Links are the SEO king
Without exaggeration, a website’s external links are still the most important factor in ranking websites on Google. Still, just ordering press releases in the
media is not enough. The process should be approached thoughtfully and responsibly, considering the nuances of promotion in the niche and the result of competitors.
For example, you have chosen priority commercial pages that should turn traffic into leads and sales. How can you estimate how much money you will need to invest in their promotion? This is where Ahrefs, a service for complex website analysis, can help.
First, we assess the project’s current situation using the Organic keywords report, sorting the keywords from the most frequent to the least frequent. At this stage, we want to see if there are any promising queries for which we want to rank higher.
For example, the pages of the services of a moving company are in TOP-60, and it is too early to promote them with links for the most frequent queries. The TOP-30 positions in Google tell you that your page suits TOP and you just need to put the links.
Next is the matter of technique. We analyze each request and see how many links we need to put on their pages. This is how the primary link strategy is made to get results. For example, let’s take the most frequent query from the screenshot above, “moving company,” and see how many links the pages in the TOP 10 have:
At first, we can see that not all pages in the TOP have links. The 8th and 9th places are without them. However, according to this report, we can make an additional conclusion on the value of DR (Domain Rank). It shows how much the site’s main page is pumped with links. In this case, sites 8 and 9 have a pretty high indicator (59 out of 100), giving them a “head start” in the promotion and first places in some search queries, even without links to internal pages! However, if you want to enter such TOPs with a young site, you will definitely need linkbuilding.
To avoid analyzing each query, you can find a competitor you want to be equal to and repeat his linkbuilding path, only 20% faster. In Ahrefs, you can do this with the Organic competitors report:
For example, you have chosen a competitor, which turned out to be canadamoving.com. Let’s see how to replicate their strategy. To do this, go to Ahrefs in the Backlinks report and sort the links from the very beginning of the site creation:
In this example, we can see that they did not engage in linkbuilding for the project’s first year. Still, they started to implement linkbuilding in October 2019 actively. For example, they put more than 10 links at once only in October. Analyzing the site from month to month, we can make a competitive link strategy to repeat their success.
In general, the first result of your actions with links should be visible after a month – the promoted pages should gradually “creep” to the top for the keywords you have chosen. It is important to note that SEO has no linear actions and 100% predictable results. If you have chosen the right competitor, correctly evaluated the key queries, and promoted pages, you are highly likely to get new customers to the site.
Content is the SEO queen
Even 10 years ago, the attitude to texts in SEO promotion was technical and based on writing the “mink fur coat to buy” keyword query in each paragraph. Such content was created not for the user but for Google. It was placed at the bottom of the page not to scare users with its illogic and dryness. Over time, the search engine has taken the vector to “sites for people.” Therefore, it required the texts to become optimized for SEO and interesting, vivid, structured, useful, and responsive to the user’s request. This became a turning point in the work of SEO specialists and copywriters.
In 2024, it’s hard to answer the question of which of the website ranking factors is more decisive – links or content. Let’s figure out how to cook them together.
Here’s the case. You want to promote pages to the TOP, but now they are in TOP-60, far from the TOP-10. It is not clear at all how to proceed. If technically the site is all right and critical errors are not found, you need to look at the quality of the text.
- Texts are a must on category pages in e-commerce
Remember the texts at the bottom of the pages in online stores? Well – they are there for a reason, and they are vital!
Most e-commerce sites now aiming for the TOP lack the following – placing quality text at the bottom of every category or even priority product page. This is because Google generally doesn’t consider pages useful if they don’t have a text block (the more, the better).
- If you’re not e-commerce – analyze your competitors and identify the impact of content
Let’s go back to analyzing the site from the link block and add a text ingredient here – let’s look at the sites in the TOP for the query moving company (promotion region – Canada):
You can look at the Words column for an initial assessment of the text necessity on the page. It shows the number of words on the page in the TOP. In this case study, it clearly shows how important content is. The site from position 9 wrote text of as many as 4,000 words and got to the TOP without even linking to the page! The site from position 5 used a combination of links and text. This approach shows the importance of using both tools to achieve the goal and higher positions.
For success, it will not be enough just to write text. It is mandatory to use keywords and LSI, which are thematic words that the search engine considers mandatory for a relevant text. Text analysis can be ordered from a content agency, or you can try to do it yourself with the Surfer SEO service.
Now you know that you can achieve results by choosing SEO promotion as a channel for attracting customers in 2024. Focus on two main factors – links and content. See you in the TOP together with Links-Stream – a service that will help you build a quality link profile for your site!
