How the Right Back Links Can 10X Your Website's Traffic

Digital marketing is now something that every business needs to include  - even if only in a minimal way.

That’s left a lot of companies either wondering what to do - or wasting time and money doing the wrong thing.

One of the core tactics is building links on your website.  They can significantly boost your ranking in search, add credibility to your website and help attract more visitors.

Like most aspects of digital marketing, the cost can be low, but the time required to do it right can be massive.   

The question is how to do this effectively and efficiently?

Today we’ll be speaking with Aaron Anderson, an SEO and Link Building expert whose company Link Pitch prides itself on offering link building services done the right way. With a focus on scalable outreach-oriented link building, Link Pitch is completely obsessed with building high-quality, relevant links that  benefit their clients’ sites for the long term.

In this podcast Aaron will be discussing:

- How link building works and why it is critical for every website to have backlinks.

- The best way to build those all-important backlinks - even for brand new websites.

- Key mistakes companies make when outsourcing their link building.

USEFUL LINKS:

Asianet Consultants:  https://asianetconsultants.com

Connect with Aaron Anderson:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronanderson22/

Link Pitch's website: https://linkpitch.io/

Let's Talk Link Building podcast:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/2057466

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Transcript

Jane Singer  00:02

Digital marketing is now something that every business needs to include, even if only in a minimal way. That's left a lot of companies either wondering what to do or wasting time and money doing the wrong thing. One of the core tactics is building links on your website, they can significantly boost your ranking and search, add credibility to your website, and help attract more visitors. Like most aspects of digital marketing, the cost can be low, but the time required to do it right can be massive. 

Jane Singer  00:31

The question is how to do this effectively and efficiently. 

Jane Singer  00:35

I'm Jane Singer, and it's great to have you here as part of our global community of industry leaders here on a seat at the table. 

Jane Singer  00:41

Today we'll be talking with Aaron Anderson, an SEO and link building expert whose company Link Pitch which prides itself on offering link building services done the right way. With a focus on scalable outreach oriented link building, Link Pitch is completely obsessed with building high quality, relevant links that benefit their customers' sites for the long term. 

Jane Singer  01:03

In this podcast, Aaron will be discussing how link building works and why it is critical for every website to have backlinks. The best way to build those all important backlinks even for brand new websites, and key mistakes companies make when outsourcing their link building. 

Jane Singer  01:20

While connections play a vital role in driving website traffic, they are equally important when you need to find and recruit top talent. One firm with seriously deep connections is Asianet consultants. Since 1988, Asianet has been working in partnership with its global clients to help them make the right strategic hires, they have a well earned reputation for being able to fail, even those difficult to fill positions. So if you need to recruit new talent, or you think you might be doing that soon, head on over to their website. That's Asia net consultants.com. Asia net consultants.com. I'll leave a link in the show notes. 

Jane Singer  01:57

Now let's sit down with Aaron and find out how to start building the right backlinks for our business. 

Jane Singer  02:04

Thank you so much for joining us here on a seat at the table. 

Aaron Anderson  02:07

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. It's um, it's my pleasure. 

Jane Singer  02:10

I think that what you're addressing is really interesting to so many people in our audience, because even though we're hopefully past the pandemic, I think everybody's realized the importance of being able to better market their products online. And it's something that a lot of people struggle with. Because it's complicated. It seems simplistic, but there's an awful lot that goes into it. 

Jane Singer  02:33

So I think that what you're talking about with regard to SEO is something that very few of us really understand as well as we should. So with regard to that, what do you see, from your point of view, that most people are either getting wrong or misunderstanding when they're trying to either implement or improve what they're doing with SEO? 

Aaron Anderson  02:57

I think the first thing is that SEO isn't necessarily right for every business to pursue as a marketing channel. Okay, The first thing to do is based on asking if someone is searching for this, and if you can show up for that relevant results. But there are certain times I get people reaching out to me, or maybe they're a startup, and they're kind of introducing a very new interesting product or, or service that maybe is something new or different. 

Aaron Anderson  03:26

And there's not going to be a lot of people searching for something if they don't really know that it exists. So for those kinds of businesses, it may or may not make sense or like in specific b2b niches, it's so niche that yeah, there's just not a lot of people searching for that. So there are certain types of businesses where the investment and the time it takes to rank, you know, may not make a ton of sense for that business to pursue that as a marketing channel. 

Aaron Anderson  03:52

So that would be the first thing I would say. And I think the second thing that a lot of people kind of get wrong with SEO is just the problem with SEO is that a lot of people when they try to hire people to help them, it can be challenging because the industry is difficult to navigate. If you don't know what you're looking for, it's hard to know who to trust or what is actually important, because everybody's gonna say, Well, this is what you need to do X, X and X. 

Aaron Anderson  04:18

And so a lot of people, I mean, almost, you know, it's so common to get clients that have hired multiple agencies in the past and had multiple negative experiences, and then they have a fair bit of skepticism because of like, okay, it seems like nobody can be trusted in the industry. So I think that is one thing that a lot of people get wrong - and that's a hard thing to navigate. 

Aaron Anderson  04:40

But yeah, just kind of maybe they're hiring their company, for my perspective is that SEO is challenging. And it's hard to do. If you aren't an agency that does everything. You know, it's hard to do everything well. So the same company that's doing your social media marketing, they may not necessarily be the best to also do SEO

Aaron Anderson  05:00

Yeah, like, so you kind of have to find someone you can trust to kind of help you navigate because yeah, otherwise, it's quite common for people to get in with companies that maybe aren't necessarily doing the best work.

Jane Singer  05:12

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Now you're an advocate of link building. We what makes them so important. And maybe even before we dive into that, perhaps you can quickly explain what exactly is a link?

Aaron Anderson  05:26

Yeah, sure. So the way that I like to always explain to everybody it's kind of simplistic, but I say when when you type something to Google, you know, Google has millions of options of websites, and they can serve to the user. So what is Google looking at? What's the criteria they're using to determine what search results to show you? And, and to be simplistic about? There's two main things. 

Aaron Anderson  05:49

One is content. It's the content of okay, what did that person write, and what do they want, either they want information or product or whatever service, and then they go out, and they look for websites that have that are going to give that user what they want. So they're evaluating the content of the query, and they're evaluating the content on the website and trying to make a match just in terms of intent. That's the first element. 

Aaron Anderson  06:12

And then the second element is okay, now that they have all these websites that match the intent, there's still hundreds or 1000s of them, how do they determine which ones to serve up and a lot of that is going to come down to trust and authority. And trust, the main way that trust is determined on the internet is by a backlink. So if you think of it, like you know, in university or whatever, when you're writing a research paper, and the professor says, Be sure to cite your sources. 

Aaron Anderson  06:43

Now, this is like make sure you include at the bottom, all the places you got your information from and whatever will on the internet, we do that maybe not thinking that it's citing a source, but just when you're reading an article, and it references the New York Times, and you can click on the the text and it takes you to the New York Times. So that's a backlink. And that is essentially a vote of confidence. Because the most respected websites tend to have the most backlinks to them. 

Aaron Anderson  07:09

People talk about them, they link to them. And so if you start a brand new website, nobody knows who you are, you have no backlinks, like Google doesn't know to trust you. You're a very established website with a lot of backlinks like New York Times like Wikipedia, like these big, you know, sites that just have a lot of links to them. And that's respectable. And so that's kind of the main idea behind backlinks is that if you build backlinks to your site, helps Google better understand and better have like to trust what you're saying. 

Aaron Anderson  07:40

And there's a lot that goes in there, like who is linking to you like if someone, for example, in your specific space, if someone is an authority in that space, and they're linking to you, then that link is more powerful than just like a random website linking to so it takes into consideration all the backlinks that go into you, and then who those are from. So if it's from a site that it already trusts, and it's linking to you , that's better to help you look trusted. And so yeah, that's basically the importance of backlinking. 

Jane Singer  08:09

That's interesting. Now, how do companies that are just getting started, right, or they may not be just getting started, but they're getting started implementing a backlink strategy? What can you do? Right, let's just say that you have a website, you have content on there, you haven't been going after backlinks, you just been putting your text on there, and calling it a day? What do you do? How do you get started on that?

Aaron Anderson  08:36

Sure, I think some of the easiest kinds of approaches that you can use are to, you know, first, I would say leverage existing relationships. So this would depend on the type of business but let's say, let's say you're an e commerce Store, and you sell certain products will oftentimes the products, the people that make these products, they have their website, and they say, Oh, you can find our products at these online retailers, and then they link to the different stores that their products might be available. And maybe they're not linking to you, because you've never asked them and you know, things happen business people have a hard time keeping on top of things. 

Aaron Anderson  09:15

So if you identify, Okay, let's look at all our suppliers or, or whatnot, and you identify those opportunities and you reach out like there's a very high chance they will, they will link back to you. So those are the kinds of opportunities that you can any type of business you can just look at, okay, who do we know currently, that might have a website and that would be willing to link to us and can we reach out and then another part of that which is kind of an extension of the same thing is what they call testimonial link build link building. Okay. 

Aaron Anderson  09:47

And this is where you've seen many businesses where maybe it's a software and they'll have testimonials of people that use the software as Oh, this has changed my business or whatever and then the link to the business that has left that review. So sometimes if you can look through, okay, let's see, like what types of services or? or companies do we use for different things? And are there any opportunities for us to give, give out testimonials, in return, get a link back. So I think those are some of the first kind of ways you can start, just by looking at, you know, what you already have, and just trying to reach out and make sure that you're getting a backlink from those relationships.

Jane Singer  10:28

Right. So you would have to put a link to that particular text on your website, to that other company's website, and then they would have to agree to accept that link to their website.

Aaron Anderson  10:40

No, it's, it would be the other way around. So rather than us linking to them, we'd be reaching out to them and saying, Hey, we see on your website, you have this page that shows your, your suppliers or, or whatever, and we're not included, so you want them to link to you because that's the vote of confidence, right? Because when you read it, when you write content on your site, you can link to whoever you want, and no one's going to, everybody's going to be happy that you're linking to them. Right. So yeah, that's getting the other people to include a link to your can give you that vote.

Jane Singer  11:17

Right. Right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And what about when you see sites that link to other content on their own site?

Aaron Anderson  11:26

Yeah. So that's a very normal part of the internet. And that's kind of why Google uses that as this sign of trust, because people link not even understanding or knowing the power of the link. They're just the writing and content and the referencing things that they're aware of, or that they know or that they might recommend. And it's not even, it's not something that they're intentionally thinking, Oh, I'm gonna give this other site this link to, you know, it's just, they're just being helpful with their content. And just, if they reference something they want to show, like, link to what they're referencing, so people can get more information. 

Aaron Anderson  12:03

So that's a totally normal part of the web. And if you're an established brand, and people know about you, you're gonna get a lot of backlinks without asking for them, right? Because yeah, people are just going to link to you naturally. And that's totally normal, and you will link out to others as well. And sometimes you can use that, for your benefit, you can just, you know, sometimes that people do these things like oh, the top experts in my field, and maybe they mentioned them, and they link to them. And that's something that maybe in the past, you didn't recognize the value. 

Aaron Anderson  12:37

Well, now you can reach out to all of those and say, Hey, just wanted to let you know, we include you on our list. And it'd be great if you could either share it on social or maybe link back to it, and sometimes the link back like maybe they'll have a press page or something. And they'll say, Oh, these are articles that were We were included on, right? So there's things like that you can kind of leverage if you just need to understand the value of the link, then you can at least try to take advantage of those opportunities, content, maybe you're already writing.

Jane Singer  13:07

Right, right. Now, what about when you see companies that are linking to another article on their own website? Do you know what I mean? What's the benefit of that?

Aaron Anderson  13:20

Yeah, we refer to that as internal link building. Right. Right. Right.

Jane Singer  13:23

So what would be the use of that? In other words, why would that be advantageous?

Aaron Anderson  13:29

Sure. So there's something that people refer to as link juice, basically, when you get a backlink, it sends some juice or some energy or some, some value. And so basically, when you're getting links to your site, there's going to be certain pages, they get more backlinks than others, right. And so when you link internally, like you reference your own page from your site, and you link to it, it helps to pass that authority and value around to the different pages of your site so that they can all benefit. 

Aaron Anderson  14:03

Okay, because if a page only has one link, you know, from one page to your site, maybe like Google, like Google takes the same signals of like other sites linking to as a part of it as like a benefit. But if you link internally, they take the similar signals. So if you link to a certain page a lot, they recognize that as this must be an important page, or have a lot of value, because it's being referenced a lot. Where if there's certain pages that you're never linking to, maybe they think it's not as important. 

Aaron Anderson  14:31

So yeah, that is a separate strategy that generally kind of falls under the umbrella of more like on site optimization. Okay. But it is an important aspect that, you know, yeah, when you're getting backlinks or just when you're referencing content, when you're writing your own content, referencing other content on your site, is a good practice to be doing.

Jane Singer  14:51

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Now, everybody wants to grow faster. Everybody wants things to be easier. From your experience, what's the easiest link building strategy, at least for companies to get started on?

Aaron Anderson  15:08

Yeah, I think I think kind of what I've referenced before was kind of leveraging some of those existing relationships would be the first place to start, you know, really kind of taking advantage of what you're already doing. But it kind of depends on the business because some businesses, you know, I guess the trick is just recognizing the backlinks are important. And then seeing how it might fit into what you're already doing. Right. 

Aaron Anderson  15:36

For example, some companies, maybe they have a PR firm that they've hired that's doing PR for them. And PR firms don't always recognize the importance of a backlink. So they may give you coverage. But then sometimes that coverage doesn't link back to you. So if you're aware of the importance of the backlinks, and you can put a strategy in place like, hey, every time we're getting coverage, every time we're being mentioned, we want to reach out and say, hey, you know, Thanks for including us, can you also link to our site so people can can find us? 

Aaron Anderson  16:09

So I think there's things like that that you can do, just by recognizing, okay, this is something that is important. And we have to make sure that anytime wherever being mentioned or anytime we're hosting some sort of sort of event or anything that, you know, we want to be getting backlinks from from this coverage or, or anyone talking about us.

Jane Singer  16:31

Okay. Yeah, I think that really makes a lot of sense to start that way. Start with what you have, so to speak. Yeah, for sure. Now, should companies be looking to outsource this? I mean, a lot of people outsource social media. What about outsourcing a campaign just to build backlinks? Is that something that you would recommend?

Aaron Anderson  16:51

Yeah, I think it depends on the business, and the value that link building might have for that business. Okay, because sometimes people think, oh, I need backlinks. And then what they do is go on to Fiverr. They buy a $50 gig that says I've built them 10,000 backlinks. And, you know, if you just think, oh, I need backlinks, and you just go look for a cheap option to build your backlinks. Like there's a lot of risk in that. Right. 

Aaron Anderson  17:17

One risk is, you know, you're just wasting your money and it won't do anything. And the other risk is it could actually damage your site's visibility. And so it's something you do have to be careful about need to understand, okay, a very simplistic way to look at it is most of the backlinks, like if you're building backlinks, generally the vote of confidence comes from a person rise from somebody else, like learning about your company and thinking it's valuable. 

Aaron Anderson  17:45

So if someone's selling 10,000 backlinks for $50? Well, you know, this is some automated way of building backlinks. That isn't that it's not coming from 10,000 different websites all knowing learning about you and giving a link to you. So I think you just have to have that basic understanding of like, okay, well, that seems weird, how are 10,000 different websites learning about me, right? And as long as you kind of have a balanced approach, you know, then it can be something good to outsource. 

Aaron Anderson  18:16

But it depends on the business, you know, because you may invest into link building. If SEO is a channel, it's important for your business, like an online business, where SEO is an important channel, then yeah, investing into backlinks can make a lot of sense. But if you're like a small business maybe, or they're like, in a very specific niche, there may be other things that you'll get more value in investing into outsourcing.

Jane Singer  18:42

Okay, now, just tell me for a few minutes, what, what link pitch does, what does your business do specifically?

Aaron Anderson  18:49

Sure. So we do link building through email outreach. So basically, we would bring on a client, and then we would identify, Okay, what approaches would make sense for this business, and then we identify other websites that we can reach out to, and pitch a link and try to get links back, we can only take on certain types of clients, because not every business is going to have either good enough content or resources on their site that other site owners would find valuable, right? 

Aaron Anderson  19:21

So if your all your content on your site is commercial in nature, like every page of your site, you're trying to sell something, it's hard to reach out to another website owner and say, Hey, look at this valuable content on my site when they look at and they say okay, all that's doing is just pitching and selling your own company, like what's the value to me? So generally, in order for this outreach to work, you need to have informational content that's purely to help people, like a free tool or there's things on your site that make that a viable approach. 

Aaron Anderson  19:53

But so yeah, we only take on clients where we can see that you have great content or you're great resources that we can use, and then we can manage the outreach process to get that content in front of other people. So that they are aware of it and can link to it.

Jane Singer  20:09

Okay. Yeah, I think that's probably something that's very valuable for companies, because to try and do that yourself has got to be massively time consuming, particularly when you don't have expertise in it, right?

Aaron Anderson  20:21

Yes, it's time consuming. There's parts that are tedious. And then yeah, just understanding what you're looking for. Because sometimes when you're identifying websites, you have to make sure that that website is legitimate. And sometimes, there are a lot of websites out there that are really good at being deceiving and making it look like legitimate website when it's not necessarily so yeah, it can be, it can be a bit challenging.

Jane Singer  20:45

Yeah, I think that leads me to the final question. And that would be when you're embarking on this kind of a strategy of link building. What are the red flags and the pitfalls that people need to be aware of?

Aaron Anderson  20:57

Sure, I think, yeah, like I was referencing, there's something that we call a link farm. Okay. And that basically means that, you know, they, it's a website, and the whole purpose of the website is to sell backlinks. 

Aaron Anderson  21:12

So if you outreach them and say, hey, you know, here's this great content, they say, Okay, thanks for reaching out, if you want this, this link on our website is going to cost you, you know, and the cost can range from $50. Up to people might call you $3,000, for the end, so they'll the, you know, they'll just ask for money. And, there are a lot of people that pay for backlinks. Wow. But if you do, you have to be aware of the risks involved there. So many sites, that they just throw up a website, they throw up content, specifically for the intention of getting people to outreach them so they can sell them backlinks. 

Aaron Anderson  21:51

So that that is the business model, the business model is to sell backlinks. And Google tries to identify these, and then basically ignore their links or discredit their links. And so I think if people sometimes it's an easy trap to fall into, if you start doing outreach to there's a lot of those websites, or if you're going to hire someone to do this for you, and they send you a list of websites and prices like this is the list of websites I can get links from. And these are the prices, that is something that I would be very hesitant about. Because generally, the sites where you can easily get links from at those price points a lot of the time, they're just link farms. And so those would be things I would advise against people pursuing.

Jane Singer  22:41

So if you're linking to a credible site, I mean, do you pay for those links? I mean, is that even some? I don't know. I can't I mean, wouldn't that typically be something that you wouldn't pay for that the other site would be looking to link to you? Or? I'm not explaining it very well. But I mean, typically, if you're doing if you're a credible site, and you're trying to link to another credible site, for example, that may have mentioned your product, or you've mentioned their product, is there typically a financial exchange there?

Aaron Anderson  23:13

So there are a lot of salesmen. So yeah, when you link out to someone, you know, I mean, links are a normal part of the internet. And so most reputable websites are not charging for the majority of the links that they're making. But there is a large industry of people. And sometimes maybe like, if you want to get a link from Forbes, maybe there's certain writers, right, maybe Forbes is unaware, but the writer will take money to include a link in an article or things like this. 

Aaron Anderson  23:48

So there is a large industry of people figuring out how to make more money from their efforts. And if they have access to a website where they can insert links, whether it's a writer or an editor or different things, there is quite a big industry of people doing this. But you know, most reputable websites, you know, from my experience doing outreach, they're reputable websites generally aren't willing to take backlinks for money if they do, it's like a sponsored, there are companies that will do these sponsored posts, but it'll be kind of like they'll mention that, you know, there was financial, they'll put there's certain things you can add to the LinkedIn to say basically, oh, this was a sponsored link. So there are some signs that you can do that show like, oh, this was sponsored. 

Aaron Anderson  24:35

But yeah, there's plenty of people linked for purely for financial reasons that won't show it outright. But that's why I say like, the more respected the website, generally, the more hesitant they would be to just take money to add a link.

Jane Singer  24:52

Right. Yeah, I think that I think you're right about that. And that's usually the case with everything, right? That if you're credible, what You do for money is being put forward as this is the service we sell. And the other things are the services that we do that enhance what we sell, and they're not for sale. So I think that's yeah, I think it's good that you brought that up. Well, go ahead.

Aaron Anderson  25:15

Oh, yeah. But there are these, you know, like, if you're like, some people kind of just wrap it under the advertising package, like, Oh, you want to advertise with this large, like, magazine website, or whatever? Oh, yeah. Well, we'll do this, this feature on you, and it'll include a link. And maybe this is like a $5,000 feature when it includes a link. So that's like part of the package. Right? 

Aaron Anderson  25:38

So yeah, those things. And some people can charge a lot of money based on what the feature is. And, you know, so there are these kinds of opportunities, but, you know, generally, and that's if that's, that's viable for your business. And that works, then. That's up to you. But I think the important thing is to just stay away from companies where their only business model is to sell the link. I would avoid this. Yeah.

Jane Singer  26:02

Well, Aaron, thank you so much for sharing so many insights. I have learned a tremendous amount from you about SEO and backlinks things that I've never really known, despite having tried to research a lot of this over the years, how can people connect with you? I think a lot of people would be very interested in taking a further look at what you do.

Aaron Anderson  26:22

Sure. So I have a link building agency that I run, that's at link pitch.io. Okay, and you could find us there and reach out to me on the contact form. I also recently launched a podcast that's all about link building. It's called Let's Talk link building. And yeah, I tried to interview different people doing link building and different approaches and kind of see how they're doing it. So yeah, either way, you can also reach out to me by email, just Aaron at LinkedIn pitch.io. So those are the best ways to get in touch.

Jane Singer  26:56

Well, perfect. I'm going to include those links in the show notes, so that people will be very, very easily. And I want to thank you again for taking the time to join us here.

Aaron Anderson  27:06

Yeah, thanks a lot. It's been fun.

Jane Singer  27:10

I'd also like to thank our sponsor, Asia net consultants, Asian that's a specialist in recruiting top talent in Asian markets. Since 1988. Asianet has been working in partnership with its global clients to help them make the right strategic hires. They have a well earned reputation for being able to fill even those difficult to fill positions, learn about how they can help you find the best talent by heading over to their website. Asianet consultants.com. That's Asianet consultants.com. I'll also leave a link in the show notes. 

Jane Singer  27:41

Thank you for joining me here on a seat at the table. If you enjoyed this episode, or learn something from it, I would love to hear about it. If you'd like to support the show, please hit the subscribe button. And if you can take a minute to leave a review on Apple podcasts or other channels. That would be fabulous. 

Jane Singer  27:58

Don't forget to check out our podcast website https://seatpodcast.com.  If there's something you'd like to share ideas, suggestions or comments, please feel free to reach out. I would love to hear from you. Thank you again for joining me and being part of our international community. I'm Jane Singer, and I'll see you in the next podcast episode.