Off-site links, usually called backlinks, are an essential part of WordPress SEO work. Many beginners are not sure how to build backlinks or where to start. Today we will look at off-site link building for WordPress SEO from several angles.
Principles to follow when building backlinks for WordPress SEO
The linking site should be relevant to your own site
The content of the site where you publish backlinks should have some relevance to your own site. The reason backlinks matter for SEO is recommendation. When a site links to you, it is effectively recommending your site. If a site in your own niche says your site is valuable, that matters. If a completely unrelated site says your site is good, it is just noise, and search engines will tend to ignore that kind of link.
The linking site should ideally have more authority than your own
Sites that publish backlinks vary in quality and authority. To make the idea easy to understand, we can assume that high-authority sites are usually more professional. If a more professional site recommends you, that suggests your own site also has a certain level of quality.
So during WordPress SEO work, backlink building should not be done blindly. Just because it is easy to publish a link somewhere does not mean you should. Before doing it, think about whether the site is actually related to your content.
Friend link exchange tips and things to watch out for
When talking about WordPress SEO, friend links are impossible to avoid. Even though their exact effect is always debated, for a site that takes SEO seriously, friend links are still important.
My own principle with friend link exchanges is quality over quantity. Some people may say that if their site has low authority, they need to lower their standards to find enough links. In fact, good friend links are not as difficult to find as they may seem. The key is to be proactive.
There are two ways to find good friend links for your site relatively quickly.
Find sites through search engines
Search for the keywords your own site targets. If a site can be found and indexed for those keywords, its authority is usually not too weak. Use the contact details on those sites and reach out to the site owner directly. That approach often brings solid results.
Follow the friend links on related sites
If the sites you find already maintain a friend links section, those links have usually already been selected by the site owner. Review those links one by one and contact the owners directly. The fact that you found their site through a friend link section suggests that they also take link exchanges seriously, so they are more likely to read and respond carefully to your message.
Whether the exchange succeeds in the end depends on the gap in authority between your sites. If the gap is too large, the other side usually will not agree to exchange links, and that is understandable.
