In this episode of Clipped, Eric dives deep into the world of backlinks. Building on last week’s conversation with SEO expert Brandon Lebowitz, Eric unpacks the essentials of backlinks and their significance in boosting your content’s visibility online.
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Episode Takeaways:
- What is a backlink? – A simple explanation of how backlinks work as endorsements for your site.
- Why are backlinks important? – Insights into how backlinks improve search engine rankings and drive traffic.
- How to get more backlinks – Practical tips like being a guest on podcasts, creating shareable content, and reaching out for link exchanges.
Eric also shares why diversifying your content into audio, video, and written formats is crucial for creating an ecosystem that resonates with all types of audiences. If you’re looking to strengthen your SEO game, this episode is packed with actionable advice to get started.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why backlinks act as a "vote of confidence" for Google and other search engines.
- The difference between high-value backlinks from big brands (like Nike) versus smaller sites.
- How backlinks directly impact your site’s traffic and ranking potential.
- Simple strategies to secure more backlinks: guest podcast appearances, shareable content, and link exchanges.
- The importance of repurposing content to create a diverse ecosystem for broader reach.
Connect with Eric:
[00:00:00] My aim in this episode is to teach you three things about backlinks. First, what is a backlink? Second, why are backlinks important? And third, how to get more backlinks for your content.
[00:00:20] What up, potty people? And welcome back to Clipped. As always, I'm Eric, your host, and Clipped brings you the tips, resources, and people to help crush your content goals online. And today I'm talking about backlinks. I'm piggybacking off of last week's SEO episode with Brandon Lebowitz, where we talked all things SEO and how
[00:00:39] SEO can improve your content's ranking. And one aspect of that is backlinks. Before we get into it, got to give a shout out to Riverside. They sponsor this podcast. That's Riverside.fm. Head on over there and take advantage of their awesome AI tools. You can get AI written show notes, AI transcripts, and AI video clips with their feature called Magic Clips, where it'll take your video file and cut together some of the best moments so that you can post vertical shorts across
[00:01:09] social media with a click of a couple buttons. And if you want 20% off, enter promo code CLIPPED, the name of this show, C-L-I-P-P-E-D, at checkout, and you'll get that discount. And now backlinks. Let's get into it.
[00:01:35] A backlink is pretty simple, really. It's when a website links to your website. Think of it as like a vote of confidence for Google or YouTube. When another site is linking out to your site, it's saying
[00:01:48] the content on the page that I'm linking to is useful, it's trustworthy, and I think that you should check it out. Some people call it link juice. It's basically like giving someone a shout out or helping somebody out. It's like a friend recommending your podcast to someone else. It's like, hey, I think you should check this out. And that builds trust within Google.
[00:02:08] If you get backlinks from like high value websites, like let's say you have like an exercise and fitness podcast and Nike like links to your website where your podcast is featured.
[00:02:22] You know, Nike fitness, your podcast slash website is geared around like fitness and running. Say Nike or a big heavy hitter like that links to you. That's going to carry a lot of weight.
[00:02:33] And maybe even a smaller company like a startup that focuses on fitness links to you. That's going to generate link juice as well. And it's also going to show Google that your website is valuable.
[00:02:47] But that link is going to be worth less than if like Nike or one of these big players links to you.
[00:02:53] Okay, so why are these backlinks important? Why does it matter if these companies or these websites link out to you?
[00:02:58] Well, it helps you rank higher in Google. The more high quality links you have, the more Google thinks your site is valuable and thus will be more apt to push it up in search rankings when someone types in a search query or keywords related to your content.
[00:03:14] When people click the link on, let's say, that Nike blog that's linking out to your like fitness podcast, it's also going to help you get more traffic because chances are that Nike blog,
[00:03:24] a lot of people are reading that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, whatever it is, a percentage of those are going to see that link.
[00:03:31] They're going to be like, oh, well, if Nike linked to this external site, it must be valuable. So I'm going to click on it.
[00:03:38] And so it also helps drive traffic in that sense, which is huge.
[00:03:41] And like I said, you know, that Nike blog that links to you, that's going to be more valuable in Google's eyes and it's going to drive more traffic because there's a lot more eyeballs on that blog than if like a fitness startup links to you.
[00:03:57] And yes, that probably will drive some traffic, but chances are there's not like hundreds of thousands of people reading that blog, seeing that link that links out to you compared to like the Nike one.
[00:04:08] Okay. So how do we get backlinks? Well, one great way to do it in terms of content, because this is all kind of geared from a content creation lens is to be a guest on other podcasts because in their show notes, they're going to link back to you.
[00:04:22] They mean, hey, this podcast featured so-and-so, so-and-so is the creator of X, Y, and Z, and they're going to link out to you.
[00:04:30] Almost all like podcast hosts will in their show notes, if they had you on their show, give you a backlink.
[00:04:37] Also, maybe in their YouTube description, when they publish that video to YouTube, in the YouTube description, maybe they'll link out to your website or your podcast from the YouTube description, or maybe the link to your YouTube channel from their YouTube description.
[00:04:54] And of course, Google owns YouTube, and so Google's going to see that, the YouTube algorithm's going to see that, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:05:00] Another great way is to create shareable content. Make something that people want to share, like a top 10 list of, you know, piggybacking on the fitness thing of like the way to improve your running stride, the top 10 tips.
[00:05:15] Or maybe you feature like the top 10 fitness companies currently like making waves in the fitness space.
[00:05:23] And maybe one of the companies that you linked to, to highlight, they see that eventually.
[00:05:30] And then they're like, oh, we want to share the love. They'll link back to you.
[00:05:33] But really, it's like to create shareable content. It's almost kind of like, you know, like retweeting or reposting a reel or something on social media.
[00:05:42] Except this is more like in the like written text version where people are, it's almost like a retweet, but it's a link.
[00:05:51] Or hey, reach out. I get people reaching out to me all the time where they're like, hey, I noticed you wrote about XYZ product on your blog.
[00:05:58] We have a similar post over here in our ecosystem. Would you consider linking to us? A link exchange is what it's called.
[00:06:07] So that's it, guys. Wanted to share that with you. Wanted to talk more about SEO because we talked about it last week.
[00:06:12] And it's something that I'm doing a lot more of and getting into.
[00:06:15] And hey, I always say, take your, if you're just doing a podcast and you don't want to write content, you don't want to write a blog,
[00:06:21] take that audio or that video, get it transcribed, use AI to help you turn it into articles.
[00:06:30] Then you've got, you know, your audio, you've got your video and you've got your written content
[00:06:35] because you want an ecosystem of all different types of content for all different types of consumers.
[00:06:40] Because some people consume audio, some people prefer video and some people prefer to read.
[00:06:45] And while blogging has maybe lost some traction because of video over the last few years,
[00:06:51] it's still definitely a viable medium.
[00:06:54] And people are searching for that kind of content, especially like educational and how-to content.
[00:06:59] So if you've got a podcast or YouTube around that, turning that into written content will definitely help you out.
[00:07:06] Until next time, guys, keep listening, keep engaging, keep creating. I'm out.