You and I both know that every private school has its “unsung heroes,” like the custodians, instructional aides, volunteers, and community partners. Just as these individuals work behind the scenes to ensure that your school runs smoothly and that students have the resources they need to succeed, backlinks are the unsung heroes of the web.
But what are backlinks? You want to think of a backlink like a vote for your private school website. When another website has a link to your website, such as a community partner or "mommy blog," it's like they're saying, "this website is good, and people should check it out." The more votes (backlinks) a website has, the more popular it is and the higher it will appear in search engines like Google. Think of it like a popularity contest online. The website with the most votes (backlinks) wins!
I say they are the unsung heroes because they play a crucial role in how search engines like Google determine the relevance and authority of your website. This goes back to the Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) that Google is looking for.
This post will delve into the world of backlinks, explaining what they are, why they're important, which kind will help your Google Ranking, good and bad link practices, and strategies for generating backlinks for your private school.
What Kind of Backlinks Will Help My Page Rank in Google?
As I mentioned, each website link is considered a "vote." The more votes your private school website gets, the more likely you will get a higher quality score.
Backlinks should be part of the digital marketing strategy for your private school. It's important to note that not all backlinks are created equal. A link from a reputable, high-authority website carries much more weight than a low-quality or spammy one. Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo use complex algorithms to determine the quality and relevance of a website, and backlinks are one of many factors that are considered. In other words, they assign a different "weight" to the link based on several factors. Now we don't know all of them, but here are a few we do know about:
- Relevance: Search engines look for links that come from websites that are relevant to the content of your private school website. For example, a link from a website from a popular mommy blog about private school education could be considered more valuable than a link from the local top 100 Pop Radio Station.
- Authority: All the search engines consider the website's authority linking to your site. Websites with high domain authority (DA) are considered more valuable than those with a lower authority. You can use various tools, such as Moz Domain Authority Checker, AhrefsREFS: Website Authority Checker, and SEMRush Domain Overview.
- Link Location: The link's location on the linking website can also be a factor. Links placed in a website's main content rather than in the sidebar or footer are considered more valuable.
- Anchor Text: The anchor text or the text that is used to link to your site is also taken into account. Using descriptive, relevant anchor text can help search engines understand the context of the link.
- Nofollow vs. Dofollow: Google considers the type of link, whether it is a "dofollow" or "nofollow" link. Dofollow links pass link juice and help with SEO, while nofollow links don't. Some SEO professionals believe that a nofollow link reduces the domain authority, but this is not always true. Wikipedia, for example, contains nofollow links, but because the site has "high trust" or is authoritative, the nofollow connections don't penalize the page.
- Natural and Diverse Backlink Profile: Search engines look for natural and diverse backlink profiles. Too many same types of backlinks from the same source can be seen as manipulative and may hurt your school's website ranking.
Dangerous Link Practices
Dangerous link practices are going to include links intended to manipulate ranking. These will be against Google's Search Essentials (formerly known as Google’s Webmaster Guidelines).
Several scenarios could cause Google to penalize your site for backlinks. Some of the most common include:
- Using unnatural or manipulative link-building tactics such as buying links, participating in link farms, or using automated link-building software.
- Having spammy or low-quality links such as those from link farms, blog networks, or other low-quality websites.
- Over-optimizing your anchor text
- Using a private blog network (PBN)
- Utilizing comments or forum spam
- Having a large number of inks from a site in a foreign language
- Poor quality links from sites that have little to do with your website.
Good Link Practices
In general, most backlinks where an editorial choice has been made to link to your content should be safe. Links created manually with the goal of increasing traffic should also be acceptable. Here are some instances of links that are most likely safe:
- Guest Blogging
- Directory Submissions
- Press Release Distribution
- Niche Forums
- Community Sites
- Question and Answer Sites
Top 12 Tips for Increasing Backlinks to Your Private School Website
Here are twelve tips for generating backlinks to your private school website:
- Create high-quality, valuable content: The first step in generating backlinks is creating high-quality, useful content that other websites want to link to. This can include blog posts, infographics, videos, and different types of content that provide helpful information to your target audience.
- Optimize your content for SEO: Once you have created high-quality content, you need to optimize it for SEO. This comprises keywords in the title, meta description, and throughout the content, as well as optimizing images and videos.
- Submit your website to directories: Submitting your private school website to directories such as Yelp, Yellowpages, and other online directories can help increase your private school's visibility and generate backlinks.
- Guest post on other websites: Another effective way to generate backlinks is to guest post on other websites. This involves writing an article for another website and including a link to your private school website in the author bio or the article itself.
- Reach out to influencers: Influencer marketing can be a great way to generate backlinks. Identify influencers in your niche and ask them if they would be willing to link to your website.
- Use social media: Social media can be a powerful tool for generating backlinks. Share your content on social media and encourage others to share it.
- Use internal links: These are the links between pages within your private school website. These links help search engines understand your website's structure and help visitors navigate it.
- External links: Just as you want sites to link to you, linking to other relevant and highly-authoritative websites is essential.
- Broken link building: This tactic might seem shady, but it's not. It involves finding valuable content with broken links where the original content is usually gone. You can contact the site's owner to link your relevant alternative content.
- Link reclamation: This is where you fix broken links pointing to your site.
- Newsjacking: This is where you use trending news to incorporate your ideas into the story. This can be an excellent way to get high-quality links from major publications. When it comes to newsjacking, timing is everything. The basic idea is to identify breaking news and write content about it and your private school.
- Repurpose Your Content: This is an excellent way to increase your content's value while acquiring high-quality links. This works by repurposing good content, such as a blog post, as a video, infographic, ebook, or SlideShare presentation.
Additional Thoughts
In addition to everything I have mentioned above, you will also want to monitor your backlinks. This will allow you to keep track of the ones that you generated. Several tools exist, such as SEMRush, Ahrefs, Majestic, or Moz.
In conclusion, backlinks are an essential aspect of SEO for private school websites. By creating high-quality, valuable content, optimizing your content for SEO, submitting your website to directories, guest posting on other websites, reaching out to influencers, using social media, and monitoring your backlinks, you can generate more backlinks to your private school website and improve your search engine rankings.
If you need help with your private school’s website or marketing efforts, contact me. I am here to help your private school grow.
