The secrets of netlinking to boost your SEO ranking

Summary

1. What is netlinking?
2. The origins of netlinking
3. How do I find good backlinks?
4. 8 different types of backlinks you need to know about
5. Writing guest articles
6. Add links to comments
7. Buy links
8. Sponsor events
9. Share an RSS feed
10. Use social networks to share your articles
11. Ask your partners for a link
12. Find your brand references
13. Backlink mistakes to avoid
14. Ready to boost your SEO?

Content is king and the quality of articles is essential to generate views and visitor loyalty. At the same time, netlinking (or backlinking) is an important lever for improving page positioning in Google (SERP) results. Let's take a look at the best practices for a successful netlinking campaign.

What is netlinking?

Let's start at the beginning and define backlinking. Backlinking is an essential technique in SEO. Its aim is to increase the number of backlinks, i.e. external links pointing to a website (yours) in order to improve its legitimacy. Search engines place great value on the popularity of a site: a site mentioned and referenced on other web platforms generally means that its content is interesting and worthy of interest. Google is therefore more likely to feature it in its results pages.

Websites wishing to improve their positioning in search engine results should implement a genuine netlinking strategy.

arrow_circle_rightBacklink checker

In 2012, the arrival of Google Penguin put an end to the dubious practices of certain SEO professionals. Indeed, Google's success is built on the relevance of its search engine results, so the technique of netlinking needed to be framed to maintain the quality of the service. Even today, updates to the Google algorithm regularly evolve the work of SEO specialists.

The exchange of links is now done in a more reasoned way, according to the criteria of deontology and common sense set by the giant Google. Link directories, press release sites and forums can still be used to generate backlinks, but their SEO impact has become more limited - Backlinking is becoming more professional - it's now based on real collaboration with bloggers and influencers. Specialized analysis tools (Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, Moz or SEMrush) have become indispensable for finding link ideas, ensuring competitive benchmarking or simply checking the popularity of your pages. A quality link is one that fits into a navigation logic between two sites. It must be placed in the middle of an article dealing with a similar subject and meet the user's expectations.

A backlink must be optimized. The anchor text (anchor text) must give precise information about what it proposes. Avoid overly generic expressions such as ". Learn more" or ". Click here", which don't add any value. Be sure to use the "title" attribute to provide information on the content of the linked page. However, beware of overoptimization, which could be counterproductive. Finally, remember that only links marked as "dofollow" are taken into account in Google's algorithm.

How do I find good backlinks?

Limit yourself to around ten links per week, and give priority to quality over quantity. Tools such as Ahrefs or Majestic allow you to measure the authority of a page or website, useful for directing your collaboration towards domains with real authority. Use Google to find sites related to your subject and contact the webmaster or the person responsible for marketing the site. The Legal section and the Linkedin professional network are good starting points for finding the names and contact details of the right people. Use the telephone rather than email to get in touch and define the terms of your deal.

Add links to comments

Also known as Ninja Linking, this method relies on the forced publication of links on a third-party site, generally using the input form in the comments area. It's quite effective, as long as you accompany your URL with an interesting text related to the page's theme, in order to bypass moderator censorship.

Buy links

Platforms specializing in paid backlinking offer to buy links. This is an effective, time-saving solution, as link exchange is a time-consuming activity! However, be careful not to overuse this method, or you'll trigger a Google alert.

arrow_circle_rightBuy baclinks on Boosterlink

Share an RSS feed

Sites that generate a lot of content (news sites, for example) are well advised to offer RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. Its news feeds can be picked up by numerous webmasters who will generate backlinks by displaying them on their pages.

Use social networks to share your articles

Each new article should be shared on your social networks and on groups related to the subject. Admittedly, links on social networks are generally published in nofollow, but you increase the chances of your article being picked up on a real website.

Ask your partners for a link

Use your local network. Contact the companies (or associations) you work with and ask them to share your URL on their site. They may be suppliers, service providers or customers. In exchange, you can offer to list them on your site, in a dedicated section entitled "Our partners". Our partners" for example.

Find your brand references

Your brand may be mentioned on other websites. Contact the author of the article and offer to add a link to your page. Rather than a simple quote, you'll get a real backlink. To find out who's talking about you, enter your brand name on Google and use Google Alerts to be notified by email of any new article referring to your brand.