinks 

This one was actually really surprising because it’s an ancient SEO technique that apparently has merit. 

In the early days of SEO, optimizers would bold, underline, and increase the font size of keywords to make them stand out. 

It definitely seems like something Google would have devalued by now, but evidently, this isn’t the case. 

The avgTermWeight metric tracks the average weighted font size for keywords, and the same is true for backlink anchor text. 

Content Demotions 

The documentation revealed numerous ways that Google’s algorithm can demote content in its search rankings, which include:

• When a link doesn’t match the site it links to (Google checks for relevance on both sides) 
• If SERP signals indicate user dissatisfaction (it’s integral to provide a stellar user experience) 
• Exact match domains (once again, it’s not wise to use too many exact match anchors) 
• If you receive a large number of negative product reviews 
• If there’s porn on your website 

These demotions prove Google’s dedication to providing a great user experience, and they reflect the importance of creating content for humans first, and search engines second. 

SEO Moving Forward 

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, it’ll be interesting to see how SEO strategies change. 

The leak is one of the biggest stories in SEO history, so the buzz is only bound to keep intensifying. Stay tuned for more updates on the topic as new developments come to light. 

If you need expert help crafting a winning SEO strategy for your business, don’t wait to check out HOTH X, our fully managed service that’ll simplify your SEO success.  

The post Breaking: Google Ranking Secrets Leaked! What Was Found? appeared first on The HOTH.

A backlink serves as a vote of confidence in your content from other websites, which signals to search engines that your content is valuable. 

You won’t be able to climb the rankings and beat out competitors unless you have an authoritative backlink profile – especially in today’s ever-changing search landscape. 

In fact, many SEO gurus assert that backlinks from high-authority sites are the #1 ranking factor that matters most, bar none.

What proof do they have that this is the case?

The #1 result on Google will have an average of 3.8x more high-authority backlinks than positions 2 – 10, according to an in-depth study by Backlinko. 

So if your SEO strategy doesn’t include going after high-quality backlinks, you’re missing out on higher rankings and more traffic. 

Read on to discover the most effective ways to target and acquire backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites in your niche.

What Are High-Authority Backlinks? 

Before we dive into high-authority backlinks, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. If you’re new to SEO, the concept of backlinks might seem a bit unclear. Here’s a quick breakdown: 

A backlink is simply a link from another website that ‘points back’ to yours. It’s created whenever you include a link to your website within content on another site. 

This could be through guest posts, directory submissions, forum comments, or any place where you can add a link.

However, not all backlinks are of equal quality, and some aren’t worth pursuing at all. 

Enter high-authority backlinks, which are links coming from relevant, authoritative websites that Google already trusts. 

These types of backlinks will have the most positive impact on your SEO, which is why it’s worth putting time and resources into pursuing them. 

Conversely, low-authority backlinks will have next-to-no impact on your rankings (neither negative nor positive). 

Also, it’s crucial not to understate the importance of relevance here. In other words, your backlinks must come from websites that hold some type of relevance to your content. 

Relevance can be:

• Direct. When a website has direct relevance to yours, it means they cover the same topics and cater to the same audience. More often than not, websites with direct relevance are your competitors, so it’s best to avoid this type of relevance whenever possible. 
• Audience-adjacent. A link is considered relevant whenever it comes from a site that shares your target audience. An example would be a construction rental company linking to a construction blog. They aren’t competing for the same business, but they do share the same audience. 
• Contextual. Some websites are only relevant to yours in context. For example, a news website wouldn’t be traditionally relevant to a construction company. Yet, if they’re running a story about construction rental businesses, the link is now contextually relevant. 

It’s super important to ensure the high-authority links you target are also relevant. Otherwise, they won’t impact your rankings at all.  

We’ll explore more about what makes a backlink authoritative (and how you can check for it) below. 

Why are backlinks a thing anyway?

The concept of backlinks goes back to Google’s beginnings. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin were brainstorming ideas for Google, they drew inspiration from a familiar concept: academic citations. 

Like research papers that gain credibility through quality citations, they envisioned websites earning authority through backlinks in a similar manner.

Think of it this way: Medical and scientific journals with numerous reputable citations carry more weight than those without. Google’s PageRank algorithm applies the same principle to websites. 

If your website boasts backlinks from high-authority sources (think government institutions, universities, and trusted companies), your own content is seen as more authoritative and trustworthy.

It’s “guilt by association” with a positive twist – instead of guilt, you earn credibility!

Recognizing the power of backlinks ignited a quest among SEO experts to acquire these valuable links. 

However, to target the right websites, they first need to understand a key question: What makes a website truly authoritative?

What’s Domain Authority?

Determining the level of authority a website has is crucial before pursuing a backlink. 

Why is that?

It’s because there are high-quality and low-quality backlinks, and low-quality backlinks won’t have any impact on your rankings. 

This means acquiring backlinks from sites that aren’t seen as authoritative or trustworthy is a waste of time, but how can you tell the difference?

Enter domain authority (DA), a metric coined by Moz used to convey a website’s authority and trust level. Websites receive a score ranging from 1 – 100, with 1 being very poor and 100 being perfect. 

While it’s not an officially recognized ranking factor by Google, Moz included many of Google’s known ranking factors into its equation. 

Since official domain authority metrics from Google aren’t available (they stopped displaying PageRank data back in 2016), third-party approximations are the next best thing. 

Besides Moz’s DA score, SEO software company Ahrefs has its Domain Rating, which is another score that rates the rankability (and overall trust level) of a website. 

You can use our free domain authority checker tool to check the DA score for any website. Enter a URL, check the CAPTCHA, and hit the button to see a site’s DA score (even your own). 

As a rule of thumb, you should check the DA score for every site you intend to pursue backlinks from to ensure they’ll positively impact your rankings. 

Typically, sites with high domain authority are along the lines of industry thought leaders, enterprise-level companies, universities, nonprofits, and government agencies. 

Here’s a quick breakdown of DA score levels:

• DA/DR scores ranging from 0 – 30 aren’t worth pursuing because they’ll have virtually no impact on your rankings. 
• DA/DR scores ranging from 30 – 60 are fair game and worth conducting outreach to pursue. 

• DA/DR scores ranging from 60 – 90 are highly authoritative and will have highly positive impacts on your rankings. This level of link-building often requires a partnership and editorial-strategy to achieve. 

• DA/DR scores 90 and above are often legacy websites that may be unattainable or too expensive (think websites like CNBC). 

A high domain authority isn’t everything

While backlinks with high domain authority scores are certainly valuable, you shouldn’t let high DA scores blind you. Here’s why:

Relevance is king

Imagine you have a website about vegan baking. A backlink from a high-authority sports website might seem impressive, but for your target audience, it carries little weight.  Search engines prioritize relevance above all else, and they’ve become extremely adept at identifying it. 

In fact, Google will simply ignore irrelevant links, despite how authoritative they may be. 

Here’s the cold, hard truth: A backlink from a niche baking blog with a moderate DA will have more of an impact on your SEO than the high-authority sports link.

That’s why you shouldn’t place your emphasis entirely on high DA scores. Instead, ensure each high DA link you pursue also has some form of relevance (see the types of relevance above). 

Don’t underestimate niche websites 

Don’t discount the potential of new websites with lower DAs. 

If a new site is producing high-quality content within your niche, it has the potential to become a major player in the future. 

Building relationships with these up-and-comers early on can pay dividends when their authority grows. If they’re actively investing in SEO (69% of companies do), then they’ll likely become authoritative sooner rather than later. 

When it comes to looking for high authority links, there are two things to keep in mind:

Focus on quality over quantity: It’s usually better to have a few high-quality, relevant backlinks than a large number of irrelevant ones. Prioritize links from websites that complement your content and resonate with your target audience.

Building long-term relationships: By focusing on building genuine relationships with website owners in your niche, you can secure valuable backlinks now and cultivate partnerships that benefit you both in the long run. Building partnerships and editorial strategies will help you snag backlinks with DA scores in the 70s and 80s. 

The takeaway: A well-rounded backlink profile should include a mix of high-authority and niche-relevant links. Prioritize quality and relevance over pure DA scores, and keep an eye out for promising new websites within your field.

The 16 Types of Backlinks 

Link-building has evolved substantially since its beginnings in the late 90s, as there are now 16 distinct types of backlinks that SEOs target. 

However, some types of links are superior to others. For instance, editorial links on relevant, authoritative websites will do more for your SEO than getting listed in a general business directory. 

Here’s a look at all 16 types of backlinks in descending order of value (i.e., the most effective backlink types are at the top of the list). 

#1: Editorial backlinks 

An editorial backlink is when a high-authority website links to one of your content pieces to support its own work. 

An example would be a website linking or embedding an infographic you created that has helpful statistics or industry information. Other ways you can obtain editorial backlinks include:

• Another website cites your content as a source for one of their posts 
• Someone vouches for the quality of your website and provides a link 
• A website chooses to include your website in a link roundup 
• Someone interviews an employee from your website and includes a link 

The best way to acquire these links is to create high-quality, data-driven content that’s valuable to your target audience. 

If you do that, other websites will start to notice and link to your web pages, essentially letting your content sell itself. That’ll make outreach a breeze; if the post is relevant enough, you won’t have to work too hard to promote it.

In fact, some of the backlinks you’ll acquire won’t involve any outreach at all. Bloggers and content creators are always on the hunt for relevant statistics, videos, and infographics to use on their websites. So, if you provide the goods, you’ll generate backlinks without having to send a single email (although following up with outreach to build a relationship is always a good idea – see below).  

#2: Relationship-based backlinks 

This type of backlink blossoms out of a relationship with another website, journalist, or content creator. 

Once they begin to link to your content more than once, it’s considered a relationship-based backlink. 

These are extremely valuable because they aren’t a one-off thing. If another content creator views you as an authoritative thought leader in your field, they’ll likely link to your content more than once, maybe even dozens of times – which is great news for your backlink profile. 

How can you establish these types of relationships?

You can by paying close attention to the editorial backlinks that you pick up. Whenever you notice that another website has linked to one of your pages, do some outreach via email or social media. 

Formally introduce yourself, and thank them for linking back to your website. From there, you can provide some additional links to your high-quality content for further reading. 

Not only that, but you should praise their blog content and offer to include a backlink on your website to their content, which is an excellent way to kickstart a mutually beneficial relationship where you both link to each other’s pages. 

If you keep this up, you’ll build a bustling network of link partners who will consistently supply you with valuable backlinks. 

#3: Guest blogging backlinks 

Another age-old tactic for acquiring backlinks is to write guest posts on other websites in exchange for a backlink. 

While guest blogging can be a reliable way to generate high-authority backlinks, you must know how to do it properly. 

Otherwise, Google could think you’re trying to game the system with spammy links. 

Most importantly, your guest posts must be relevant to your website and provide valuable content for the website you’re posting on. 

Why is that?

It has to do with Google’s rigorous quality standards for its search rankings. Google only wants to display the highest quality, most relevant results for search queries. 

If the top results suddenly become irrelevant, spam-heavy articles without any valuable information, Google will lose business, as searchers will go elsewhere. 

That’s why your guest posts must be of the utmost quality and relevancy for your target audience if you want to rise through the rankings. 

To find the most success, only establish guest post relationships with other high-quality, trustworthy websites in your niche (be sure to check their DA score with our free tool first). As long as you do that, your guest post relationships will yield many high-authority backlinks. 

#4 HARO backlinks

HARO (Help-a-Reporter-Out) is a platform that connects journalists in need of expert sources with relevant industry professionals online. 

In other words, it’s basically a backlink-generating machine. 

It works like this: several emails go out each day containing hundreds of journalist queries organized by industry (i.e., business and finance, high tech, education, etc.). Industry professionals can then browse these queries and respond to them. 

More often than not, journalists are after quotes from industry experts that they can use in their stories. 

If they choose your response, they’ll provide a link back to your website alongside your quote/resource. HARO is so valuable because it can lead to high-authority backlinks from major news outlets and reputable websites in your niche. 

That’s not to say that generating backlinks through HARO is a breeze, as there are fierce levels of competition. It’s likely for each query to receive dozens or even hundreds of replies, so your pitch needs to stand out. 

How HARO works (step-by-step)

Here’s how you can get started as an industry professional on HARO:

1. Sign up: Create a free HARO account and select the categories relevant to your expertise.
2. Receive HARO emails: You’ll get three emails daily (morning, afternoon, and evening) containing queries from journalists across various fields.
3. Scan for relevant queries: Comb through the emails to find opportunities where you can provide valuable insights.
4. Craft a compelling pitch: Respond with a concise, well-written pitch that demonstrates your expertise and directly addresses the journalist’s query.
5. Follow guidelines and deadlines: Adhere to the journalist’s specific instructions and submit your pitch promptly. Journalists will quickly ignore responses that don’t follow their guidelines (or are irrelevant), so double and triple-check the instructions and deadline. 

Tips for HARO success:

• Speed: Respond to relevant queries quickly to increase your chances of selection. As stated before, it’s normal for journalists to receive hundreds of replies, and the early bird tends to get the worm. 
• Quality: Put effort into your pitches. Proofread carefully and tailor your response precisely to the query. Also, try to think of ways that you can make your pitch unique from others. Do you have unique first-hand experiences to share or insights that other professionals don’t know about?
• Follow-up etiquette: A polite follow-up is acceptable, but avoid being pushy.

#5: Backlinks from free tools 

There’s an SEO-specific reason why we have so many free tools that anyone can use on the HOTH website.  

Besides wanting to help as many people as we can, free tools are a fantastic way to acquire high-authority backlinks naturally. 

For instance, how many website owners need to conduct keyword research and check competitor backlink profiles each day?

The answer is in the thousands.

For example, many website owners flock to our free SEO tools (the keyword planner tool and backlink tool in particular) to meet their needs. Beyond that, they also share our tools on their websites, blog posts, and social media profiles, generating loads of backlinks.

For instance, Hubspot included a link to our local SEO tool in one of their blogs, which you can see here:

Our free tools help us snag high-authority backlinks like this all the time, which is why we love them so. 

You can also incorporate this strategy on your website by providing free tools or another valuable free resource. 

To come up with a helpful tool, do some research on your audience to uncover their problems and pain points. After that, see if you can come up with a tool (or scale down a paid tool) that solves those problems. 

Next, do some outreach to high-authority websites in your field to see if they’ll link to the tool in their content (or review it).

#6: Press release backlinks 

Press releases are a classic public relations tactic and happen to work wonders for acquiring backlinks. 

If you’re rolling out a press release containing big news from your company, journalists in your niche may create posts about it and link to it. 

Even better, high-authority media outlets can report on and link to your press release, which are the cream of the crop (they’ll have a highly positive impact on your search rankings). 

Here are a few news topics that are worthy of creating a press release for:

• Launching a new product line or service
• Opening a new location 
• Making a charitable donation 
• Presenting an award you recently received 
• Highlighting achievements from your team 
• Announcing a new partnership or sponsorship with another company
• Rebranding your business with a new name or logo 

These are all subjects that are bound to generate a buzz online, so don’t hesitate to create product releases about them.

However, there’s one topic you should avoid – and that’s time-sensitive events. If your goal is to generate traffic and backlinks from a press release, then you shouldn’t mention an upcoming promotion or event. 

Why is that?

It’s because as soon as the event or promotion happens, your press release is no longer relevant, and you’ll have to take it down. 

Stick with ‘evergreen’ press release topics that don’t have expiration dates. That way, they’ll continue to generate traffic and provide link juice to your content. 

#7: General website directories 

There are plenty of website directories out there, and getting listed on them will score a backlink for you. 

In fact, backlinks from general directories are among the easiest to get. For the most part, they accept links from any type of website, regardless of the topic, industry, or even its quality. 

How valuable are they?

Outside of the major players (see below), Google doesn’t contribute much ranking power to most general directories online. Once again, it has to do with Google’s obsession with quality and relevance, which these directories largely ignore. 

That doesn’t mean you should entirely ignore general directories; it’s quite the opposite. It’s just that you shouldn’t go hog wild getting your website listed on every general directory online, as that won’t amount to much. 

Instead, focus only on the largest, most trusted website directories, such as Yelp, Yellowpages, and Local.com, as Google does value their links.

#8: Niche website directories 

Instead of getting listed on tons of general directories, you’ll find more success focusing on a handful of niche directories. 

What are those?

A niche directory contains business listings for specific industries and topics. 

They tend to be more selective and more challenging to get listed on than general directories and have a specific focus. For instance, if you sell fitness equipment, you could search for niche directories that list fitness equipment providers. 

An example would be G2, a niche directory for software companies. 

Google values niche directories far more than general directories for two reasons. 

First, they have a clear focus and target audience instead of being geared toward everyone/everything. Next, they don’t accept anyone who applies. Instead, they have higher quality standards than general directories, which is what Google wants. 

While it may be harder to find niche directories, getting listed on them will positively affect your SEO profile. 

Also, as long as the directory is relevant to your niche, you don’t have to stop at just one link to your website. If you have the content for it, you can get more pages from your website listed in the directory, which will help your SEO efforts even more. 

#9: Paid Links 

While you can pay companies, websites, and publishers for backlinks, it’s not always a good idea. 

Google views paid backlinks as a ‘black hat SEO’ tactic that aims to trick the algorithm into ranking content higher that didn’t legitimately deserve it. Paid links pose a risk as a result, as using them can lead to Google penalizing your site.

Does that mean you should NEVER pay for backlinks?

It actually doesn’t, as there are ways to pay for backlinks while avoiding scrutiny from Google. In a nutshell, the way to do it is to make the links look as natural as possible. 

That means if you do pay for links, you need to make sure that the links are from high-quality, relevant websites. Moreover, ensure the content you’re getting links for is some of your absolute best work. 

If you pay for guest posts and follow the two rules above, your paid links will likely pass as quality links – remember to make them appear as natural as possible. 

Despite all the risks because of Google’s staunch stand against paid links, paying for backlinks is a practice that’s still very much alive, and it’s not only dastardly black hat SEOs that are doing it.

How to make paid links work 

Some white-hat SEO gurus still pay for links; they just know how to make them appear natural. 

The risk is akin to speeding on the highway. Sure, you could get pulled over for a ticket, but there’s no denying that driving faster will get you to your destination quicker. 

In the same vein, paid links can increase your search engine rankings; otherwise, nobody would still do it. 

Pro tip: You never want to pay a website owner directly for a backlink (i.e., offering $500 in exchange or a link pointing to your site), as that’s a blatant link scheme and a surefire way to get caught. Instead, there are ways to buy high-authority links without directly violating Google’s policies. 

A popular method is to outsource your link-building strategy to a trusted agency that can earn you desirable backlinks. 

While you’re technically paying for backlinks, using this method is not against Google’s rules. 

That’s because you’re paying someone to create resources, perform outreach, and build relationships on your behalf, which isn’t a link scheme. 

There are some links that you can buy directly without getting in trouble, but they’re nofollow links. 

What are those?

A nofollow link will only have a marginal impact on your search rankings, as it’s a signal to Google’s algorithm not to consider the link. While SEOs used to think that nofollow links passed no link juice whatsoever, that’s not entirely true. 

Nofollow links still pass a tiny amount of link juice to your site, and they can still generate traffic for you – regardless of the nofollow tag. 

Conversely, dofollow links do affect search engine rankings, which are the types of backlinks you want to target the most. 

For this reason, you should do your best to ensure every link you acquire is a dofollow backlink; otherwise, you won’t gain as much visibility on search engines.

#10: Business profile links

Another type of backlink is a business profile link, which exists on social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), industry directories, and local citation profiles. 

These types of backlinks are especially important for local SEO strategies, as these business profiles are where consumers go to discover local products and services. 

The theory here is simple, as you create accounts for your business on different platforms, look where you can include a backlink to your website. Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YellowPages are all examples of platforms that allow you to link back to your site, so don’t forget to create an account for your business on each one. 

Business profile links are among the easiest to acquire, so make sure someone at your company is in charge of including a backlink whenever you create a new profile on a platform or directory.

Another type of backlink is a business profile link, which exists on social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), industry directories, and local citation profiles. 

These types of backlinks are especially important for local SEO strategies, as these business profiles are where consumers go to discover local products and services. 

The theory here is simple, as you create accounts for your business on different platforms, look where you can include a backlink to your website. Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YellowPages are all examples of platforms that allow you to link back to your site, so don’t forget to create an account for your business on each one. 

Business profile links are among the easiest to acquire, so make sure someone at your company is in charge of including a backlink whenever you create a new profile on a platform or directory.

#11: Webinar links 

It’s a fact that a link will get more clicks when it provides a valuable resource for your audience. 

The principle is the same as a squeeze page for generating email leads – you provide a freebie in exchange for something valuable. In the case of a squeeze page, it’s a customer’s email address. 

In our case, the prize we’re after is a backlink that generates a lot of organic traffic. 

How do you do that?

You can by providing a link to a webinar (or podcasts) with valuable insights, techniques, and information for your audience. 

In the case of webinars, you’ll gain more value from the links if you record them and archive them on your own website so viewers can always access them.. 

A recorded webinar is a powerful tool you can use to not only score backlinks but also generate a ton of organic traffic. That’s especially true if your webinar contains valuable information your audience can use to better their lives.

Podcasting is another way to get backlinks. 

If your podcast has a high-profile guest or contains something unique (such as proven-effective digital marketing techniques), the chances are high that other content creators will link to your episodes, generating backlinks for you in a very natural way. 

You can also use your podcasts and webinars for future guest post outreach opportunities, so make sure to hold onto them in your archives.

#12: Sponsorship links

Another option is to mimic sports athletes and go for sponsorships. Yet, rather than trying to score your photo on the Wheaties box, you’ll want to form sponsorships with high-authority websites in your field. 

Sponsorship links offer a way to secure placement on reputable sites, boosting your SEO in the process.

These are backlinks you acquire from another website in exchange for some form of compensation. This compensation could be:

• Money (direct sponsorship)
• Free products or services
• Reciprocal links (if you link to them as well)
• Other forms of promotion or benefits

How sponsorship links work

Usually, you would reach out to websites within your niche that have high domain authority (DA) and propose a sponsorship arrangement in exchange for a backlink.

From there, your backlink will be featured on a dedicated “Partners” or “Sponsors” page. This signals to search engines that you have a legitimate association with the website.

Sponsorship links can be a valuable tool, but they come at a cost. You’ll need to weigh the potential SEO benefits against the financial investment or other resources involved in the sponsorship arrangement.

#13: Award badge backlinks 

Here’s a type of backlink that most SEOs overlook: the branded award badge. 

Create an award or special ranking for other websites in your field. It’s important not to skimp here; make it a legitimate award worth winning – complete with a sleek branded badge they can place on their website (which is actually a backlink to your site). 

It’s crucial to note that it can take some time to establish your badge as something valuable and sought-after in your field, so this is a bit of a long-term strategy. 

Once you do, however, websites in your niche will start to line up to receive your awards, which will translate into high-authority backlinks for you.

How it works

1. Design a legit-looking award: Focus on a specific aspect of your field (e.g., “Best Sustainable Fashion Brands,” “Top Pet Blogs of the Year”). Ensure your selection criteria are clear and based on merit.
2. Create an eye-catching badge: The badge itself should be visually appealing and serve as a symbol of achievement. The cooler it looks, the more other websites will want to include it. 
3. Promote your award: Spread the word to related websites and encourage them to participate.

Why it’s a smart strategy

Websites crave recognition: Awards provide social proof and credibility for other businesses, making your badge desirable.

Viral potential: If your award gains respect, sites will share their win, spreading awareness of your badge, backlink, and brand. 

#14: Backlinks from comments 

Many websites, such as Forbes, Medium, and user forums like Reddit, allow you to include links in your comments. 

You should be able to guess where this is going. 

By commenting on these websites, you can include links pointing back to your content, which can help you accumulate backlinks. 

Yet, this is a strategy you should use in moderation. 

If you comment and link back to your site on every website you find, Google will likely flag them as spam. 

Not only that, but the last thing you want to do is include a backlink on a low-authority website. Instead, stick to websites that have a high DA score and already rank high on search engines, like Forbes and Medium. You should also target websites that are within your niche.

#15: Backlinks from forums

Forums offer a chance to earn backlinks while engaging with your target audience. However, proceed with caution – as overt self-promotion will backfire.

The wrong approach

Avoid blatant advertising like “CLICK HERE to check out our amazing products and services now!”. Users will ignore this, and it could displease search engines.

The right approach

• Be relevant: Seek out forums where your expertise aligns with ongoing discussions.
• Be helpful: Offer genuine insights and solutions to users’ problems.
• Introduce links organically: When it adds value to the conversation, you might say something like: “Hey [forum poster], I noticed you’re struggling with writing compelling blog CTAs. We recently wrote a comprehensive guide on this; maybe it’ll help!”

Why this works

Prioritizing valuable contributions to the community means your backlinks become natural extensions of the conversation. This establishes your expertise and increases the likelihood of people clicking through to your website.

#16: Footer, header, and sidebar links 

Lastly, you should know that where your link shows up on a page affects its value. 

In particular, Google does NOT consider links that show up in the header, footer, and sidebar of a page valuable.

Why is that?

It’s because these are ‘sitewide links’ that appear on every website page. 

Google’s algorithm has learned to assess the relevance and value of a link based on where it appears on the page.

Which spot on the page has the most value?

Links embedded in the middle of the body content of a page will always carry the most value. Backlinks in this area serve a purpose for readers and have a use and a context (supporting the blog content with additional relevant information). 

If one of your backlinks appears in the header, footer, or sidebar of a page, Google will largely ignore them, as it views them in the same context as navigational links (Home, About Us, etc.). 

So whenever you do outreach to acquire backlinks, ensure that your clients place them in the body of their articles and not in the header, footer, or sidebar.

Backlink Building Strategies

Now that you know more about the 15 types of backlinks, let’s learn some proven techniques for acquiring them. 

Replacing broken links 

A great way to acquire links and provide public service for the internet is to replace broken links online with your content. 

Link rot is a real thing, and there are thousands of broken links online as a result. 

To find them, you can use Ahrefs Broken backlinks tool. The goal is to find broken links for content that you can easily replace. For instance, if you find a broken link for a blog on a topic you’ve already written about, you can simply replace it with your existing blog. 

Here’s how it works. 

First, log in to your Ahrefs account and select the Site Explorer tool. From there, enter the URL of a website you want to check for broken backlinks. 

Ahrefs will direct you to the website’s Overview, but we want to select Broken backlinks under the Backlink profile section. 

You’ll need to contact the website owner to replace the link. Explain that you found a broken link but have an adequate replacement. As long as there are no conflicting interests, they’ll likely agree to it. 

The skyscraper technique 

A fantastic link-building strategy involves outdoing competitor content to poach their high-authority backlinks.

It works like this:

1. First, check Google search for top-ranking pieces of content in your niche that have desirable backlinks (you can use our backlink checker tool to check out their link profile). 
2. Brainstorm ways to create a similar piece of content that’s 10x better. (i.e., go into more detail, provide new insights, and include a video or an infographic)
3. Publish your content and reach out to the original post’s backlinks. 
4. Link to your piece and let them know you’d like them to link to your content instead. If it is 10x better than the original, they’re more likely to link to your content instead.

This is a highly effective technique that you can use to penetrate the top results on the SERPs (search engine results pages).

The proof?

According to a case study by Hubspot, they were able to use the skyscraper technique to drive over 70k page views. 

Creating infographics 

Infographics are one of the most effective types of content you can create to acquire backlinks. 

They’re great because they convey complex information in a visual manner – making it far easier to understand. In fact, posts with images contain a 650% higher engagement rate. 

An infographic can contain eye-opening statistics, crucial facts, and other relevant information. 

Moreover, bloggers love linking to infographics because they convey information effectively. As such, if you create a detailed, visually pleasing infographic containing relevant facts, many other bloggers will link to it – generating natural backlinks for you.

Final Takeaways: High-Authority Backlinks 

If dominating search results is your goal, high-authority backlinks are essential. They signal to search engines that your content is trusted and valuable. Since Google’s earliest days, links have been the backbone of its ranking algorithm.

Building a strong backlink profile takes focus and effort, but the rewards are undeniable: higher rankings, increased visibility, and greater authority in your niche.

Ready to Take Action?

If you haven’t yet developed a comprehensive link-building strategy, now is the time! Check out our elite-level link-building services at The HOTH today.  

The post How to Get High-Authority Backlinks from Relevant Websites In 2024 appeared first on The HOTH.

At the time, the plan was to officially roll out SGE sometime in early 2024 after months of experimentation and data-gathering.  

This set the SEO world ablaze with anticipation (including us) about how SGE would alter the search landscape and potentially trigger the SEO apocalypse. 

January 2024 came and went, and nothing happened. Google was notoriously tight-lipped about the issue, and some assumed that they had canceled it outright. 

Here we are almost exactly one year later, and Google’s AI-powered search features have officially arrived. 

During Google’s annual I/O developer conference, newly appointed head of Google Search Liz Reid outlined the company’s new generative AI features on May 14th, 2024. 

The most noteworthy announcement was the AI Overviews from SGE are now an official part of Google Search. 

Besides that, Google discussed a whole host of other AI-powered features for its search engine, so there’s a lot to unpack. 

Stay tuned to learn everything you need to know about Google’s new AI transformation. 

What are AI Overviews?

AI Overviews first appeared in SGE’s testing phase in Search Labs. 

Certain search queries will now trigger an AI-generated summary at the top of the results page. 

The AI Overview will:

• Answer questions 
• Educate and inform users
• Cite sources from the web for further reading
• List local businesses and products

The Overviews are now live, and you may have already seen them in action if you’ve been on Google recently. 

Here’s an example of an AI Overview for the long-tail keyword ‘is broccoli a healthy food?’

As you can see, the AI Overview appears at the very top of the search results page (SERP), and it directly answers the question posed by the keyword. 

It also provides several online resources for further reading, and you have the option to ‘Show More,’ which reveals more educational information generated by the AI:

Here, we can learn more about the health benefits of broccoli, some preparation methods, and health concerns. 

Also, notice the tiny carrot by each paragraph?

Clicking on them reveals links to more online resources for further reading (these are also the pages the AI summarized to provide the overview).

As you can probably imagine, getting Google to cite your content in its AI Overviews will be a huge deal in SEO moving forward. 

In fact, it may replace targeting the #1-ranked organic position since it’s pushed further down the page (more on this below).

Which Types of Searches Trigger AI Overviews?

At the I/O developer conference, Liz Reid noted that not every search query will trigger an AI Overview, even though the feature is becoming increasingly more common. 

Reid claims that AI Overviews are typically reserved for more complex questions. 

Every time that you make a Google Search now, the algorithm makes a judgment call on whether the query warrants an AI Overview or not. 

So far, only certain types of queries trigger AI Overviews, so let’s take a look at them. 

Complex questions 

One of the main appeals of integrating LLM chatbots into search engines is their ability to understand complex questions and requests. 

This forgoes the need for ‘search engine speak,’ where users search for content by using brief phrases and keywords. 

For instance, a Google search of the past would look something like this:

‘Best pizza restaurant round rock tx’

With Gemini (Google’s AI), users can use more natural-sounding queries like this:

‘What’s the best pizza restaurant in Round Rock, Texas?’

In fact, users can get even more complicated with it and include specific requests like:

‘What’s the best pizza restaurant in Round Rock that’s no more than a 10-minute walk from my house?’

These complex keyword strings are the most likely to trigger an AI Overview. 

Informational searches

Lots of informational queries now trigger AI Overviews, and it’s pretty clear why. Gemini can provide direct answers to common questions, which are what most informational keywords consist of. 

If you’re looking to educate yourself about a topic or answer a question, don’t be surprised if an AI Overview pops up. 

Here’s what happens when we search for the health benefits of chamomile tea:

What’s concerning for SEOs is that informational queries like these used to be perfect for driving traffic to their blog posts. 

Informational blogs draw in users at the top of your sales funnel, and they’re excellent for building awareness and brand loyalty. 

While many users will now get the information they need from the Overview, there’s one ray of hope. 

Each Overview will cite several online resources, which can still allow users to experience your content. 

Commercial searches 

Searches with commercial intent mean the user is interested in making a purchase but wants to weigh their options first. 

These types of queries can trigger AI Overviews that provide detailed information about what the user wants to purchase. 

The Overview also cites several online resources and includes a brief description of each. 

Here’s an AI Overview that was generated for a user searching for iPhones near their location in the UK:

What Types of Searches Don’t Trigger AI Overviews?

Not every search query triggers an AI Overview, especially:

• Transactional searches. Whenever a user has transactional intent, it means they’re ready to make a purchase right then and there. As such, the queries are often highly specific and brief (such as ‘buy Mac Mini M2’) – so there’s not much use for a detailed AI Overview. 

• Navigational searches. During the conference, Liz Reid explicitly stated that navigational queries will not trigger AI Overviews. The example she provided was, “If you search for Walmart.com, you really just want to go to Walmart.com.” Since the query is so straightforward, there’s no need for a lengthy AI-generated overview. 

• Your money, your life (YMYL) searches. Google also stated that AI Overviews would not appear for YMYL searches (topics that relate to healthcare and finances) due to the possible legal implications if the information provided is inaccurate. However, this seems to be something they’re still working on, as AI Overviews are appearing for some YMYL queries (see below). 

As you can see, this YMYL query triggers an AI Overview, so Google still needs to work out the kinks. 

An Overview of Google’s Other AI-Powered Search Features 

Besides the AI Overview, Google has other AI-powered features that it’s adding to its search engine. 

One of these is the ability to ‘adjust’ AI Overviews to simplify the language or break things down in more detail. 

The feature isn’t ready for official rollout yet, as it’s coming to Search Labs in the U.S. first. 

It gives users the option to decide how they want to consume information, either in a concise summary or detailed breakdown. 

It’s also a way of refining search results without having to conduct multiple searches. 

Here’s a look at the other AI-powered capabilities coming to Google Search. 

AI-organized search results 

Another planned but not-yet-released feature is AI-organized search results pages. 

What are those?

It’s where the AI groups search results into unique categories for easy filtering. An example would be searching for barbecue restaurants in an area near you. 

The AI will split the results into several different categories at the top of the page, such as takeout, delivery, and dine-in. 

Here’s what it looks like:

The pink buttons at the top of the page split the results into different categories, which some users may find convenient. 

Sponsored results are also peppered throughout the AI-generated results, as Google still wants to generate ad revenue. 

Multistep reasoning for search queries 

Google is adding multistep reasoning to its search algorithm, which means you’ll be able to ask Google questions that contain more than one request. 

This will save you the hassle of conducting multiple searches. 

When the feature goes live, you’ll be able to make a series of requests in a single query, and Google will understand each step.

An example would be asking Google to find a sports bar in your area that’s A) near you, B) affordable, and C) open late on Saturdays. 

As of right now, this feature is not live, but it’s coming soon to the U.S. version of Search Labs. 

Planning and scheduling capabilities 

Another AI-powered feature on the horizon is Google’s new planning capabilities. Users will be able to plan and schedule events, plans, and more straight from Google Search. 

For instance, you could ask Google to develop a 3-day meal plan for you, and the AI will handle the rest. You’ll get to see a list of recipes from across the web as a starting point, and you can further customize the results from there. 

Users also have the option of exporting the results into Google Docs or Gmail. 

You can coordinate plans with others, schedule a trip, and swap plan details with other options at the click of a button. 

Video search 

Lastly, Google is eager to show off Gemini’s multimodal capabilities, and the video search feature is set to do just that. 

Gemini doesn’t just understand text prompts. It can also see and hear, which means you can conduct searches through your video camera. 

The example Google provides is a user asking why their turntable needle won’t stay in place. 

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Once again, this is another feature that will soon be available on the English version of Search Labs. 

What Does This All Mean for SEO?

These AI-powered features certainly seem impressive, but what does this mean for the future of SEO?

After all, you’re here to market your products and services above all else. As we’ve been saying for a while now, generative AI does NOT mean the end of SEO. 

The search landscape has constantly changed and evolved since the beginning, and SEOs always find a way to adapt. 

AI Overviews are no different, as it’s only a matter of time until SEOs crack the code and discover the best ways to optimize for them. 

The downside is, at the moment, not much is known about how to optimize your content to appear in AI Overviews. 

Yet, we still have the data we’ve gathered from our rigorous experiments with SGE in Search Labs (more on this in a bit). 

First, let’s take a look at all the ways SEO is set to change from the adoption of generative AI. 

The diminished importance of the #1-ranked organic position 

Page real estate is one of the biggest issues SEOs have with AI Overviews. For queries triggering an Overview, it appears at the very top of the page. 

SERP features (featured snippets, knowledge bars, etc.), which used to appear at the top, will now appear below the AI Overview (if there are any SERP features, that is). 

Beneath that are the organic results, which have experienced quite the fall from grace. 

However, it’s crucial to note that not every keyword triggers an AI Overview (or a SERP feature, for that matter). 

A lack of data for analysis 

SEOs rely on tools like Google Search Console (GSC) to analyze their performance on Google, but they’re about to get left in the dark. 

Why is that?

It’s because as of now, Google has no plans to show impressions or clicks from AI Overviews in GSC, which is definitely concerning. This will make it even more difficult to determine what works when optimizing for AI Overviews. 

The rise of zero-click searches 

A zero-click search is an SEOs worst enemy. They happen whenever a user conducts a search but receives all the information they need on the results page, and doesn’t click on any organic results. 

SERP features like knowledge bars and snippets were notorious for causing zero-click searches in the past, but AI Overviews stand to make the problem even worse. 

How You Can Prepare for AI-Powered Search 

Okay, enough doom and gloom. We’ve been preparing for generative AI features in search engines since SGE’s announcement last year, and we’ve been running experiments ever since. 

One of our most important findings was that if you’re already ranking in the #1 organic position for your keywords, you’re more likely to get featured in the AI Overview. 

Why is that?

It’s because Google isn’t changing its principles regarding how it views quality, trustworthy content. 

As long as you create outstanding content for your audience that provides value, Google will want to direct its users to it. 

The best things that you can do now are:

• Optimize for longer queries. Long-tail keywords are the way of the future since users will ask lengthier questions. Researching popular long-tail keywords and commonly asked questions in your niche and creating content around them will help you appear in the AI Overview. 
• Focus on building lots of high-quality backlinks. As stated before, Google isn’t changing its principles related to ranking content. Google only ranks websites it trusts, and backlinks are how you form that trust. 

Besides that, you should stick with what’s worked in the past for your SEO. It’ll take some time for marketers to discover the best ways to optimize for the AI Overview, so don’t try to fix what isn’t broken until then. 

Thriving in an AI-Dominated Search Landscape 

Google’s new AI-powered features may have abruptly burst on the scene, but they weren’t without warning. 

We knew that Google had been planning on adding generative AI into the mix since last year, it was just a matter of when. 

Now that AI Overviews are here, it’s up to SEO experts like us to adapt to them.

Do you need help with your SEO in the age of generative AI?

Then don’t hesitate to check out HOTH X, our managed SEO service that takes the entire process off your hands. We’ll optimize your content for AI so that you won’t have to worry about it!  

The post Google’s AI-Powered Search: The End of SEO or A New Dawn? appeared first on The HOTH.

This is the #1 question from new clients at The HOTH. 

The only problem is it’s an impossible question, as there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for how many backlinks a website needs. 

In fact, asking this question is on par with other impossible questions like, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” and, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

When most SEOs get this question, they all say the same thing:

“It depends.”

We think that’s pretty lame, and we’re sick of hearing it. 

That’s why we’re going to do the impossible and attempt to answer this borderline rhetorical question. 

Along the way, you’ll learn more about the current state of backlinks as a ranking factor and some up-to-date techniques for generating high-quality links that point to your homepage and content.

Do Links Still Matter? Addressing Google’s Recent Comments

In September 2023, Google Analyst Gary Illyes downplayed the importance of backlinks, saying links were no longer a top 3 ranking factor. 

This led some digital marketers to believe backlinks no longer move the SEO needle, which isn’t true.

Illyes acknowledged the importance of backlinks but disagreed with their top-tier status. His words should be taken with caution, as Google is notoriously secretive about its ranking algorithms to prevent manipulation.

Google aims to deliver the best search results, meaning they only want to rank trustworthy and authoritative sites. For this reason, they have a bit of a love/hate relationship with SEO. 

They know that it’s necessary for businesses to improve their visibility on their engine, but their SEO advice seldom gets deeper than ‘make better content.’

Proof Backlinks Are Still The Real Deal 

Take it from us: backlinks still matter in a very big way, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. 

Perfect technical SEO (loading speed, mobile friendliness, URL structure, etc.) and flawless on-page factors (keyword usage, metadata optimization, high-quality content, etc.) will only get you so far.

Whenever we have a client that can’t outrank its competitors, links are almost always the reason why.

Since the websites occupying the top-ranking spots have more high-quality links than our clients’ sites, outranking them with basic SEO tactics is next to impossible. 

As a result, we spend the most time ‘closing the competitive gap’ by building enough relevant links for our clients to level the playing field with their top competitors. 

The fact remains that more backlinks equal better SERP rankings AND more organic traffic, which is why high-value links are so powerful (they’re literally working double duty for you).

To put our money where our mouth is, here’s hard evidence from one of our clients that backlinks and traffic go hand-in-hand:

As you can see by the line graphs, as the client’s backlinks started to increase, their organic traffic followed suit. 

How Many Backlinks Do I Need to Rank?

As you can see, backlinks are crucial to ranking your content in the SERPS. So, what’s the magic number of backlinks you should aim for?  

A well-established website typically has around 40-50 backlinks to its homepage, with individual pages varying from 0-100.  

Too few backlinks and Google might not consider your site as relevant. However, too many can raise red flags about potentially manipulative practices. 

The key is to focus on earning high-quality backlinks from reputable websites that have either topical or contextual relevance to your content.

In the section below, we’ll explore the factors affecting your ideal backlink count. 

What Factors Determine How Many Backlinks I Need to Rank?

While links are still extremely important for Google SEO, they’re not the only ranking factor. 

As we said before, building more links bridges the competitive gap for our clients. However, without strong technical and on-page factors, reaching the top of the SERPs is impossible.

Google’s algorithm looks at technical factors like loading speed and interactivity, URL structure, broken links, and indexing errors. 

On-page SEO factors, like keyword placement, content formatting, readability, and metadata optimization are also integral for high search rankings. 

Here’s a look at the top SERP ranking factors:

Content quality

Let’s be clear: the #1 most important ranking factor is the quality and relevance of your content. 

If you aren’t producing high-quality content that satisfies users’ search intent, your dreams of becoming the SEO GOAT will never come to fruition. 

Moreover, the quality and relevance of your content are also extremely important to your target audience, and you should always produce content for them first and search engines second. 

How does Google judge the quality of website content?

They use a team of human quality raters equipped with their Quality Rater Guidelines, which are represented by the acronym E-E-A-T – which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. 

Therefore, if you want Google to view your content as high-quality, you need to share first-hand experiences that demonstrate your expertise on a topic. An example would be citing a real-life case where you helped a client with your vast knowledge of your business’s area of expertise. 

As far as content goes, you only have to worry about the first two E’s (experience and expertise). 

Authoritativeness isn’t something you can build through content directly, as it has to do with the quality and relevance of the backlinks that point to your web pages. 

Lastly, trustworthiness is accrued by consistently demonstrating experience, expertise, and authoritativeness in your content.  

Content length 

The length of your content is also a ranking factor, and there’s a sweet spot that you need to hit. 

First, Google views web pages that contain less than approximately 1,000 words as thin content, and it doesn’t like to rank thin content because it’s viewed as unhelpful. 

As a rule of thumb, try to include at least 700 – 1,000 words on each web page to ensure they aren’t flagged as thin content. However, you need to make sure that the words still provide valuable information, as just writing nonsense to inflate the word count won’t work.   

If there are web pages that you just can’t add any more words to, try to merge them with a related page. 

Since Google doesn’t like thin content, some SEOs have falsely assumed that more words are always better, which isn’t the case.

Google’s algorithms can identify when a page contains useless or irrelevant information. For example, a how-to guide on stringing guitars doesn’t need to include a 400-word section on the history of the guitar. 

Sticking to the 1,000 – 2,000 word range for blogs is a good range to stick with for most topics. That’s not to say that you can’t write longer guides, just that every piece of information must be relevant and valuable. 

SSL certificate 

Security is a priority for Google, as they don’t want to direct users to unsecure websites where they might have sensitive personal or financial information stolen. 

That’s why they only rank websites that contain SSL certificates, which provide a secure web browsing experience through HTTPS. All communications are encrypted using the SSL/TLS protocol, making things like e-commerce transactions safe. 

The good news is it’s extremely easy to get an SSL certificate for free. 

Passing the Core Web Vitals test

Internet users have no patience for websites that don’t load within a fraction of a second. Google is aware of this, which is why they developed the Core Web Vitals test. 

It examines a website’s speed for not only loading but also interactivity. 

To learn more, you can check out our guide on passing the Core Web Vitals test. 

Keyword usage 

At the most basic level, search engines match user queries (keywords) with websites that contain exact matches and related keywords. 

An example would be Google ranking a piece of content called ‘How to String Guitars’ in the #1 spot for the query ‘how to string guitars.’

Make sense?

Despite all the advancements in the SEO world, proper keyword placement still matters. Here’s where to place your target keywords:

• In your title tag and H1 header 
• In the first 100 words of the content 
• In image alt tags 
• Organically, throughout the piece 
• In the metadata 

You can use our free keyword planner tool to uncover popular keywords related to your business, which is the best way to find topic ideas. 

URL and page architecture 

If Google’s algorithm can make heads or tails out of your site structure, your content likely won’t rank very well. 

Google prefers sites that use logical, ‘flat’ designs for their site architecture, where every page is only one or two clicks away from the homepage. 

Deep site architecture uses long link chains that lead to inner pages (which are hard for both Google and users to find). 

Whenever you’re designing your site and URL structure, follow the K.I.S.S. method and keep it super simple. 

Internal and external links 

Whenever you make a claim in your content, you should always back it up with evidence via an external link. 

The websites you choose matter here, too, as you want to link out to reputable sources. 

TLDs (top-level domains) ending in .gov, .edu, and .org are always safe best, as are academic journals and studies. 

Also, don’t forget to include internal links in your content. This serves a dual purpose, as it makes your content easier for Google to index – and internal links provide resources for further reading that will keep users engaged in your content loop (and will boost your dwell times). 

Drop anchor! Achieving the proper anchor text ratio 

Besides the links themselves, the anchor text you choose for each link is also incredibly important.

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text within a hyperlink. It typically appears in a different color (often blue, but we prefer red) and is underlined, signaling to users that it’s a link.

Here are the most important things you need to know about anchor text: 

Relevance: The anchor text should accurately describe what the linked page is about. This aligns with user expectations and helps search engines understand the target page’s content.

Balanced anchor text ratio: Aim for 2-5 words in your anchor text. Briefer phrases are more readable and less likely to appear spammy.

Natural language: Avoid overly optimized, keyword-stuffed anchor text. Use conversational language that flows organically within the text.

Variety: Change up your anchor text types to create a more natural backlink profile (more on that below).

Anchor text types

There are a few different types of anchor text that you can use, and it’s imperative to use a mix of them all. 

Google doesn’t like to see lots of exact-match anchors, which contain the keyword you’re targeting and nothing else. To Google, this is an attempt on the site owner’s part to manipulate the search rankings, which is why the need for an anchor text ratio arose in the first place. 

Competition in your niche 

Remember, you won’t be the only one optimizing your site for better performance on Google’s SERPs. Your competitors will also engage in SEO, so you always need to keep an eye on your top competitors. 

In particular, regularly analyzing their content and backlink profiles can provide valuable insights to boost your own strategies. 

You can use our free SEO audit and backlink checker tools to analyze your competitors. Pay attention to the keywords they use, where they get their backlinks from, and how much traffic/engagement they’re getting. 

The Classic Debate: Quantity vs. Quality 

SEOs are always fiercely debating whether backlink quality or quantity matters most. 

Some swear that only the most reputable, highest-quality backlinks are worth pursuing, while others claim to find success by building as many links as possible. 

Which side of the issue is true?

We hate to be boring, but the truth is that both quantity and quality are equally important to your link profile. 

Let’s clarify that a bit further. 

When quantity matters 

In terms of quantity, it’s NEVER worth pursuing low-grade backlinks from garbage websites that provide no value to users. 

These links scream spam to Google, and they’ll only hurt your SERP rankings. 

However, when you’re trying to bridge a significant link gap between you and a competitor (where you have dozens of links and they have hundreds or thousands), sometimes links with average domain authority (scores 40 to 50) are exactly what you need. 

These average links are still from real websites that provide services to users, so there’s no worry about them getting flagged as spam. 

Moreover, they’ll provide you with the volume of links you need to catch up to the competition. 

In other words, beggars can’t be choosers when you’re far behind in the backlink race. 

When quality matters

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t shoot for the stars and target high-value backlinks (DA scores 60 and above) at the same time, as you definitely should. 

Conversely, if you’re practically on par with the number of links a competitor has, then going for high-quality links is the name of the game. 

Ultimately, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re far behind, quantity can beat quality – but if you’re neck-and-neck, quality reigns supreme.

These factors are all imperative for SEO success, so you shouldn’t neglect any of them during your search campaign.

How Do You Get Backlinks?

By now, you should have a specific number of backlinks you need to build. To reiterate what we’ve covered so far:

Analyze your competitor’s backlinks to gauge the gap between your link profiles.  If the gap is significant, initially focus on building a larger number of links, even if some are of lower quality.

This helps establish a baseline. As you gain more links, shift your strategy to acquiring high-value links.

For brand-new websites, aim for 50 links to your homepage and around 100 for your most important pages.

Now that we’ve addressed the core question let’s explore another important aspect:

How do you build links that point back to your content?

Here’s a look at some of the most effective ways to acquire backlinks. 

Targeted link outreach 

Conducting outreach is necessary for just about any backlink technique, and it’s become more nuanced in recent years. 

In the past, SEOs found success using generic outreach templates that contained simple requests for guest articles, link insertions, and fixing broken links. 

The only problem is this technique worked a little too well. 

Once it caught on, it became the norm (and still is) for website owners to receive hundreds of generic outreach emails every day. 

Currently, the link outreach game is about standing out from the crowd while developing long-lasting relationships that lead to multiple links down the line. 

It’s crucial to shift your mindset from targeting one link at a time to forging long-term link partnerships with related websites in your field. 

Also, divorce the link outreach process from one particular tactic, such as guest posting. 

When done properly, your outreach can lead to a lot more than guest blogs (although those are pretty sweet, too). 

An outreach example

As an example scenario, let’s say that your website sells fitness products. 

In that case, you’d benefit from forming link partnerships with noncompetitors in your field – meaning you share a target audience but don’t compete for the same business. 

Examples include fitness news websites, fitness forums, and nutrition blogs – just to name a few. 

Instead of sending one-and-done outreach emails, you start interacting with these sites in a far more personal way. Your goal is to form a relationship instead of securing one measly link placement, so you should interact with their social media, ask interesting questions, and share their content. 

If you play your cards right, you’ll form a partnership that leads to guest posts, link insertions, and article syndications.

Article syndication 

Speaking of syndication, you can start publishing your articles on other websites to gain more exposure and accrue links. 

Relationship building is a key component here, too, as you’ll need an existing network of relevant websites to publish your articles. 

If you don’t have any connections yet, try searching on Google for things like:

• “Originally published on” (niche keyword)
• “Syndicated from” (niche keyword)
• “Originally appeared on” (niche keyword)

These search operators will help you find websites in your field that syndicate posts and it’s worth trying to build relationships with them. 

You can also use our free backlink checker tool to analyze your competitor’s links to see if they’re syndicated anywhere that you aren’t. 

Press releases 

Press releases (as long as they don’t mention time-sensitive events) are another great way to get the word out about your brand and obtain links. 

This is where it pays off to have relationships with news outlets in your niche, as you’ll be able to circulate your press releases to them for some easy links. 

Why can’t you mention time-sensitive events?

You shouldn’t because this type of press release exists to provide backlinks to your site. If you mention a time-sensitive event (like an upcoming conference), you’ll have to remove the press release as soon as it happens. 

That’s why you should stick to things like launching new products, hiring new executives, and interesting developments in your business (like adding a new department). 

Here’s an example of a press release we created and distributed through Cision for backlinks and better online visibility:

To further your education, here are some more reliable ways to build backlinks from relevant websites.

Broken backlinks 

Link rot is a real struggle that every website faces. 

It’s the tendency for hyperlinks to no longer point to their original web page or server after long periods of time. There are numerous causes for this, the most common of which is when a site migrates to a new CMS or changes its link structure. 

As a result, virtually every website will have broken links, and they present a unique link-building opportunity. 

Say that you come across a broken link on a website that covers a topic you already have a blog post about. 

In that case, you could reach out to the site owner, notify them of the broken link, and offer your content as a quick replacement. 

Since broken links hurt a website’s user experience, site owners have a very real incentive to fix them by adding your link. 

How do you find broken backlinks to target?

One of the easiest and most reliable ways is to use Ahrefs, but you can also use web crawlers like Screaming Frog. 

If you have an Ahrefs account, navigate to the Site Explorer tool. From there, enter the URL of the website that you want to check for broken links.

Under Backlink profile, select the Broken Backlinks report.

Voila, you now have a complete list of the website’s broken links that you can analyze for backlink opportunities. Try to find broken links that relate to your business’s content. If you don’t already have a viable replacement piece, you can always create one.

Start Building the Right Number of Links Today 

Well, wasn’t that a much better answer than simply saying, “It depends?”

Now, you have an accurate approximation of how many links you need to build to achieve your ranking goals, and you know the best ways to build them. 

This is only the first step in your journey to becoming the SERP master, so stay tuned to our blog for more practical advice. 

If you need help building the right number of links for your website, don’t wait to check out our Link Outreach and Link Insertion services.     

The post How Many Backlinks Does it Take to Rule Your Niche’s SERPs? appeared first on The HOTH.

But what if you could use AI to help with your link-building?

And… what if the links AI helped you build weren’t some watered-down version of a backlink, the same way so much AI content seems to be? What if they were better, more high-quality links?

If you’re unsure how this could work, read on. We’ve figured out a way to make SEO success with link building simpler than ever—and we’re using AI to do it. 

Introducing HOTH AI Link Select

Our Link Outreach services are still considered some of the best in the market. The HOTH’s focus on quality, scalability, and ease of use has allowed us to continue to grow long after many of our competitors have exited the market. 

And getting white-hat links isn’t easy (ask anybody who’s ever had to build them). Even agencies with incredibly experienced teams and a vast network of sites and publications put a ton of work into outreach. 

AI Link Select is going to change all that. 

What is HOTH AI Link Select?

Picture a software that allows you to plug in your target URL and any filters like DA, DR, and site traffic you’re looking for. 

Imagine that software can “read” your site to determine its content. You or a team member need not provide further context, and no more research is required.

That software takes your site and your filters and goes through thousands of sites that have been hand-selected for quality that can link back to yours. They meet all the metrics you’re searching for.

And beyond that, they’re relevant links. They’re in your industry or niche, making these links even more authoritative.

You see a list of sites that fit your metrics with descriptions of their content. Next to each link option, you see a price. You pick the links you want and expect delivery in 30 days or less (usually much sooner).

It’s as simple as that. 

Your Personalized Path to Page 1 

While AI takes the outreach wheel, you’re more in the driver’s seat because you have more control over which links you get to your site than ever before. 

While some links may be more expensive than our Link Outreach packages, others may be cheaper depending on the metrics you’re looking for. It’s an AI-powered white hat backlink marketplace. 

We can’t wait for you to try it. Click on the AI Link Select Product Page for faster, better, more relevant links– and experience the future of link building.

The post Using AI To Scale Your SEO With AI Link Select appeared first on The HOTH.