Ranktracker + uSERP

Why great backlinks are important

So, why are backlinks such a critical component of SEO? Why are they needed to rank in competitive spaces?

Backlinks are endorsements of your content, your website, and your brand, in the eyes of search engines.

Straight from the mouth of Google, backlinks serve a strong purpose:

The internet is a web of links pointing to and from one another. And Google’s algorithm heavily accounts for backlinks from reputable sources.

Time and time again Google has stated the importance of high-quality link building:

Backlinks from prominent websites signal to both readers and search engines that your content is valuable, trustworthy, and important.

Securing these links back to your website passes authority back to you, increasing your ability to rank for competitive keywords.

Without great backlinks, it’s impossible to rank for competitive keywords.

In obscure niches, you can get away without backlinks. But in these spaces, that’s also your biggest opportunity to secure long-term rankings: building a backlink moat that will take competitors years to catch up to.

How to identify pages on your website to build links to

So, you know the importance of links. But, how do you identify which pages on your site to build links to?

Homepage? Service or bottom of the funnel landing pages? Or should you stick to just top of the funnel blog posts?

Your approach here should contain multiple strategies and serve multiple unique goals.

Building links to your homepage is always a great idea from a brand perspective. And earning homepage links enables you to rank faster for keywords across the board. It also increases branded organic searches and traffic.

However, it’s not always enough. If you’re in very competitive spaces, like SEO tools, project management, and just about anything software related, you’ll also need to build links directly to pages ranking for keywords beyond your brand.

I’ve worked with 100s of brands from small, brand-new startups to companies like monday.com, and one things remains true: you need to build links to key pages, not just your homepage, if you want to rank long-term.

A mixed strategy is often your best bet:

1. Build links to your homepage. Always seek to get branded mentions, quotes, etc.
2. Build links to key top of the funnel pages: establish your brand as the leading source of valuable information on a subject.
3. Build links to keyword-driven, high-converting pages. Turn basic landing pages into content-driven landing pages. Then, build links to them and rank them for valuable searches, like “best CRM for lawyers” to drive traffic that turns directly into revenue.

Identify top pages that fall into these two categories beyond your homepage. Look closely at which pages drive the most effective business value for you. Conversions, paid users, newsletter signups.

Using Ranktracker, build a list of your pages that are holding organic rankings outside of the top three positions

Then, sort their importance by conversion value to your business.

For example:

Page 1: bottom of the funnel keyword. 500 search volume per month. Converts at 10%.

Page 2: top of the funnel keyword. 5,000 search volume. Converts at 2%, but only on a lead magnet, not a paying customer yet.

Despite having 10x less search volume, the bottom of the funnel page, if ranking first, would drive significantly more revenue and direct business value.

Make these your priority when building links.

Link building strategies that actually work

Most link building tactics don’t work anymore. Broken link building is nearly impossible to scale. HARO is more competitive than ever, and you rarely get a following backlink from it. Email outreach is extremely unreliable.

So, what can you do? What strategies actually work?

Right now at uSERP, we see three distinct strategies working to build truly valuable links at scale that don’t get removed, replaced, or become ‘link rot.”

1. Content-first approach

Submitting long-form content assets to websites in exchange for a link.

But wait, isn’t this just guest posting? Not quite.

Traditional guest posting is often useless. You Google “guest post marketing sites” and see that 100 of them are accepting guest posts. The problem? Your competitors are doing this too.

These sites are often low quality and accept all submissions.

These are the sites you want to avoid.

Instead, your content-first approach should target the highest quality websites online with personalized approaches.

Identify 100 websites you’d love to get a backlink from. Now, spend the time to build relationships with their editors. Pitch them a post that fits their audience and provides real value.

Craft an article worth publishing that isn’t purely self-promotional. It should be 2,000+ words, fully optimized, and something that would cost the company $1,000 to write on their own. Make it so worthwhile they are eager to publish within days.

While time consuming, this approach is the best way to generate backlinks from the biggest websites in the world. As an example, here’s a post I wrote for BigCommerce 5 years ago. It still ranks first page for the target keyword years later without any updates. And it earned BigCommerce hundreds of links, all of which passed more pagerank to my own website, compounding the power of this single backlink 100x:

This is how you win at link building. Identify good websites. Provide content that genuinely will rank for target keywords. You’ll then earn a powerful, high authority link. In addition, as that content ranks, it will pick up tiered backlinks of its own, passing authority back to you.

2. Digital PR approach

Taking a digital PR approach to link building involves sourcing unique data that other journalists and bloggers want to reference in their own content.

It’s a powerful way to earn hundreds of backlinks with a single piece of content and build brand authority.

For example, at uSERP, we surveyed over 800+ people in SEO to get their thoughts on link building.

The study generated thousands of backlinks from hundreds of unique websites, including Neil Patel, Content Marketing Institute, and hundreds more:

With unique data that others in your industry don’t have, you can pitch journalists with ease.

3. Relationships

Lastly, relationships are king in link building. The more people you know and can provide value to, the better.

Relationships give you exclusive access to link building opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't get.

You can effectively skip the spam inbox messages and reach directly out to your contacts to pitch stories.

When push comes to shove, the highest impact link building strategy is doing the boring, hard work: build real connections at scale for years.

Ranktracker Recommends uSERP – Outsource Your Link Building to uSERP

(uSERP is an SEO link building and strategy agency that drives organic growth by acquiring normally unreachable backlinks.)

About uSERP

“I started uSERP because other link building services were fundamentally broken. I was trying to grow my own businesses and organic rankings, but nothing I bought moved the needle. They sell you hundreds of links per month that are low quality and don’t actually improve your organic rankings. They buy links from site masters which is directly against Google guidelines. I decided enough was enough, and launched uSERP to help companies get powerful backlinks that actually increase rankings, traffic, and revenue.”

Jeremy Moser, CEO of uSERP

uSERP helps software and technology companies, affiliate sites, and ecommerce brands scale organic growth through authority backlinks and performance-driven SEO.

Unlike most traditional agencies, they don’t charge vague “retainer” fees. They’re performance-based, meaning each dollar spent produces direct deliverables and high quality links for your site.

Their client roster is vast and impressive, catering to both smaller startups and publicly traded companies.

Their team is made up of 26+ experts in SEO and digital PR strategy, who work directly with you on projects. Hiring uSERP is like having a fully integrated team at your disposal.

uSERP has become a household name in the link building space by flipping the script on traditional link building companies:

They only acquire high quality links, and they never pay for placements or use private blogging networks (PBNs). Unlike most link building companies, they believe in quality over quantity, and strictly focus their efforts on high authority sites that you know, recognize, and love.

They’re able to acquire mentions on big sites like Qualtrics, G2, Crunchbase, BigCommerce, Shopify, and thousands more with a content-first approach.

With their white-hat approach, uSERP has been recognized as the leader in this space by the best in the industry:

What uSERP does

uSERP are experts at building top-tier links at scale. If you’re stuck in the endless loop of finding good quality sites to get a link from, sending cold emails that get ignored, and hoping that links flow in, uSERP can help.

Their time to results is within a week to earn links from DR70+, high traffic, branded company websites.

They’ve built the relationships, strategy, and expertise over half a decade to help clients get results fast.

Here’s what their clients have to say about the success they achieve:

uSERP’s Exclusive Ranktracker Deal: $6000/mo (normally $9,000/mo)

Ranktracker users get an exclusive deal in partnership with uSERP. Looking to outsource your link building efforts? uSERP is our trusted partner for fully outsourced, high authority link building and strategy.

uSERP never uses PBNs, and they don’t pay sitemasters for links. In fact, the sites they acquire links from don’t ever offer paid placements.

Complete with competitor analysis and strategy calls, uSERP can help your content outrank competitors and gain market share.

Reach out to the experts at uSERP to get started today, and tell them Ranktracker sent you: https://userp.io/start/