Netlinking is an effective tool for your visibility on the web. This technique consists of obtaining external links (backlinks) from third-party sites which redirect Internet users to your website.
What is a backlink?
Backlinks are links that point from a page on one website to a page on another website. Also called inbound or external links, they are distinguished from internal links (also called “anchors”) which connect two pages within the same site.
Backlinks allow you to gain visibility through SEO and gain traffic from another site. On the one hand, these links from reliable and authoritative sources (publishers, journalists, renowned companies …) optimize organic SEO. Google values the quality (and quantity) of backlinks to gauge a site’s popularity and help it determine how well it ranks in search results pages. On the other hand, backlinks represent an additional source of the traffic to a site that allows new visitors to discover the offers and potentially become customers.
There are different types of backlinks for which attributes (lines of code) are added that indicate their nature to search engines:
Nofollow and dofollow links. If you do not want to vouch for a site, but you still want to include a link to one of its pages, you can add the “nofollow” attribute to ask Google not to integrate them into its classification and indexing criteria. Conversely, the “dofollow” attribute indicates that you place your trust in the link to help optimize the organic referencing of these two sites.
- Editorial links. To provide more information and a better browsing experience, you can provide an editorial redirect link to another site.
- Sponsored links. Bloggers or influencers can promote your content on their site in exchange for financial compensation by adding the “sponsored” attribute to the backlink.
- UGC (User Generated Content) links. They come from comments left by Internet users on blogs, forums, online review sites.
Netlinking: gain visibility with backlinks
7 keys to success for effective netlinking
The success of a netlinking strategy depends on the quality (and quantity) of backlinks that link to your website. Here are seven keys to identifying the quality of inbound links:
- The inbound link must come from a recognized site, from a popular page on a relevant topic
- Favor links from old content rather than recent
- They must be exclusive and come from a single page
- The pages linked by a backlink must both deal with a common theme
- Link text must explicitly describe the destination content
- Diversify your media sources: favor several links from different sources rather than several links from the same site
- Bet on the quality of the backlink rather than the quantity
Be careful not to harm your e-reputation by using false or artificial links that could lead Google to downgrade you. This type of backlinks could come from suspicious sites that try to manipulate the ranking algorithms. They can also be paid links without the “nofollow” or “sponsored” attributes; or links hosted in poor quality directories.
Many tools allow you to analyze your netlinking and the quality of your backlinks such as Backlink Audit from SEMRUSH, Majestic, SEOBserver.
[Video] Evolutions of several sites thanks to the netlinking strategies set up by SEMJuice
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Netlinking, a pillar of SEO
Netlinking is one of the five levers of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Also called natural or organic referencing, SEO aims to allow a company or a brand to gain visibility on the web and optimize its ranking in search engine results.
To stand out from the crowd and maximize your online presence, professionals in the digital world are mobilizing to make your website your digital storefront open 24/7. Webmasters create your website and provide crawlers with the sitemap file while web designers design optimal browsing experiences. Web marketers weave internal/external linkages and deploy content marketing strategies that meet the requirements of readers and Google. Finally, community managers interact with your audience on social networks.
Activate these five complementary levers to maximize your online presence:
Netlinking: gain visibility with backlinks
Web crawlers and Google Bots are constantly scanning websites. They analyze them (loading time, updates, content, Html code, sitemap, etc.) then index them in the search engine results pages, the SERPs (Search Engine Result Page)
UX (User eXperience) is evaluated on the experience felt by Internet users who visit a website (visuals, design, ergonomics, navigation, accessibility, etc.)
Off-site: these are the external links that point to a website (netlinking, indexing in directories, partnerships, purchases of links or domain names, 301 redirects, etc.)
The on-site: these are all the content available on a website (integration of keywords in the URL, H1, H2, alt, strong tags, internal anchor links, etc.)
Social networks: all profiles on social platforms and social media, interactions with a community; but also Google My Business inserts, customer testimonials on opinion platforms, presence on route applications …
Netlinking is part of the off-site part of SEO and strongly influences your ranking on search engines. It is a tool that should not be overlooked at the service of your visibility.
And you, are you satisfied with your netlinking strategy? 🤔
Did you conduct an audit of your backlinks?
Do you have enough inbound links to your website?
Is your website well referenced on search engines?
Over to you in the comments!
