What is netlinking in SEO?

Netlinking, also called off-site linking, is a strategy built by collecting backlinks between websites. The external links pointing to your site are among the criteria that help your pages rank in search engines. Before you chase volume, though, quality has to come first.

It is the quality of your netlinking that can lift the ranking of your pages. That is why you run a netlinking strategy at all.

This article is here to give you the keys to strengthen your SEO with that strategy.

The role of netlinking, or why links still matter

SEO has changed a lot, and links still matter for search rankings. They are one of the signals used to judge the quality of your page content. Sites with many external links have a better chance of landing on the first page of results. That is why link building is strategic, and why it has to follow a few rules.

Links also say something about your company’s reputation in its market. Well-known companies and sites pick their link targets carefully. If your pages show up in those lists, your brand sits in a stronger position than competitors in the same space. Once your off-site linking strategy is in place, the links give the site authority. That helps it rank in the SERPs, and it is one of the things that can bring traffic.

Search engines do not treat every link as equal. Quality usually comes down to four main criteria:

• the source page and the target page should cover the same topic, or you lose coherence

• the site that hosts the link already ranks well in the SERPs

• the link sits in a strong position on the web

• the match between the anchor text, the keywords, and the content is solid

The different netlinking strategies to put in place

There are several ways to create links pointing to your site. Here is a tour of the options you have.

Buying links

Buying links is common, but it still has to be contextual and it still has to meet the criteria above. Whenever you can, prefer natural links. The goal is to earn high-quality links. That is how you grow your reputation with people in your industry and convince strong sites to place a link for you.

Writing quality content

One reliable way to earn backlinks is to publish excellent content that actually adds something. Linkbaiting, or earning links naturally by writing useful pages, is the recommended path. It also takes time and a lot of work. Hiring a web writer is a good way to delegate a task that sits at the center of your netlinking strategy.

Reviews from professionals and specialists

Another strategy is to put your products or services in front of specialists in the field. Those specialists can be bloggers or columnists. When they talk about you and your company, they give you visibility. Their reviews also feed your online reputation and can improve your brand image. It is even better if you get a contextual anchor on their pages. You can, for example, offer to write an article on their site in exchange for their contribution.

Building partnerships

Building quality partnerships is a strong way to create a strategic association. You can ask bloggers to test your products, or negotiate a link exchange. You can also work your network to find sites willing to place backlinks to yours. Ask partners, clients, suppliers. That is how you land on sites that belong to people in your industry. Topic match is a deciding factor, because thematic fit is what makes the links relevant.

Reclaiming broken links from other websites

You can also hunt for broken links on other sites with the right tools, then try to reclaim them. W3C Link Checker is a practical tool for finding dead links on a page directly online. It is fast to use.

Once the broken links are identified, filter the ones that match your page content. You can also create content for links that fit your topic. Then contact webmasters and offer high-quality resources so they can repair the links.

A netlinking strategy through internal links

Creating internal links is a method that works and has a track record. The technique is to link to the pages you want to rank from your own pages. The main benefit is that you connect those pages and make the site easier to browse. Internal linking belongs in any netlinking strategy. That is how your internal links get optimized for SEO (organic search).

Do not forget the basics, even when you are the one creating the links. One parameter is the choice of the referring page. Its quality still matters for the transfer of link juice, even if both pages live on the same site. The links also need to be visible enough to send traffic. That is why you place them on quality pages whose content has real value.

To create internal links under the right conditions, you need a system of connections between your pages. Start by identifying the keywords you will use as anchor text. Research tools will help you find keywords that are both relevant and popular. Then create content from those keywords. Finally, contextualize each link by choosing the anchor text carefully.

Tips for tracking your netlinking strategy

How do you track a netlinking strategy as it evolves? Whatever approach you chose, you need at least some follow-up if you want it to work. Tracking the links that point to your site is how you measure the strategy and improve it. That evaluation covers many parameters. The key indicators are:

• the number of referring domains

• the number of inbound links (backlinks)

• the quality and relevance of the links, especially relative to your area of expertise

• the visibility of the links

• the choice of anchor text

• the country the links come from

As for tools that track whether your netlinking strategy is working, you have plenty of options. The most common are:

• Ahrefs

• Majestic SEO

• Open Site Explorer

• Linkody

• Link Detox

They tell you how many links point to your site. They also show which sites recommend you, which pages get recommended most, and which anchors are used.

Netlinking strategy: finding broken links

What is the real point of checking for broken links?

The check is essential, because this kind of link hurts your ranking. Links are one of the signals Google uses to judge the quality of your pages. In practice, Google’s algorithm expects a travel site, for example, to link out to hotels, destinations, events, and so on. That is how the search engine establishes whether a link is relevant. If the link is broken, that process never finishes. Google cannot judge relevance, and the target site loses out.

Broken links also damage your site’s reputation and image. A 404 error that shows up too often, or stays up too long, suggests you are not looking after the site. You risk losing traffic and seeing a high bounce rate. Repeated errors hit your online reputation.

Even when you are careful about how you create links, they are never safe from a problem. You also cannot guarantee they work when they live on a referring site. That is why you need to detect broken links. Online tools do this systematically, because a manual check takes too long and you can still miss something. Options include Xenu, Brokenlinkcheck.com, Vérification-des-liens.com, Linktiger.com, and others.

These tools let you choose how often to check. The default frequency is 3 days. They send a notification email to the site owner and the content author when they find broken links. When there is a problem, they also suggest alternatives. You can choose the type of content to scan (pages, comments, articles) and its status (published, draft). You can even choose which links to check.

Do not delete every broken link on sight. Some of them may sit on high-quality pages. In that case, try to recover the links by contacting the webmaster of the referring site. For internal links, the issue may be a simple error, and a correction is enough. If you cannot fix them, then remove them.