What Is Backlink Management?

Is your website traffic tanking despite having multiple backlinks? If so, then you might want to reassess your backlink management strategy. A solid link-building system consists of relevant, quality backlinks. Even a new website with relatively average traffic can land one or two backlinks in major publications with the right plan.

If you’re having trouble understanding the importance of backlinks and proper link-building, keep reading. This article equips you with everything you need to know about standard backlink management. Acquiring quality DoFollow backlinks, managing backlinks, and tracking live links will take your site performance to the next level.

Why Does Backlink Management Matter?

Backlinks serve as the cornerstone of any well-curated link-building strategy. Internal links make your website navigable, but backlinks drive up your website traffic. Even a newly published website can jump to the top of Google search engine results pages (SERPs) if they secure one or two quality DoFollow backlinks.

What Are the Different Types of Backlinks?

Familiarize yourself with the following types of backlinks:

• DoFollow: Strive for DoFollow links when acquiring backlinks. These links strengthen your website by transferring ‘link equity’ from the backlink source onto your pages. However, ensure that your DoFollow links come from reputable sites because Google associates you with the source of your backlink.
• Socials: Socials link to your social media pages and handles instead of your desired landing pages. They don’t necessarily hurt website traffic, but they don’t improve your website authority as well.
• NoFollow: A NoFollow tag tells Google to skip the specified backlink. NoFollow backlinks do not transfer link equity to your website and serve as nothing more than a brand mention — assuming they indicated your name and website.
• Image: Image links only transfer link equity if the alt and title tags lead to your website. Otherwise, Google cannot detect them.
• JS: JavaScript-generated links do not always lead to your websites correctly.

What Is Link Building?

Link building is an SEO strategy wherein you accumulate quality DoFollow backlinks for your web pages to increase site authority. These links are often acquired through guest posts or soliciting inbound links to your site.

How Do You Manage Your Backlinks?

Managing backlinks requires a detailed step-by-step plan. Assessing links based on subjective, debatable factors like site traffic, page layouts, and published content yields negligible results. In the worst case, you might accidentally disavow a good backlink.

To ensure that you execute your link-building strategy correctly, commit to the following steps:

1. Backlink Research

Backlick research takes precedence over cleanups and disavowal requests. Whether you go old school with analytics reports and disavowal requests or utilize modern third-party site auditors, never forgo link analysis.

Backlinks play a crucial role in your SEO strategy. Carelessly removing all the links leading to your pages hurts your site ranking just as much as retaining bad backlinks from spammy link farms. Learn to differentiate between toxic and quality backlinks.

2. Competitive Analysis

Learn from your competitors’ pages. Use Google Analytics reports to zero in on which pages from your rival websites garner the most backlinks. Study their tone and content. In-depth research will help you pinpoint the common denominator on why multiple credible sources link out to them in the first place.

After gathering your data, analyze how you can emulate similar strategies. For instance, let’s say that your competitor receives backlinks for their infographics. Gauge if you can convert any of your finished case studies and surveys into readable, shareable infographics.

3. Audit Existing Backlinks

The Google Penguin update in 2012 released stringent guidelines regarding internal and external links. Pre-Penguin, backlinks boosted your website rating, no matter where the links originated. However, Google noticed an increase in spam links. To combat black-hat SEO link farming campaigns, they started rating all live backlinks.

Bolster your link map by eliminating spam backlinks and securing more quality backlinks from reputable sources. Google Analytics reports give you in-depth insights into every link on your platform. Combing through these lines of codes might take some time, but these findings are crucial to the success of your backlink map.

4. Automate Outreach  

Do not automate your outreach link-building tool to send the exact pitch. Instead, use the platform to locate the backlink sources of your competitors and generate their webmasters’ contact information. However, customize your pitch — sending the same “please link to my website” spiel will likely get rejected. 

Overall, managing backlinks relies on skill, not fancy tools. SEO platforms and systems simply serve as means to help you achieve your end goal — don’t get sidetracked. Understand the relevance of managing backlinks, then see how they’ll help you improve website performance. 

Also, focus on quantified data. Quantifying your analysis reduces the risk of ill-informed, baseless link-building strategies stemming from subjective site performance metrics. Do not pitch to random journalists. A solid link-building plan follows a theme and consists of links from reputable publications.

Are you having trouble securing high-quality, relevant DoFollow backlinks from major publications? Automatic Growth has you covered! Check out our backlink packages for more information!