Author: Ryan Walsh

Date: 26/08/2025

 

Subject: Link building, organic search engine optimisation

All of us who have even a shred of SEO knowledge know that backlinks are extremely important when improving a business’s search engine optimisation.

Backlinks are a pivotal factor in determining whether you rank number 1 or end up in a lonely position 100 on Google’s search engine results pages.

So, in SEO, it doesn’t matter if you’re a manager for a global firm or a self-employed person having a bit of a go at improving your visibility yourself- all businesses will need more quality links.

However, this is an area where businesses often get it really, really wrong.

They can overoptimise, build the wrong type of links, and go off track by creating links from sources that are irrelevant to their business.

As link building and strengthening your business’s backlink profile are core pillars of search engine optimisation, we aim to educate you on how to improve your business’s backlink profile, rather than weaken it.

 

What is a backlink profile?

A backlink profile is just a list of websites pointing at your website.

It could be a super-long list or a super-short list of websites that link to you. It depends on how much SEO activity you have had underway since your website went live.

A word on buying a domain name

Not to complicate things, but this point is also super important.

Businesses sometimes buy domain names that another company has used before.

This means you should check the website’s backlink profile before you buy a domain name.

The reason is that the previous company may have been busy purchasing toxic links (spam links) and then made a hash of their link-building campaign. Businesses that have subsequently incurred a link penalty often ditch their domain name, which opens up the possibility that another company will later buy that domain name.

Just a little top tip: check your domain name before buying to look for toxic links.

 

Natural, diverse, well-built backlinks

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

That’s not just a random fact; it’s something you should consider when building links.

Don’t rush the process just because a manager says they need 10 links built by the end of the month.

Link building doesn’t or shouldn’t work like that; quality is the name of the game. It’s far better to have quality links than to start damaging your backlink profile by building spam and toxic links for the sake of it.

Think natural, think strong, think diverse, as these are the attributes you want.

Link building must be done correctly; otherwise, SEO can be damaged, potentially for an extended period. So much so, a warning message can appear in Google Search Console, which can sometimes say a manual action has been applied to the website, which means you’ve built toxic links.

 

Take your time, build quality backlinks

Why does a strong backlink profile matter?

With SEO, it can feel like you’re plugging away, spending countless hours, and you’re not seeing the fruits of your labour. This is with good reason, organic search engine optimisation is a slow process.

People often get frustrated and tired with the long wait for results, which is where the temptation to cut corners arises. However, businesses that cut corners, such as buying spam links, can suffer long-term damage to their search engine optimisation. This is especially true when a manual or algorithm penalty has been applied to the website.

 

Every link must be of quality.

Now what’s important is that Google and the other search engines “crawl and index” every link. This basically means Google and other search engines check every link to ensure they are of high quality.

Throwing in some spam links won’t work. Every link must be focused around this elusive concept of “quality”.

We use the word “elusive” for good reason, because most people don’t know what makes a good link from a bad one.

Our experts will tell you what makes a good link and what you really want to avoid.

 

The links you should be building:

The backlinks a business shouldn’t be building.

 

DA and “Domain Authority” score

First things first, what’s the domain authority score of the website you’re trying to get a link from- is it high?

You want backlinks from businesses which have a high DA score.

A word to the wise: DA stands for domain authority, which is a score from 0 to 100 indicating how strong or weak the domain authority is.
100 is strong, closer to 0, and you’re moving more into the territory of spam links.

The SEO consultant should use this as a first check, essentially a first tick off the list, as one of the ways to see if the backlink being built is quality or not.

 

Then you need to conduct a more in-depth evaluation of the website and ask the following questions.

– Is the content marketing of good quality?
– Are they specialists in their given area
– Is it a well-known brand/company such as the BBC?
– Is the information widely respected?
– For those with a good idea and feel as to what Google E-EAT means, does that website have a good E-EAT score?
– Is the company an authority, respected, and well-known?

 

Relevance

If you plan to sell robot vacuum cleaners, you will need links from tech websites and possibly robotic-related websites.

What would not be effective are links from, say, a football club, to your robot vacuum business, as the links wouldn’t be relevant to the industry. Therefore, the links you build should be from companies that are related to your business.

 

Anchor text optimisation

You need to write the anchor text so that it is white hat, well-written and diverse.

If you keyword stuff the anchor text, well, Google will spot this; it could trigger a penalty.

Remember that the anchor text should help readers of a page or article proceed to visit another page or product.

Therefore, if you’re writing about the best e-bikes of 2025, and you mention an e-bike with the most extended range, you could use anchor text within the article like this:

“We have also reviewed an e-bike that offers the longest battery range- click here to read that article”.

That anchor text is very descriptive; it will give Googlebot an excellent idea of what the page is about. It will also inform the reader about the page’s content.

 

Diversified

So you will want to obtain links from a wide range of high-quality websites.

What you don’t want to do is say just 100 links, coming from just one source/website.

You want as many links as possible, quality links, but from a wide range of sources.

 

What are the main benefits of owning high-quality links?

Good quality links are hard to come by; however, the benefits to a business can be vast when they have accumulated strong backlinks.

For instance, receiving high-quality links from numerous reputable websites with a high DA score, all relevant to your business, can significantly boost your Google rankings faster than most other methods of optimisation.

However, there is a fly in the ointment, so to speak: good quality links, especially those with very high DA scores, are hard to come by.

 

Brief history lesson about Google

Google’s algorithm still has its roots and foundations built on Google PageRank.

For those who don’t know much about Google PageRank, it’s essentially where Google first started.

It’s a bit like the Sega Mega Drive of game consoles. This is where Larry Page and other Google founders started to centre Google’s PageRank formula around the idea that businesses with more links should rank higher.

Google has since introduced additional spam filters (Google Panda and Penguin, to name a few) as part of its algorithm, aiming to eliminate spam.

However, the principles remain: more links, if they are of good quality, can help your business rank higher.

What does a good vs. bad backlink profile look like?

A good backlink profile will have:

– A lot of links from a diversified set of websites
– Links from quality websites
– Well-written anchor text (white hat)
– The linking website is relevant

 

What makes a bad backlink profile?

– Spam links
– Toxic links
– Overoptimised anchor text
– Too many links from just a small number of websites

 

Reputable

Using a high backlink checking tool is needed; however, the real test is whether the business is offering quality information. For example, is it a well-known brand such as the BBC?

If it’s not a brand, let’s say it’s an award company or a news website, then is that website known for offering high-quality information to its readers?

Is it a respected source of information in that business sector?

If it is, these are the websites you want to obtain links from.

 

Mixture of no-follow and do-follow backlinks

For those not in the know, backlinks fall broadly into two main categories: do-follow and no-follow.

Now, link equity refers to the value that passes through a link and can help improve another business’s SEO.

So, you might think, “Well, that’s a no-brainer; we just need mostly do-follow links,” but hold your horses for a second.

When it comes to link building, what you actually want is a “natural” set of backlinks.

This suggests that your business has invested significant effort in creating high-quality content marketing, as the links will have come from companies that have chosen to link to your content marketing because they approve of the work.

You don’t want it to look like you have bought the links.

Buying links is essentially an attempt to deceive Google into believing your business is more significant than it is.

Instead, many businesses that rank in the top 3 on Google have earned their spots through earned links.
.

Spam links are perhaps the easiest to build, yet should always be avoided.

Spam backlinks ultimately mean that a business will sooner or later incur a penalty.

A business can incur a link penalty, which can mean that, because the company has accumulated too many toxic links, a Google penalty has been applied.

These penalties are commonly called a “link penalty” or a “Google Penguin penalty”.

What ultimately means is that the business can experience a significant decline in its Google ranking after a penalty has been applied.

Anchor Text and why you need to vary it

The anchor text, for those who are unfamiliar, is the highlighted or bold text that you click on to follow a link.

The anchor text from an SEO perspective needs to be written in a white hat way. What does writing in a white hat way mean?

Well, it simply means the anchor text needs to describe the link accurately.

 

Here are some words of advice when optimising your business’s anchor text:

– Vary the anchor text- don’t keep mentioning the exact words or phrases too many times
– Use the anchor text as an opportunity to describe the page which the outbound link is pointing towards
– Only add outbound links in an article if they help the reader; don’t place a mass of links to try to improve the SEO.

Hire Walsh & Partners is your SEO agency:

We are one of the longest-established SEO agencies in the city of Cardiff. We can offer businesses fixed-priced organic SEO packages starting from one thousand per month.

For that fee, we take care of the business’s organic SEO in terms of technical SEO, content marketing, and link building every month.
To hire us, call our team today.