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Understanding Back Links – a conversation with Brandon Liebowitz
18 Plays8 days ago
Brandon Liebowitz is the founder of SEO Optimizers.com a Los Angeles, California SEO consultancy.
Brandon is proud of his track record of assisting small and medium-sized businesses to achieve top rankings on Google. He uses combinations of search engine optimization (SEO) tactics, social media strategies, and paid ads to generate traffic and enhance your online presence.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, Brandon explains to host Michael Millward
· How SEO tools can deliver website visitors and increased sales.
· The common SEO mistakes that companies of all kinds make.
· That even with the arrival of AI based searches it is still important to build a network of back links.
· What makes a good back link
· How to build a network of back links
· The importance of having quality content on your website.
More information about Brandon Liebowitz and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
In this episode of The Independent Minds, we discuss Google search engine optimization techniques. The same techniques are relevant to most search engines.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Independent Minds' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:23
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseed.
Meet Brandon Libovich
00:00:29
Speaker
Today, i am joined by Brandon Libovich, who is a specialist in digital marketing.
00:00:36
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
Overview of Zencastr Platform
00:00:43
Speaker
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Google YouTube Music.
00:00:57
Speaker
Zencastr really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using zencaster visit Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysida.
00:01:11
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
SEO Basics and Importance
00:01:20
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:26
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, my guest, Independent Mind, who I met on matchmaker.fm is Brandon Leibovitch, who is a specialist in digital marketing.
00:01:45
Speaker
Hello, Brandon. Hi, thanks for having me on today. It's a great pleasure. I think this is ah subject, the old search engine optimization is something that affects every business and lots of people need to know more about it. But please, could we start by you telling us a little bit about your career in search engine optimization, please?
Brandon's Journey into Digital Marketing
00:02:06
Speaker
first got my degree in business marketing. And after I graduated from college, I got my first job helping out a company with their digital marketing and That was back in 2007. didn't really know much too much about digital marketing. They said, don't worry, we don't know much either. We're going to learn alongside with you and take to classes.
00:02:25
Speaker
and workshops and seminars, which thought was kind of interesting. so I was like, all right, let me check this out. After working there for a few months, I was helping out with like their SEO. i was doing social media, something out with paid ads. i was doing email marketing, kind of helping out with everything, but just kind of realized that everyone's probably going to have a website in the future. And there's lot different ways to get traffic.
00:02:45
Speaker
Everything I mentioned definitely works to get traffic, but ah SEO is just a way to get free traffic. so I thought over the years, why spend money on paid
The Role of Backlinks in SEO
00:02:52
Speaker
ads? If you could get up there for free and focused over the years, different working or working at different advertising agencies as a director of SEO and before work or after work and on my lunch breaks, I would work on my own company and built it up to where I was able to eventually quit my job and focus solely on this and been doing that ever since helping people tap into that free traffic from Google. Someone who's not an SEO specialist, who I'm an HR person. and
00:03:16
Speaker
who runs an HR consultancy, but listening sometimes to ah SEO people, I suppose it's like listening to any other professional. You make it sound so simple, but let's try and and break it down into, make it a little bit easier. So what are the sorts of mistakes that organizations make when they're doing their ah SEO?
00:03:34
Speaker
Most of the time, they just don't know what they're doing or what to do, which is really but building backlinks. lot of people skip over the backlinks section, which is One of the most important things is getting other websites to talk about to you because Google just doesn't really trust anyone.
00:03:50
Speaker
So you could put keywords all over your website. You could do all the things that Google's looking for, but without backlinks, they're just not going to trust a website. And lot of people don't know what backlinks are or don't know how to build backlinks or they're building the wrong type of backlinks and it's going to do more harm than good. So that would probably be the number one mistake is People just don't realize what backlinks are and how to build them properly because if you build a wrong type of backlinks instead of ranking higher, you're actually going drop down in rankings. A backlink is a clickable link from another website that points to yours. So let's say you're reading an article on Forbes.com and there it says Brandon Leibowitz.
00:04:27
Speaker
you click on that and it goes to my website, I'd be getting a backlink from Forbes.com. So getting other websites to talk about to you is very, very important to Google. Right, because go one of the things you said there, Google doesn't trust anyone or anything.
00:04:41
Speaker
And you've got to build the trust. You've got to build Google's trust in you before you can expect them to share information about you with other people.
00:04:54
Speaker
And by sharing and information about you with other people, their users, that means you are going up their listing because they trust you based on the fact that other people trust you.
00:05:05
Speaker
Pretty much. It's like a website is voting for you, essentially. So it's like this website is voting for you, and that vote is a vote of trust for Google. Now that they think that you're somewhat trustworthy and potentially should rank you for in the search results, but it doesn't guarantee it. It's just a signal. It's not on Google. It's like, right, is website voting for you saying,
00:05:27
Speaker
We believe you are who you say you are. And the more websites that essentially vote for you and send that signal of trust to Google, the more trust Google is going to give to you and the higher they're going to rank you in the search results.
00:05:37
Speaker
Sounds good. the The high ranking in the search results comes from having the backlinks. And you mentioned the right type of backlinks and the wrong type of backlinks. And I'm imagining that there's probably someone somewhere who's registered a thousand million different yeah URLs and puts a link onto all of those to the website if you give them a fee.
Strategies for Quality Backlinks
00:06:02
Speaker
And that's probably the wrong type of backlink to have. Correct. Yeah. and That would probably mean that Google would actually move you down the listings because it doesn't trust where you've had the backlinks from.
00:06:16
Speaker
So how would you get the backlinks, the right type of backlinks that is? Google is looking for websites that are related to what you're doing. so it's all about relevancy. The more related it is to your business, the more trust Google is going to give to you and the better off it's going to be. So if you're, let's say real estate agent and you're getting backlinks from a restaurant that looks a little strange to Google. Like why the restaurant linking out to a real estate agent? But if you're a real estate agent and you're getting other websites related to homes and housing and
00:06:48
Speaker
real estate, anything that's somewhat related to what you're doing, that's what Google wants to see. doesn't have to be exactly what you're doing. You don't have to get other real realtors, but as long as it's somewhat related, that's the trust signal that Google's looking for.
00:07:01
Speaker
So the more related it is to you, the better off it's going to be that backlink, the more value it's going to pass on for SEO purposes. And then authoritiveness, how popular is this website? The bigger the website, the more trust it's going to pass on. So if you're getting a backlink from my website, it's good.
00:07:17
Speaker
but it's not the same tier as a Forbes or Huffington Post or Wall Street Journal or New York Times or anything like that. So the bigger the website, the more SEO value and the more related it is to you, the better off it's going to be. So relevancy and authoritativeness are of the two aspects that Google's really looking at nowadays.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah. So a valuable backlink is one from a website which is related to what it is that you are doing, but it doesn't need to be exactly what you are doing. So If you are selling lawnmowers, for example, then it would be useful to have a backlink from a grass seed company, from a a garden center, from a DIY store.
00:07:59
Speaker
It's all the things that are linking together. So you have to think holistically around all of the things that would be useful if somebody was to use your product. What else might they also use?
00:08:12
Speaker
And to get backlinks from those websites. As long as it's somewhat related, that's what Google wants to see. It doesn't have to be exactly what you're doing. and like I'm an SEO company. I'm never going to get another SEO company to link out to me because we're all somewhat competitors. So that's going to work. But if I could get another website related to marketing, digital marketing, even traditional marketing, TV, print, radio, it doesn't have to be.
00:08:36
Speaker
exactly what I'm doing. Just somewhat related business, entrepreneurship. Those are type of websites that Google would want me to link out or have to link to me from an SEO company. So it's all about relevancy. As long as it's summit related, that's good.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah. So related to what it is that you do, but not necessarily the same as what you do, think holistically about all the things that someone might need in addition to your product or service that complements your product or service and aim to get backlinks from websites offering that complementary product or service.
00:09:16
Speaker
That sounds great. how do you get a complimentary website to link to you? Is it you link to them, they link to you? how does it How does that sort of negotiation process work? What's the what's the trick to get people to link to you?
00:09:30
Speaker
They don't want to do what you just said, which is i link to you and you link to me because that's called a reciprocal backlink. And Google knows that if you're doing that, that it's probably just for SEO and they cancel each other out. So if I link to you and then you link back to me, the backlink doesn't count anymore.
00:09:47
Speaker
If I link to you, then you get a backlink. If you link to me, then I get a backlink. But if we both link to one another, Google knows that we're just trying to help each other out and that's not going to work for SEO, unfortunately. So you need one-way links where they link to you only.
00:10:01
Speaker
If you link out to them, then it cancels it out. So there's lots of different ways to get backlinks. there's One good starting point is let's look at your competitors' backlinks because there's tools that will show you any website's backlinks. So I could see your backlinks.
00:10:14
Speaker
You could see my backlinks if you look in the right places. You have to pay for these tools such as Ahrefs. Moz or Sumrush, but they will let you look at any website's backlinks. And then one by one, you can see which ones are related to what you're doing and try to reach out to those sites because if they're linking out to your competitor, they would probably link out to you. It's just you got to get creative and figure out what did they do to get that backlink. Did they write an article? Did they do a press release? Did they get interview done? Did they, if they're selling products, did they have a product reviewed? So you can reach out to the writer that maybe interviewed them or ran wrote an article about them and
00:10:49
Speaker
see if they would potentially write an article about you. Like if they're in the Huffington post and you see someone wrote an article and quoted one of your competitors, maybe you can reach out to that author and figure out how you could get in that article and how you could get a quote and a backlink. and kind of like reverse engineering and becoming a detective and just trying figure out what did your competitors do to get those rankings and how can do similar job of what they've done? Because if Google is trusting them and on that first its page of Google, if you look at their backlinks and look at their keywords, then and you incorporate them into your own website, then Google's going to trust you and give you those similar rankings that your competitors are having. Right. So to get the backlinks from other websites, don't offer them a backlink from your website because that that will cancel each other out.
00:11:33
Speaker
And then use the tools to identify who links to who. But then it sounds like you go offline almost and you do some conventional...
00:11:46
Speaker
PR work to make sure that organizations know that you're around and there is an advantage to to them in linking to you because you've offered them something which is special, which is different, whether that's content, whether it's ah special offers, information, all sorts of various different things you can offer them, which helps them create content. Yep, basically you need to provide value to that website to get them to want to link out to you. Because if you're just asking for a backlink, they're going to say no. They're going to be why am I going to give you a backlink? But if you offer value and provide value, then that's what they're looking for. so you just got to get creative and figure out what type of value can I offer to them that's going to get them to want to say yes to giving me a backlink. I a backlink?
00:12:34
Speaker
get them a product for a review or do I let them know that, hey, you have a list of 10 websites, like maybe you have like maybe you're selling cameras and your competitors are in this top 10 list of cameras to look out for and you see that your competitor's in there but you also see a couple backlinks or websites are broken, you can tell that author like, hey, I see this top 10 list Couple links are broken. Would you potentially include me and replace some of these broken links with my link? And so just kind of getting creative and just figure out how you could offer value.
00:13:05
Speaker
That's almost reviewing the content on the websites that you want to be featured on or have a backlink from and helping people identify where something like a backlink that they've already put on is no longer working or where content that they've published is out of date and giving them a version which brings it up to date is a good way of offering some value, which doesn't sound as if it's going to take an awful long time to to do either.
00:13:35
Speaker
No, no. As long as you spend the time and just don't just ask for that backlink because if you're just asking for that backlink, you're going to get a no most likely. Yes. yeah What's the value? You got to think if someone's just emailing you for a backlink, you're probably not going to say yes unless they're offering you something of value.
00:13:53
Speaker
Yeah. There's always got to be something which is of value to the person that you want some value from. There has to be something that is of value to them. Lots of people have LinkedIn
SEO and Social Media
00:14:04
Speaker
profiles, Twitter profiles, Facebook, all sorts of various different business and social media type profiles.
00:14:13
Speaker
Does Google trust the content in the same sort of way? If you have a profile and you put a link from there to your website, or if you um have somebody do you an endorsement on one of those sites or with something about you on Facebook, which is complimentary.
00:14:30
Speaker
um Would Google trust that that content as well? Yeah, but Google's blocked from most social media, so Google can't really see what you're posting, but they could see that you have a profile and that you have an account, but they can't really see what you're posting or how frequently you're posting or how many followers, all that stuff doesn't really matter. But to Google, a normal business would have a have some social presence. It should have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
00:14:54
Speaker
YouTube, if relevant, Pinterest, TikTok, whatever platforms that your audience is on. But you should definitely have some social presence because the Google, a normal website, should have some social media presence.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yes. It doesn't mean to be active all the time in posting, but as long as you have a profile, that's what Google wants to see. Right. Okay. But it's not going to look at the, sorry, but it's, Google is not going to look at the content that is on your social media profile. It just wants to make sure that you have one.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah. They're blocked from social media. Right. Okay. I can't imagine they're very happy about that. Yeah. Cause they're all direct, not direct, ah but they're all somewhat competitors. So Facebook doesn't want to show Google all their information because they're competing against one another because Google owns YouTube and Facebook is really big on video. So,
00:15:45
Speaker
Video is really big on video on Facebook and YouTube and they don't want just help each other out. So Facebook, all social media is pretty much blocked from Google except Google owns YouTube. So Google can see YouTube and Google partnered with Twitter like five years ago. So Google could see the tweets on Twitter. But other than that, they're pretty much blocked from all social. But You don't want backlinks from social media because then Google is going to think of your social media website, unless you are a social media website, then you want backlinks from social media, but you want backlinks from websites that are related to what you're doing.
00:16:17
Speaker
If you're just getting backlinks from a bunch of social media sites, Google is just going your social media company. So, which is not bad if that's what you're doing, but if you're doctor or a lawyer, you need sites that related to what you're doing, related to health, wellness, legal, whatever it may be, but you need the more related is to you, the better off it's going be that backlink.
00:16:36
Speaker
So it's real websites that you need links from. Yep. No fake websites. You need real backlinks from real businesses. Real links from real businesses into your website.
Deep Linking and Keywords
00:16:47
Speaker
And also deep linking those from those websites, not just to your homepage, but I think they're called long tail links. So specifically from someone else into content that is within your website.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah. And that would be just called internal linking. So you want to link to your homepage, you want link to your services, to the blogs, to every page on your website. If you just link to the homepage, that looks really, really weird. Like no website is just going have only backlinks pointed to their homepage.
00:17:14
Speaker
the Most websites are going to get backlinks to their blog posts. That's the most common place to get backlinks because you have a good piece of content. Someone wants to link out to it. And that's where the majority of your backlinks should be pointed to is your okay blog posts, then your service pages, and then your homepage and just mixing it up and Merging as much as possible and long tail, what you mentioned was called is for keywords. it's not for backlinks. So there's short tail and long tail keyword, short tail keywords are just one or two words. So like if your keyword was lawyer, that would be short tail, which is a bad keyword because what does lawyer mean? There could be million different things. Someone's searching for if they type into lawyer into Google lawyer, but
00:17:55
Speaker
Long tail keyword would be two or more words. So someone searches for like burn injury lawyer in Los Angeles. That's a long tail keyword where it's really specific.
00:18:06
Speaker
They know what they're looking for. They're in Los Angeles. They're looking for a lawyer that that focuses on burn injuries. So there's intent behind that search versus someone just searching for lawyer. What does that mean? That could mean so many different things. There's no intent behind that search.
00:18:20
Speaker
Right. I see what you mean. just going to build quite a picture of of where I've been going wrong, really. But there's um something that I think also we need to think about, which is that the reality of the website that people land on has to fulfill the expectation of clicking the link in the in the site that hosts the backlink.
00:18:45
Speaker
as well. And that could mean that somebody has put a link into your website that actually might not be something that adds value to your website. How would you deal with with something like that where someone's putting a link to your website, but it doesn't actually have all of those connection criteria that you talked about earlier on?
00:19:06
Speaker
What would you do? You could try to reach out to that site and see if they would take it down potentially. And if they won't take it down, then you could reach out to Google and let them know that this is what, or you could tell Google to block the URL using a
Managing and Disavowing Backlinks
00:19:22
Speaker
disavow tool. So you could tell Google, Hey, don't count this backlink for SEO. This is not me. don't know who did this. And you can block that using Google disavow tool. It's a free tool. You have to go into Google search console to access it. And then you could tell Google block or don't count this yeah URL for SEO purposes.
00:19:40
Speaker
Right. Very interesting. But it would be bad if you get it taken down. Yeah. That doesn't always work. Yeah. Because once you click those dots on the Google Home page, you get into all sorts of different functionalities.
00:19:54
Speaker
It's a lot more to Google than simply just searching in that in that box, which is Very interesting. Interesting. I suppose one of the things I've got to ask you, we've, we've arranged this podcast. We're recording an episode of the independent minds.
00:20:10
Speaker
How could we use this to improve the trust level that Google has in both of our websites?
Enhancing SEO with Podcast Content
00:20:16
Speaker
I mean, if you add more content to your website, so Google loves content. So if you add the podcast episodes to your website and transcribe them, then Google's going be happy because this is all text and content that they could use to help them better i understand and know what your website's about. So if you post the podcast episodes on your website, that's going to help you out. If you don't post it on your website and you just post it on Spotify, then you're just helping Spotify. Or if you're posting it on YouTube, you're just helping YouTube rank higher in the search results. You need to post it on own website, transcribe it. So there's text there. And then if you link back to my website, then I'd be getting a backlink, which would help me out with that clickable link from another website that's related to what I'm doing. So,
00:20:57
Speaker
you're getting content and I'd be getting a backlink if you post it on your website. But if you don't do that, then it's not going to really be beneficial for SEO, but it'll be beneficial for marketing getting your name out there, getting the word out there. But if you want to make it for SEO, then got to post it on your website, transcribe it and include that backlink.
00:21:13
Speaker
That sounds interesting. I will make a point of doing that and doing it correctly. I think it's like use the transcript, post that as an article so people can listen to the podcast and also read it.
00:21:26
Speaker
and put, as we always would, a link to your website, Brandon, in the description and also in the article that we publish on our website.
00:21:37
Speaker
And then we've maximized the value from ah marketing perspective, a content perspective, and also from an SEO perspective as well. Yeah, that would be the best.
00:21:49
Speaker
Hit all those points right there and Make sure that you post it on your website because you own that website so you get full control of it. you don't want to post it on other people's websites because then you're just helping them get more content.
00:22:00
Speaker
You want to make sure that you get all that content and get that traffic to your website. That's great. Brandon, I'm in the UK, you're in Los Angeles. It's the end of my day, the very start of yours.
00:22:11
Speaker
And I really appreciate you you know making the time at the start of your day to have this very informative, I've learned a lot, conversation um with me. i really appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
00:22:25
Speaker
Thank you for having me on today. It's been great. Thank you.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:22:30
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Brandon Leibovitch, who is a specialist in digital marketing based in Los Angeles, California. You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk.
00:22:49
Speaker
There is a link in the description below. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Brandon Leibovich. If you're a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Brandon, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made.
00:23:10
Speaker
There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. The Zencastr system has, as always, been very efficient today. But if you are listening to the independent minds on your smartphone and experience technical issues, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:23:31
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:23:45
Speaker
which means that the description is well worth reading. If you have liked this episode of The Independent Minds, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:23:56
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. If you want to share it with your friends and colleagues, please, and you have your website, please put a backlink in. And remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
00:24:15
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.