It’s really easy to do a Google search for “link building services” and find company after company mouthing off about link building, each one making far-fetched claims about how only they can help increase your web traffic.
What’s really uncommon is finding a company who can actually show you the steps they take to analyze your website and build customized, quality links that actually do help your website grow.
Hence, this article.
At Profit Engine, we pride ourselves in actually doing the work that link farms pretend to do—and we’ll prove it to you by showing you this ultimate guide to our link building strategy.
The first thing we do is define our objectives.
If soccer didn’t have defined goalposts, even the best players would have no idea how to proceed.
In the same way, we like to get really specific as to what we’re trying to accomplish with link building.
Here at Profit Engine, all our analysis and research serves to answer three basic questions.
This one is pretty self explanatory—it covers how many links you need to build that lead to your website’s main section. Optimally, you’ll have a landing page that answers common questions and points potential customers in the right direction.
This question determines how many links need to be built to specific pages—product pages, “About” pages, “Contact Us” pages, and so on. The most important pages you’ll want to build links to are your target keyword pages, which will be discussed in more depth below.
There are many different types of links you can create, including niche edits, guest posts, tiered links, and more. Many people aren’t aware that the types of links you choose to build actually matter—a lot.
Answering the three questions is a simple matter of finding your top three competitors and analyzing their websites to see how they compare to yours.
Using our scoring system detailed below, we’ll compare both the quality and quantity of your competitors’ tier 1 links, tier 2 links, and target keyword page links with those of your own.
By comparing your website directly to your competitors—as opposed to some abstract metric—our link building suggestions optimize your website to actually outrank those of your competitors, with time.
In order to really see how your backlinks compare to those of your competitors, we utilize a comprehensive scoring system that covers all aspects of link building.
The most fundamental pillars of a good backlink are relevancy and authority. Relevancy refers to how similar the link’s source website is to your own, and authority refers to how reputable it is. If the link is coming from a link farm, it will be low quality on all fronts.
At Profit Engine, we like to be consistent and unbiased—that’s why our link rating process starts with AI. We have our AI engine comb over your links and those of your competitors and assign it a score using link points and domain ratings.
The relevancy and quality of each link is decided via our “link points” scoring system. Here’s how it works:
If a link comes from a relevant domain, it gets 1 point;
If a link comes from a page with relevant content, it gets 1 point;
If a link comes from a page with traffic of over 1,000, it gets 1 point;
If a link comes from a link farm, it gets a maximum of 1 point.
Based on this system the maximum number of link points that a single link can get is three.
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Authority is determined via a Domain Rating (DR) score, and it works as follows:
DR 0-29 is for the lowest quality links;
DR 30-44 is for low to moderate quality links;
DR 45-59 is for higher quality links;
DR 60+ is for only the best, top-quality links.
Tier 1 links are the bread and butter of link building. These are links of the highest quality, and from the most reputable sources. When someone clicks on a tier 1 link, it will take them directly to your website.
For this first step in our analysis, we’ll compare your existing tier 1 links with your competitors’ tier 1 links.
Comparing links between websites is difficult—which is why not many people bother to put in the work. Does only the quantity of links matter, regardless of the source? Or should you take quality into account too?
Using our scoring system we detailed above, we make sure to take both into account.
Once we’ve determined both the link points and the DR score for every one of your backlinks and every one of your top three competitors’ backlinks, we compare them by building you a custom chart.
The screenshot below shows an example chart we built for dungeonsolvers.com.
First, we tally up the total number of link points for each of the four DR ranges. We calculate how many links you have in each range, and how many links your competitors have in each range (on average). Normally this process would be a slog, as you would have to make all the calculations yourself, manually. With our AI engine, however, the task becomes trivial.
If the number of links you have in each DR range are equal or greater than that of your competitors, you’re outperforming them. In most cases, however, our clients find they have some work to do.
In the bottom section of the chart above, you can see the discrepancy of link points—this is the difference between how many link points your competitors have and how many link points you have, for each of the four DR ranges.
For example, for the DR 30-44 range, the competitors, on average, have 21 link points. Dungeonsolvers.com has only 19 link points for that range. That means that dungeonsolvers.com needs to build enough links in the DR 30-44 range to get at least two more link points.
The goal is to get the discrepancy of link points to zero or less for all four DR ranges.
Tier 2 links are aptly named. A tier 2 link, when clicked, will bring you to a website that, in turn, has a tier 1 link that leads to your website. Hence the name “tier 2 links”—they’re a tier below tier 1 links.
A visualization is often helpful for understanding tier 2 links. See the below screenshot:
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Tier 2 links are obviously not as important as tier 1 links, but they’re a vital part of a full link strategy and cannot be ignored.
We compare tier 2 links exactly the same way we compare tier 1 links.
First our AI engine combs through and scores each tier 2 link, with link points for relevancy and quality, and a DR score for authority. Then we compare your tier 2 link points to the average of your top three competitors’ tier 2 link points, in each of the four DR score buckets.
For each DR score range, wherever the average competitor tier 2 link points exceeds your website’s tier 2 link points, you’ll need to build more links.
After we’ve analyzed your tier 1 and tier 2 backlinks, it’s time to take a look at the final piece of the puzzle: backlinks to your target keyword pages.
The first step is to decide what your target keywords are. These are frequently searched keywords that are related to your website. Ideally, you’ll want your website to be the top-ranking Google search result for those keywords.
These keywords should lead to specific pages of your website—not just the home page. For example, if you’re selling old-school t-shirts with fun designs, one of your target keyword searches could be “vintage graphic tees.”
In the same way we compare tier 1 and tier 2 links with those of your top three competitors, we’ll compare the links to your target keyword pages with the links to the top three ranking web pages for each of your target keywords.
For each separate keyword page, we’ll compare the link points of your page with the average link points of your competitors’ corresponding pages. We’ll find the discrepancy of link points for each DR rating range, and figure out exactly how many links you’ll need to build to match or exceed your competitors’ link points.
Let’s recap.
At this point, we’ve gone through your tier 1 links, tier 2 links, and each of your three target keyword pages. For each one, we’ve compared your link points (which determine relevancy and quality) with those of your competitors, in each of the DR rating ranges (which determine authority).
At this point, based on how many link points you need for each DR range, and which types of links you need to build, we’ll present a full link building strategy to implement over the next 6-12 months.
Here’s the high-level breakdown of our recommendations for dungeonsolvers.com:
There are clearly many different ways to build backlinks. In the screenshot above, we’ve advised dungeonsolvers.com to build niche edits, guest posts, and standard tiered links.
One of the key differences between Profit Engine and other link building agencies is that we don’t offer generic, one-size-fits-all link building tactics. We closely analyze your website and your closest competitors, and formulate a curated strategy deliberately designed to put your website on top.
Ready to get started building your own personalized link building strategy? Head to our services page or get in touch with us to get started.
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After years of experience growing brands just like yours, we know what gets results and what doesn’t. We’ll stop you from spending too much time, resources and money on backlinks that don’t help. We’ll stop you from building links on harmful or useless websites. We’ll use our AI Link Strategy to analyze your competition and give you a personalized action plan.
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