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Hi business owner! (No worries if you’re not one.) I’m Maria Katarina Johannesson, a plant-obsessed (sometimes a plant-dancer) link builder here to guide you through the digital universe of backlinks.
Why a title that brings up the concept of cosmic dance?
Because backlinks are not just random or isolated elements. They are part of a larger, dynamic (I love that word, side note) system that connects different websites and helps them work together to improve visibility and authority online.
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Imagine your website as a garden that looks a bit sad at the moment. Not much going on, maybe you’ve tried to grow some vegetables that just didn’t work out……
Then picture a good friend of yours (who has green thumbs) giving you a seed and saying, “This is such an awesome seed, it will turn out to be this amazing plant if you take care of it correctly.”
You decide to plant it.
This is a very simplified way of describing link building.
The seed in this case is a backlink.
And that good friend of yours is a relevant and trustworthy website.
You want to plant seeds in your garden from people you actually trust and seeds that would fit in it.
To do that, you need to:
What I’m trying to say here is that not all links are equal, and you want to be associated with the right sort of websites.
If you get enough seeds in your garden, they can turn it into a real WOW-garden full of cool plants!
You already know that link building is a part of SEO.
But!
It’s so much more (yes, I know I am biased, but hear me out) 🙂
One of the first things I like to mention (but often overlooked) is that link building can help you build strong relationships with niche-specific organisations and influencers.
It raises brand visibility, makes your brand more trustworthy, and… this will lead to more conversions and more profit for you!
(A caveat here: you have to have other SEO factors in place such as internal linking, clear URL structure, etc.)
But it all comes down to getting those good seeds from good people (who actually have green thumbs).
I’ll admit – it’s hard to write a guide about backlinks without getting too technical.
My remedy to that is… you guessed it – a cosmic dance with plants.
So, we have already established that you don’t want to plant random seeds in your garden.
They have to make sense for your business.
Let’s look at some things that can help you decide that.
You have probably heard about the concept of “Domain Authority” (DA). It is a way to understand how strong a website is. This metric was introduced by Moz and ranges from 0-100, with 0 being the lowest.
In Semrush, the “Authority Score” is a similar metric. To determine the figure, these third-party tools look at various factors such as the unique number of links pointing to the main domains.
If you have an account on Moz or Semrush, you can easily check the Authority score. Or you can do it for free here: Moz Domain Analysis
But! I don’t want this article to get too technical (cosmic dance with plants, remember? 😊) and I’m writing this from the perspective that you don’t have any of the paid tools.
So let’s forget about the technical jargon for a moment and do an example:
The Solar Company Example
Let’s say you want to rank for “solar panel.”
Ideally, you would want to find a page that is about solar panels (because then that page is already optimized for that keyword that you want to rank for and is going to be more effective than one that isn’t).
You also ideally want to be the only link on that page because the more outgoing links there are on a page, the more authority is being shared.
The actual backlink comes from the anchor text which is the clickable part of the link that takes you to another website.
In a perfect world, you would get the exact anchor text (solar panel) to squeeze the most amount of authority from the page, but that rarely happens – and that is okay!
An anchor text that is “best solar company in the world best quality” doesn’t look natural so you would want to avoid anything like that.
The point here is that you want your anchor text to look natural. You don’t want to use “solar panel” over and over again as your anchor text but want to change things up.
One tip is to always think about “what is this page about”.
Let’s say that you have found a target page that you think would be a good fit – to what page on your own website would you want a link? (this has to do with where the money is which I will talk more about soon).
But that perspective can help you decide what anchor text to use.
What other things should you look out for?
And this means…..
Yes!
They end up giving you a random seed to plant in your garden.
And if it’s really bad – it is one of those bad seeds that just causes a lot of problems.
You want healthy, relevant and trustworthy seeds in your garden.
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Without a business perspective tied to the link building campaign, it’s kind of doomed to fail. So, ask yourself – what products or services do you want to sell more of?
Because then you can focus on creating link building campaigns that support those products/services.
And another perspective I quickly want to mention is:
How do you want to be perceived? What makes you unique? What is your brand image?
For me; yep – you guessed it – I’m the plant lady that builds backlinks.
The point is that you can leverage whatever makes you unique when you are contacting people.
I know… this is an article about backlinks and then I come in and tell you to stop thinking about backlinks.
But it will actually help you build better links in the long run.
Think about the following:
Tadaaa!!!
1-4: link opportunities for you
What do I mean with link opportunities?
These could be possible prospects, people you could do outreach to, and they may give you a link.
Now you have 2 options
Option 1 often takes longer time but the value proposition is 1 to an endless amount of seeds.
The value proposition for number 2 is 1 to 1, you get quoted or maybe write a guest post.
A website gets content from you in some form and in return, you get a link back.
At this stage, you know who you are, what your most profitable products or services are, how to assess a website and also who you want to be associated with.
There are many different ways to build links:
and maaaaaany other methods.
But the goal here is to actually focus more on humans than on links.
Because what we will be doing now is trying to connect with another human being.
How can you find suitable prospects?
Think about:
Based on these conclusions – write that down and try to find email addresses for those companies (not info-addresses).
By this time, you should know what sort of “link tactic” to use.
Let’s say you want to write a guest post and have a list of 50 prospects that all make sense for your business and target audience.
Now it’s time to start to breathe, think and act like a copywriter and be creative and NOT start the emails with “I hope this email finds you well”.
The point here is to do something that makes the person on the other side of the screen, laugh, smile – feel SOMETHING.
You don’t accomplish that by saying things like “I love your blog”.
I like to think like a kid when I write emails, and I often go for the obvious things. If I have read that someone has visited a country that I genuinely think is a cool place, I say that.
Kids have no filters, they do unexpected things.
Do unexpected things. Be personable.
In your outreach, think about the person you are reaching out to.
Don’t make them work. If you want to write a guest post on their website. Give examples of three titles that you think would be a good fit for their site.
If you can sprinkle a little bit of you/your brand that feels genuine – even better. If you can add them on Linkedin (without being creepy) – awesome.
And don’t forget to do follow up emails!
Negotiating skills are also good, but as a business owner I’m sure you already master that:)
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In this guide, I have outlined how you, as a business owner, can find, build and attract good and relevant backlinks to your website. If you start to see your website like a garden and only try to plant healthy seeds that would fit in your garden – you will win.
Never forget the human aspect, align everything with your brand and your most profitable products or services.
Backlinks are not just random elements – they are part of a larger system. They connect different websites, helping them work and grow together, making your website and brand more visible and authoritative.
So even though backlinks are on the table, the best links are built when you think about people first, plants second and links third.
Let’s go and plant some seeds!
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