How to Rank on Google with Link-Building and Backlinks

If you own a website, you probably wonder how to get your cybersecurity content to rank 1st on Google. We live in a competitive digital world, and even if the quality is excellent, it can be very tough and expensive to get your content seen. It’s important to know that one of the most important ranking factors are backlinks. Link building is the process of building one-way hyperlinks or backlinks to a website with the goal of improving search engine visibility. So what are backlinks? Do they work? And how do you build high-quality links that will drive more traffic to your site?

What are backlinks?

Put basically; backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Clicking on a link in a blog that takes you to another website, for example, is an example of a backlink. It’s very simple, but it has its tricks. Link building is not just a case of getting as many backlinks as possible. The quality of the backlink also counts. Each backlink carries its own authority, depending on its source. So a backlink from a well-known source literally carries more ranking weight than a website that no one has ever heard of. 

Relevance is a secondary ranking factor, so stick to only sourcing backlinks from relevant cybersecurity-based pages. 

Do backlinks actually work?

Yes! As you improve the site’s visibility, you should know that link building remains one of the most effective SEO tactics. Since Google continues to factor in high-quality backlinks to determine a site’s credibility, investing in a link-building campaign can potentially grant you more ranking and conversion opportunities.

In support of Google’s backlink ranking factors, an Ahrefs case study showed that pages without backlinks do not get any traffic. If you are investing in content, then those links need to be built into your content, and that content requires promoting. As part of this strategy, it would help if you also thought about building pillar pages into your website structure to make those backlinks easier to get. 

Common link-building strategies include content marketing, building useful tools, email outreach, broken link building, and public relations. Editorial links are proven successful with high click-through rates, high engagement, higher than average content consumption, and very high conversion rates.

Link building is a long-term investment

The Challenges

A hard fact of this job is that management and clients want results quickly, often asking for the impossible. All the while, other SEO marketers are claiming they can do your job! But the truth is, good backlinks are not easy to get – a challenge for most! Typically, a collective team works together to produce the result, which is good content promoted by people who know where to go.

So the process can be expensive, and it is labor-intensive – budgets to do quality link building needs arrangement with the acceptance that the ROI may not be as fast as you want.

The Work

Linking building is a combination of producing creative content and marketing it in the right way. Your compelling content for a specific cybersecurity audience needs to reach the right people. These are the security-based bloggers, journalists, and web admins, and they will feed it to their audience. There is a relationship there and a process to engage with them at the right time and create that all-important backlink for the provision of quality content as-a-service.

Summing Up Link Building

Link building is the practice of acquiring links to your website from other websites. In SEO, these links are called backlinks. Getting backlinks from high-quality sites can pass authority to your site and help you rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). There is no single approach to link-building, and getting each link may take a different path than the last. Creating strategies around unique and compelling content that resonates with your particular audience is an excellent place to start. Backlinks work like votes of confidence from other cybersecurity websites to say that your content is good. Over time these endorsements boost your ranking and authority, and your digital asset increases in value.

Further reading:

For more backlink gems and an introduction to pillar pages, take a look at SEO Guide: Backlinks by Michal Niebauer and Building Page Authority in Cybersecurity by Joe Pettit.