Stop Panic Linking and Take Stock of What is Really Going on Behind the Scenes
How much do you know about your backlinks? Not much I am guessing, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing because after reading this you will hopefully be interested enough to find out. Everyone is talking about creating more backlinks via forum posts, article writing, Twittering, link exchanging and a host of other activities, but seldom do people stop to analyse the state of their present ‘links’ situation; all they know is they want more.
Ask an SEO Agency to Run a Backlink Report
Before embarking on achieving more backlinks you should carry out a thorough investigation into your current backlinks situation. Ask your SEO agency to run a report of all links pointing to your website. You may even be able to get this service as part of a free SEO consultation if you haven’t already hired an SEO firm. The SEO consultation will uncover the following aspects of your current backlink situation. :
- Search Engine
- URL Address
- Anchor Text
- Page Rank
- Traffic Rank
- Link in
- Link out
- Follow Y/N
Surprise Surprise…
The SEO consultation will almost certainly throw up a few surprises. For a start you might find that you are linked from some undesirable websites; you will want to contact these and become unlinked. You will see that some of your best links are in fact ‘nofollow’, meaning you get no extra SEO points with the search engines for the existence of that link. You will also get a feel for the anchor text (the text housing the embedded link) websites use when they refer to your site, this will enable you to adjust your linking strategy going forward. Your SEO agency will be able to see things is this report that you won’t, they will also have advanced software with extra features and better search accuracy, it is best to steer clear of freebie software as it really doesn’t give you the whole picture.
Knowing Where You Are at Means You are 50% of the Way There
Every good optimization company knows this and it really is the truth. How can you know where you are going if you don’t know where you are? You must analyse the fertility of the land before you start planting this year’s crop. Assess your present linking situation in depth before you continue panic linking. Everyone wants more links, but how many websites know the number of links they already have and the measurable quality of these links. For all you know it is your links holding you back from improving your SEO. Ask a professional optimization company to run a backlinks report for you today.
