Google is constantly updating its search algorithm to keep users happy, the web safe, and businesses accountable. One of the most recent updates was a modification to the link analysis algorithm called “new crawler target.” This update made it harder for websites with low-quality content, such as those with irrelevant backlinks or heavily pimped sites, to rank well on Google.

It also made it harder for new sites that lacked backlinks to get discovered in general. This blog post will explore how you can enhance your backlinking strategy to achieve greater rankings in 2022 and beyond. While this is a challenging time for all businesses—especially e-commerce stores—that leverage SEO to drive traffic and sales. The good news is that by implementing the right strategies now, you can still achieve great results going forward.

What backlinks mean for SEO

Backlinks are hyperlinks that are connected to a site that point back to your site. When people link to your content from their websites, from social media posts, or from online article directories, that’s called a backlink. It’s one of the most important factors that Google uses to determine which websites are relevant to a user’s search.

Backlinks are critical for SEO. In fact, the more backlinks you have from high-quality websites with relevant content, the better your search engine optimization will be. When Google sees that other sites are linking to you, it knows that you’re an important website that people should be able to find. With that in mind, it gives you a greater ranking in the SERPs so more people can see your content.

Link transparency

Like all industries that rely on third-party participants, the link-building industry has been affected by the new high-risk penalty. One of the most visible changes that have been brought about by the new update is the transparency that has been forced on backlink providers.

Now, a business can easily verify if the backlinks they are receiving are natural or not. Since the update, the Google crawler has been programmed to show the real IP address where the backlink is coming from. This change is meant to be a deterrent for those who may be abusing the system and removing the anonymity that had made it easy for “black hat” marketers to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors.

Now, businesses that are earning legitimate backlinks can easily see who is linking to their sites and who is not. This makes it much easier to build a more diversified backlink portfolio. However, it is essential to conduct a detailed link analysis for your website at regular intervals to maintain diversity. You can choose a paid SEO tool like Rankwatch to make this task a breeze. The ‘Link Explorer’ feature of this tool creates a real difference in your analysis.

Build high-quality backlinks

As link transparency has become more common, businesses have been forced to start developing more creative ways to acquire high-quality backlinks. In the past, it was common for businesses to outsource low-quality content to “content farms” that would create articles about their products or services and then link back to the business’s website.

Now, this type of link building is easily detectable by Google’s crawler. To avoid detection, businesses have been forced to hire writers to create original content on their websites, do link building services to earn valuable backlinks to their domain or commission original articles from popular authors who have a large following on social media. This is a much more expensive and time-consuming solution than outsourcing content to a content farm. However, it also guarantees that the links that are being acquired are high-quality links that will help drive traffic back to the business.

Content quality and relevancy

Another change that has come about as a result of the new link building penalty is that businesses have had to start investing more time and money into creating quality content. Rather than simply purchasing links from the cheapest provider they can find.

Businesses are now finding that they need to start paying closer attention to the content that they are using to win links. That is achievable only when you update and manage your content at certain intervals. If there is heavy amount of content already published on your website, the task becomes harder. You need to generate fresh content on recent topics and update the older ones as well. However, you can choose reliable and paid software from many available in the market for managing your content after reviewing and comparing them.

However, it’s important to note that just because someone is linking to your site doesn’t mean that they are linking to your content. Rather, they are linking to a page that they think will drive traffic to their site.

For example, let’s say that a food blogger is working on a new recipe and wants to include a link to a product that is perfect for cooking the recipe. Instead of linking directly to the product page, the blogger might link to a review of similar products on Amazon or a recipe for a similar dish that also uses the product. This link is not going to drive traffic to the product page because it’s not directly pointing there. Instead, it’s simply driving traffic back to the blogger’s site.

Video Backlinking

Most people don’t typically link to the “about” page on their website. Instead, they link to their homepage or specific product pages. This works well if you are selling a few products.

However, if you are trying to build an e-commerce store with a wide variety of products, linking to your homepage is often not enough to attract customers.

To solve this problem, many businesses have started creating videos that include links to the products they want customers to purchase. They then share these videos on social media and encourage their followers to “like” or “share” the video. You can also link to these videos from your website.

Doing this will help you collect video backlinks and will give you a chance to link to products that don’t have their own pages.

Conclusion

As Google continues to update its search algorithm, businesses will have to stay on their toes to ensure that they’re staying compliant with the latest changes in their link analysis algorithm. However, if you want your business to thrive in the future, building backlinks is not enough. It’s also important that you take the time to create a proper plan to implement the right SEO strategies for your website.

And SEO is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that is why a minute and reliable SEO tool like Rankwatch can be your savior. That helps you remove all the hindrances stopping your website appear on the top of the search result page.

Besides, you need to work on creating high-quality backlinks. This doesn’t have to be incredibly difficult—but it will take more time than the quick and easy method of outsourcing to a content farm. There are many ways to build high-quality links, including creating original content, building links through social media, guest blogging, and creating videos that drive traffic back to your site.