Before building links, it pays to make sure your site has the right foundations in place — solid technical SEO, quality content, and well-optimised pages. Links amplify what is already there; they are not a substitute for it. Here is what to check before you start. 1. Technical SEO basics Search engines need to be able to find, crawl, and index your pages before links to them can have any effect. A few key things to verify: Your site loads quickly, especially on mobile. Page speed is a ranki...

Not sure which pages to build links to? Here is a simple process to figure it out. Step 1 — Find your currently ranking keywords Use Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Search Console to see all the keywords your site currently ranks for across the first three pages of Google. You do not need a paid tool — Google Search Console gives you this data for free. Step 2 — Filter for commercial relevance From that list, pick out the keywords that are most commercially relevant to your business — the ones th...

A link gap analysis tells you roughly how many links you need to build to compete for a given keyword. Here is how to do it properly. The key principle — compare to sites with a similar DR to yours The most important thing when calculating your link gap is to find sites of a similar authority to yours that are already ranking in the top 10. Comparing yourself to a DR 80 site when your own site is DR 20 will give you a misleading number. Find the sites closest to your own DR that are currently ...

Anchor text is the clickable text that contains your link. The words used matter — both for telling Google what a page is about and for keeping your backlink profile looking natural. Using the same anchor text repeatedly, especially exact match keywords, is one of the most common link building mistakes and can trigger over-optimisation penalties. The other common mistake is following a generic formula — 20% exact match, 50% branded, and so on. The problem with this approach is that every search...

If your site is new or has a low domain rating, build links gradually and focus on authority before specific keyword/page battles. Our recommendations - Build links over at least a 3-month period rather than all at once — this maintains a natural link velocity - Focus on homepage links first — this builds overall site authority - Use a mix of anchor types: branded, URL, topical, and misc — avoid exact match anchors at this stage For new sites, DFY guest posts are the stronger starting po...