Search engine optimization continues to play a crucial role in getting your content in front of more eyeballs. Staying on top of new SEO trends and best practices, however, can be a real pain – especially for companies with limited resources.
The trick is to focus on the few things that do remain constant in SEO. One of those constants: the power of backlinks. By having the right websites linking to your own website, you can give yourself a boost in the search engine results page (SERPs). The opposite is true, too: Bad links can take you down a notch.
Auditing your link profile can help you get a better idea of who’s linking to you. That way, you can see if you’re doing something right or discover any red flags. Here are some of the links you should be wary of:
Too many Irrelevant links: Are you in charge of a hospital site but most of your links come from unrelated sources (e.g., tech or pop culture sites)? Something fishy is going on. Similarly, if you find that your website is doing really well in a country that’s outside of your target market, you might want to look into that. Google’s Disavow tool is a convenient way to take manual action against unnatural links to your site.
Too many weird domains/urls: If a lot of backlinks have similar formatting – like “article” or some other generic term appended to the url – then there might be some shady linking going on. Links should look natural – not like they’ve been made from a machine. If you spot this happening a lot, it’s likely you’re dealing with links from a content farm or some other unethical entity.
In short, anything that looks strange in your reports deserves a closer look. If something pops up too much or too little, do some more digging. Odds are there’s nothing wrong but then again, it could be something bigger.
For help with auditing your link profile, contact the experts at Wax Custom Communication at waxcom.com or 305-350-5700.