Link building has always been an essential part of SEO and has evolved over the years into more sophisticated practices. In the beginning, link quantity was the goal; the more links you had, the higher your site was ranked on search engine results pages. 

Now, Google focuses on the quality of the link and not the quantity, and that is to make sure the websites that are providing valuable content will be ranked higher. As a result of this shift in the game, link building has become a long but crucial process in SEO. 

So, what is guest posting? In short, guest posting is publishing articles on someone else’s website. Outreach experts use this technique to increase brand awareness and earn backlinks to a site. Earning backlinks through articles on high authority websites can and will help with your organic ranking. 

Link building is very important, and Google considers it as one of the crucial factors to rank your website on the SERP. And still, there is this common misunderstanding that guest posting is just a link building tactic that’s not relevant these days, and they are not completely wrong - yes, it is a link building strategy, but guest posting gives you so much more, and it is very relevant in the SEO world.  

In this guide, I will take you step by step through Aloha’s process of link building.

Website Metrics

So, when it comes to doing the work - this is where Aloha does their homework right. We cover everything important when it comes to choosing the potential websites to work with. There are a few crucial steps to go through when you are filtering through your options, like the website’s traffic, keywords and DR, and we are going to explain each one -  so let’s get started.

Ensuring Niche

When you’re considering websites for link building opportunities, it’s important that you keep in mind your niche and what I mean by that is, making sure the website is topic wise aligned with your niche. Let’s say your niche is travel, you wouldn’t want to choose a website that’s topic is finance. So, you would want to make sure the website you are qualifying matches you niche wise so you attract the right audience for you. Also, Google pays attention to the kind of websites you link your website to. The more closely related a website is to your niche, the better the link will be SEO wise.  

Domain Rating (DR)

Domain Rating (DR) is one of the most important SEO metrics that was developed by Ahrefs that measures the strength and authority of a website compared to others on a 0-100 point scale, with 0 as the weakest and 100 as the strongest.

A high domain rating basically means that you can rank higher in search engine results pages, which ultimately helps you attract more visitors from other websites. Even though domain rating is not a direct ranking factor, a high domain rating means you are on the right track and that you are taking the right SEO steps. So if you want to improve your SEO results, you need to work on improving your DR.

So, when you are qualifying websites for link building, make sure that the websites you choose have a high DR, at least above 30. Obviously, the higher the DR the better, so when you link build with a website with a good DR your own website will attract more visitors from that website. “As the DR of a website that links to you increases, it will start sending more “DR juice” to your website. So your own DR may increase too.” - Ahrefs

With that being said, it’s important to say that if the website you’re qualifying doesn’t have an impressive DR but is super relevant to your topic and all the other metrics look good, then it shouldn’t be a deal breaker and you might want to consider publishing on that website. 

Traffic Analysis

When it comes to traffic, you obviously want and need websites with high and steady traffic. When you check the traffic of a website, it is very important to take notice of the amount of traffic. Obviously, you don’t want to post on a website that has very little traffic or none at all. 

You would want to pay attention to the traffic history to see if the website has steady traffic or if it had a huge traffic drop or just any extreme changes. The last thing you want to check is the traffic source. Depending on your target audience, you want to make sure that the majority of the traffic source is aligned with the audience you want for your website.

Example of bad traffic:

Example of good traffic:

Ranked Keywords

Another important step in checking a website for guest posting is to check the website’s keywords. You want to make sure that the keywords have some relevance to the topic of your article\link you want to post on and, of course, that the majority of the keywords are relevant to your niche. For example, if you want to post a link to an article about cosmetics, you’re not going to want to post it on a website that the majority of the ranked keywords are about video games. 

You also want to implement a word filter with the word Casino while checking the keywords and top pages to make sure that the website you’re looking into isn’t related to online gambling. Another pro tip on how to find out if the website you’re checking is related to online gambling is to use the “site:domain.com casino” search query. It will show you if that website has any casino related posts.  

But let’s say, If a review of a casino resort pops up in your search, it’s not a deal breaker because it’s not online gambling but rather a physical establishment.

Top Pages

This is another important step when you are checking if a website is right for your needs. For this step you can use tools like Ahrefs to find the website's top pages. You would want to look at the percentage of the top pages. It is good If the percentages are relatively low for each page because it means the website’s traffic is divided pretty evenly between the pages and if one page has most of the percentage of the traffic, but the page topic is relevant to you, then that website could be a good fit for you as well. 

But, if a page that has most of the percentage of the traffic and that page is not relevant to you topic wise, then you might want to reconsider this website for link building. 

Avoiding Farms

Let me start by explaining what a link farm is - a link farm is a website that its main purpose is to link to other websites. The owner sells links by adding them to existing posts or by guest posting, and it’s basically a money making machine for them, nothing more. 

Link farms usually look like regular websites, but there are a few ways to recognize them as they usually have poor quality content, a lot of suspicious external links, articles that have no connection niche wise and most of the time, they have a pretty basic or templated design for their website. 

Google’s algorithms are very active in picking up sites that are link farms, and link building from sites like these can harm your SEO score and even end up with a Google penalty. I know that link farms might look like a good idea in the short run, but in the long run, it is very unreliable. So do your future self a favor and avoid these kinds of websites.  

Final Thoughts

As you probably figured out by now, link building is a long but crucial process and is a very important part of an SEO strategy. 

We established the importance of going over and checking every metric a website has that’s important to the process to make sure we make the best choices when it comes to link building opportunities. From making sure the website has a good DR, a nice and steady traffic, and that the top pages and keywords are aligned with our niche to making sure that the website is not a link farm and that we always have our niche in mind.

Hopefully, this guide has helped you understand the importance of link building and guest posting and how much it can affect your SEO score. If you are still not sure if this service will do you good and if you should even bother, just say Aloha through our contact page.

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