Niche-Relevant Backlinks

One of the most misunderstood strategies for building backlinks is niche backlinks, sometimes called niche edits or link insertions.

When deployed correctly, niche-relevant backlinks can get you a lot of SEO value by boosting organic traffic from search engines. It’s faster than trying to organically attract links and easier than guest posting to other websites.

That’s especially true when you work with a digital marketing agency that can use niche-relevant backlinks as part of a broader SEO strategy that includes other quality backlinks, high-quality content, and technical improvements.

SEOButler’s niche edit services are designed to save you time and effort, making it easier to boost your site up Google’s search results pages.

What Are Backlinks?

A backlink is any link to your website, no matter where it’s found. Broken links count, too. Backlinks can be from social media platforms, blogs, directories, or any other site.

Backlinks in articles are typically linked with “anchor text.” The anchor text is blue when unclicked and purple after clicking.

You can use a number of free SEO tools for backlink analysis, or you can work with a digital marketing agency.

It’s not hard to attract backlinks naturally. You’ll probably get some organic mentions and some relevant links in the local news and on social media. But businesses also have to be on the lookout for relevant backlink opportunities to balance out their backlink profile.

Relevant backlinks are links that make sense for your organization. If you’re a dog groomer, a link from an animal rescue group is a relevant backlink, but one from a cigar bar probably isn’t.

Google analyzes the pages on your site with the acronym EEAT. That stands for:

• Experience. Pages should be written by someone who has experience with the product or service.
• Expertise. Web pages should be written by someone who really knows their stuff.
• Authoritativeness. Authoritative websites are those highly valued by others in the industry.
• Trustworthiness. A web page should be HTTPS, not HTTP, and all the information provided should be factually correct.

Search engines determine the quality of the sites providing you with referral traffic, too. If your links have good EEAT, that improves your SEO.

What Are the Three Types of Backlinks?

SEOs divide potential backlinks into three piles: tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3:

• Tier 1: These are the best, most reputable places to link back to you. Think legitimate news sites, magazines, and blogs by true industry leaders.
• Tier 2: These websites don’t have as much trustworthiness or authority as tier 1 sites but can still be somewhat useful for SEO. Think less well-known blogs, industry directories, and local directories.
• Tier 3: Spammy websites that should never link back to your site. Think hacked sites, spam sites, and the like.

You should build niche-relevant backlinks only with tier 1 sites. With these high-quality links, you get the most return for your time and effort.

Tier 2 sites are less important in SEO than they used to be, but they can still be an effective element in a link-building strategy.

You can link tier 2 sites to a tier 1 site that links to your company. By boosting the tier 1 site in Google’s search engine results, you indirectly boost your own SEO.

Tier 2 links are a great strategy to use in conjunction with niche-relevant backlinks – you can really enhance their reach!

What Is a Good Example of Backlinks?

Backlinks are all around you online! Every time you share a news story with your Facebook feed, you’re building a backlink for the news organization.

The next time you read an article online, pay special attention to the links in the text. Some probably link to other stories on the site, but others may link back to news sites and even commercial brands.

What Are Niche Edit Backlinks?

Niche-relevant backlinks are a subset of backlinks. They involve you (or your SEO agency) finding suitable websites that could benefit from a link to your website.

That may seem inefficient, but there are actually a lot of backlink opportunities in techniques like broken link building.

Some sites in the same industry may already be linking to you, but they have a broken link or dead link. Closing the broken links is a benefit to you, but it also benefits the linking site, as well.

Broken links aren’t the only opportunity. Other sites may be mentioning your company but not linking to your site and giving you referral traffic. This is another easy fix, and many publishers (though not all) are happy to add a link.

You can also try to get your site listed in a list of industry resources. For example, if you’re in industrial safety and you have a great cheat sheet on following a government regulation, other websites may be happy to post a link.

Your Backlink Profile

Good backlinks start by researching your backlink profile. How many relevant backlinks do you have, and how do they compare to competitors’ backlink profiles?

This backlink analysis can help you spot opportunities for relevant links. Perhaps you need more geo-relevant backlinks from other sites in your community or region. Perhaps you’re not able to attract links in your specific niche because your content’s not quite good up to par.

Niche edits are best for targeted traffic – that is, traffic from your target audience, the people who are more likely to purchase your product or service.

Along with research on your profile, you should also do research to find relevant websites for high-quality backlinks. You probably already know the major websites in your same niche, but there may be some slightly smaller sites you haven’t thought of.

Niche-Relevant Backlinks vs. Guest Posts

Niche-relevant backlinks’ closest cousin is probably the guest post. These are short posts written by you and hosted on other websites. Your post includes one or more links back to your site.

Website owners sometimes struggle with getting enough content, so most are happy to have someone take an assignment off their plate. Each website has its own guest post policy, though, and some can be quite strict.

You’re also responsible for producing brand new content, whether you write it yourself or have the writers from SEOButler help you out. It’s in your best interests to find niche-relevant websites to host your posts to increase the likelihood of reaching your target audience.

Niche-relevant links and guest posts each have their pros and cons, but both can work together as parts of a coherent link-building strategy.

Why Are Niche-Relevant Edits Divisive?

Niche-relevant backlinks sometimes have a controversial rap. People sometimes think they’re too dangerous or put you at serious risk of a Google penalty.

Google is pretty thorough in its linking policy; paying for links, link schemes, and any linking activity designed to manipulate a page’s PageRank can cause a site to incur a penalty. This seems like an extremely broad policy, but it’s worth taking a look back at SEO’s past.

If you were on the internet in the ’00s, you probably remember vast, sprawling blog networks that tied together sites that didn’t really go together. You may remember pages stuffed with links, too.

These practices were both attempts to manipulate search engines that Google got wise to. Google stamped them out because these practices didn’t add any value for its customers.

Google’s primary goal is to provide good value (which means high-quality searches) to its users. If your link-building focuses on adding value and providing high-quality backlinks, chances are you won’t incur a Google penalty.

You may not be so lucky if you use non-relevant backlinks or spammy tactics. That’s why working with a white hat digital marketing agency like SEOButler can help.

Black Hat, White Hat, Grey Hat

Talking about niche-relevant backlinks inevitably leads to a discussion of white hat/black hat SEO.

White hat SEO agencies stick within the letter and spirit of Google’s policies. When it comes to link building, they tend to be more conservative. To the white hat optimizers, niche-relevant backlinks, important as they are, still aren’t worth taking too much risk.

Black hat SEO firms concern themselves more with results than Google rules. Black hat techniques are becoming less common as Google tweaks its policies, but they are still used with niche backlinks, and they can get some results in the short term.

Most SEO firms are neither completely white hat nor black hat. Rather, these grey hats use strategies that make sense and match their risk tolerance and the risk tolerance of the client.

Make sure you’re on the same page as your SEO agency when it comes to risk tolerance around niche backlinks.

Are Niche-Relevant Backlinks Safe?

Provided that you’re focused on backlinks within your niche and making sure the links are to high-quality content, you don’t have too much to worry about.

It’s low risk to get niche-relevant backlinks, but that doesn’t mean 100% risk-free. However, that’s true about many commonly used SEO techniques.

Ultimately, Google doesn’t reveal much about its algorithms. Changes are frequent, too.

That’s why it’s so important to be on the same page as your digital marketing firm. You don’t want them taking risks or using techniques you’re not comfortable with.

What Are the Benefits of Niche-Relevant Backlinks?

More Control

When you write a guest post and pitch it to a relevant site, you’re not sure how the SEO is going to do. Hopefully, you’ve done the research to find sites related to your niche that have good SEO, but you honestly don’t know how your piece will perform.

Acquiring niche-relevant backlinks gives you more control. When you pitch a niche-relevant backlink, you already know the SEO for the page. If it’s a resource list, informational article, or another piece of “evergreen content,” the ranking in search engines should even improve over time.

You’ll also get to choose the anchor text for your link. You often don’t get that kind of control with guest posts.

No New Content

The best part of niche-relevant backlinks is that you’re not responsible for any new content. That saves you time and money.

With new content, even if you have your marketing firm write an article, you still should read it to ensure the information provided is correct. This is especially true in the medical, financial, and legal sectors.

Guest posting also requires you to have other websites accept your pieces. Depending on the website, this can be difficult.

But you don’t have to worry about that with niche edits. You can pick a piece that you like and find trustworthy already.

Niche-Relevant Backlinks in SEO Strategy

Slow and Steady

Some link-building services promise that they can boost your website’s search engine rankings in mere days. At SEOButler, we think differently.

That’s because obtaining fast results typically means relying on black hat tactics like shady link networks and paying for links. Once Google finds out what you’re doing, your website will be blacklisted and your search engine rankings will plummet.

One relevant link related to your niche will always be better than a dozen irrelevant ones, especially in the long term.

The best approach – especially with your link-building strategy – is to look at slow and steady growth that builds on your previous SEO campaigns. That’s the surest way to net stable growth in organic traffic over time.

Link-Building Strategies

Niche-relevant backlinks are far from the only game in town when it comes to link building.

Tier 2 edits, guest posting, and local SEO like directories are hugely important, too. Think of them like tools in an SEO toolbox – each works well in certain contexts.

Local SEO and link building also come together in finding geo-relevant backlinks.

SEOButler understands how these tools can work together to produce high-quality backlinks. Get in touch today to learn more!

The Role of Content

You could have the best strategy for niche backlinks, but if you don’t have valuable content to link to, you may find it hard to get takers.

After you’ve tackled the low-hanging fruit like broken link building, directories, and press releases, building niche-relevant backlinks means asking others to link back to real (and hopefully relevant) content on your site, like an article or blog post.

Building backlinks to your site depends on offering valuable content that people want to link to. That content should also be optimized for search engines with relevant keywords.

If you’re not a writer or just have a lot on your plate, consider working with a digital marketing agency that can write the articles for you.

SEOButler has the tools and writers to help you produce fantastic content that supports your link-building efforts. Contact us to see how.

Niche-Relevant Backlinks and Social Media

Google and other search engines rely on signals from shares, mentions, and likes on social media platforms to determine how relevant your content is. Depending on what industry you’re in, these signals can greatly affect your SEO.

You can, of course, share links on your own social channels, but you can also work with a digital marketing company to help seed these conversations. This service is typically referred to as “social signals.”

If you’re placing a backlink on niche-relevant websites, why not boost your SEO even further with social signals? This two-pronged approach is great for getting eyes on an older but still relevant piece.

Why Choose SEOButler?

Experience

A digital marketing firm should be able to back up its claims with a track record of search engine success. At SEOButler, our track record is almost a decade long.

No matter what your challenges with SEO, we can help. We can help you see how you stack up against competitors’ backlink profiles and help you scope out link-building opportunities.

We’re happy to show off our portfolio or put you in touch with customers who used us for valuable niche-relevant backlinks.

Knowledge

Identifying relevant niche sites for placing your edits requires a lot of industry knowledge. You want to work with a digital marketing agency that really understands your sector of the industry.

SEOButler has been around for close to a decade – a long time in the SEO world! We’ve helped out law firms, contractors, salons, wellness brands, and more. Chances are we’re familiar with your industry and the best relevant websites for your link placement.

Finding niche-relevant sites and determining which anchor text to use can be difficult, but we can help.

We’ve helped dozens of business owners boost their organic traffic through niche-relevant backlinks. Contact us and see what we can do for you.

Transparency

Digital marketing firms use all kinds of strategies (some more above-board than others) to place niche-relevant backlinks. It’s incredibly important that you and your digital marketing firm are on the same page and they understand your risk tolerance.

SEOButler creates an individual strategy for all of our SEO clients, including those who get niche-relevant backlinks. We’re also happy to show you our past strategies for clients in the same niche.

We don’t make any placements of niche-relevant backlinks until you’ve okayed them. Our measured approach helps you gain the value of building niche-relevant backlinks without too much risk.

Full-Service

Niche-relevant backlinks are great on their own, but they work best as part of a holistic SEO strategy, including content, social media, and on-page SEO. If your digital marketing firm only focuses on link building, you’re missing out.

SEOButler is a full-service digital marketing agency with content, link-building, and social media services. That allows us to develop custom strategies for our clients that make use of multiple SEO tools.

Quit getting your marketing services a la carte and go with an agency that can do it all.

Contact SEOButler Today!

If you’re a website owner focused on improving search engine rankings, get in touch today to see what SEOButler can do for you!

Schedule a free consultation or fill out our contact form online to start building your custom-tailored SEO strategy today.