April 8, 2025 • 10 mins
🚀 Hey everyone, it's Brandon Leibowitz here! I had an awesome time chatting with Lorraine Ball on More Than a Few Words 🎙️ all about one of my favorite topics—BACKLINKS! 🔗
💡 Want to know how backlinks can boost your website’s credibility and skyrocket your rankings on Google? 🤯 I break it all down—what they are, how to get them, and why they matter! Plus, I share some pro SEO strategies that will help you stay ahead of your competitors. 🚀
🔍 We cover:
✅ What exactly are backlinks?
✅ How to find out where your competitors are getting theirs 🔎
✅ The best (and worst) places to get backlinks 👀
✅ Why Google cares so much about link quality!
If you're a business owner, marketer, or just someone who wants more visibility online, you don’t want to miss this one! 🎧
📌 Listen now and get those backlinks working for YOU! #SEO #Marketing #Backlinks #Podcast #MoreThanAFewWords
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to More Than a Few WordsMarketing conversation
for business owners.
This is your host,Lorraine Ball.
In Life and Online,you are judged by the
company you keep.
And how do you demonstrate thoseconnections online? Well,
it's through backlinks.
What are backlinks?
How do you get them,do you need them,
(00:21):
and where do they come from?
Well, that's what we're goingto talk about today.
And to have this conversation,I've invited Brandon Leibowitz
to join me.
Brandon runs and operates SEOOptimizers and he's been
doing it since 2007.
It's a digital marketing companythat focuses on helping small
and medium sized businessesget more online traffic,
(00:42):
which in turn converts intoclients, sales and leads.
Brandon, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much forhaving me on today.
I am so excited to have you andto have this conversation about
backlinks because I think it'ssomething that a lot of business
owners don't really understand.
(01:04):
So maybe let's start with adefinition. What is a backlink?
A backlink is a clickable linkfrom another website that
points to yours.
So let's say you're reading anarticle online on Forbes.com and
there it says Brandon Leibowitz.
And if you click on that andit goes to my website,
I'd be getting a backlink fromForbes.com so the more websites
(01:27):
that have clickable links thatpoint to your website,
the more popular or trustworthyGoogle sees you as.
Okay,so I need to get backlinks and
how do I go about maybecultivating some backlinks?
There are tons ofdifferent ways,
but the first way that I alwayslook at is let's look at your
(01:50):
competitors. Because the SEO,it's not really a one size fits
all. Every website's different.
And we gotta figure out whoyour competition is,
who ranks for your keywords inGoogle. So going into Google,
typing in your keywords andseeing who's on that first
page of Google,taking those websites and
throwing them into differenttools. These are all paid tools.
Unfortunately,there's no free tools that will
(02:10):
let you look at backlinks.
They're all about like a hundreddollars a month.
The more popular ones would belike mods or Semrush or Ahrefs.
But these tools will let youlook at any website's backlinks
and then you can see where yourcompetitors are getting
talked about.
Are they running articles?
Are they doing blogs?
Are they doing press releases,are they doing podcasts?
Are you doing interviews?
(02:31):
Whatever it is,you can reverse engineer their
entire strategy and look throughall their backlinks and find the
ones that are good qualitybacklinks.
And what is a qualitybacklink to Google?
A quality backlink means itcomes from a site that's related
to what you're doing andit has some authority.
So you don't want just anyrandom site linking out to you.
You want to find somewhatrelated sites. So like I do SEO,
(02:54):
I'm not going to get any otherSEO companies to link out to me
since we're all pretty muchdirect competitors.
But I could find other websitesrelated to marketing or business
or entrepreneurship or anythingsomewhat related.
That's what Google wants to see.
Lend authority. Like,how popular is this website?
If I give you a backlink from mywebsite, it's a good website,
but it's not the same as like aWall Street Journal or New
(03:15):
York Times or Wikipedia.
So the bigger the website,the more SEO value and the more
related to your industry,the better off it's going to be.
Awesome.
Well I want to go back and breakdown several things
that you said.
And the first thing that yousaid is that the good tools for
figuring out who's linking toyour competitors are all paid.
(03:36):
The nice thing is that it'sa monthly subscription.
So in theory you could hop infor a month and hop out.
The challenge is that using alot of those tools also requires
a certain level of expertise.
And the average business ownerhopping in may stumble around
for a month and a half beforethey actually figure out what
they're looking at.
(03:57):
And so I might argue that that'sa place you might want to invest
in getting some help.
Are there ways,other ways to find some
of those links?
Maybe not as comprehensively,but can you do creative Google
searches that will help youfigure out where your
(04:17):
competitors are showing up?
Yeah There's different ways tosearch called advanced
search operators.
But one way I like to searchis just by, well,
blogging on other people'swebsites.
So like I was saying earlier,you might be on sites that are
related to what you're doing,and the best way to do that is
offering them somethingfree or a value.
If you just ask a website,can I get a backlink?
(04:38):
They're not going to say yes.
But if you offer value,like offer a free article or
blog post or be a guest on theirpodcast or do an interview
or something like that,that incentivizes the website a
little bit more topossibly say yes.
So you could go into Google andsearch and if you want to put
like advanced Search operator.
I would put like in URL,so in URL that put a colon.
(05:02):
Then in quotation marks I'd putthe word like guest post.
And then I put your keywordafter that.
And that's going to say that inthe URL it has to have the word
guest post and your keyword.
So that's an advancedsearch operator.
There's tons of them out there.
If you're just a littletoo confused,
you can just really just go toGoogle and just type in your
keyword and type in blog afterit and you'll be pulling up
(05:24):
websites that are relatedto what you're doing,
that all have blogs or changeblog to podcast and you'll be
able to pull up podcasts if youwant to be a guest on podcasts
or whatever it is thatyou're trying to do.
But you can really get granularwith those searches if you want.
And so the second thing that youtalked about is getting these
links from reputable sitesbecause there's all sorts of
(05:47):
sites out there that willhappily link if you link to
them. But the truth is,if it's not a high quality link,
it won't impress Google.
But will it actually causesearch engines to perhaps look
at you a little askance andthink you're not nearly as good
as they used to think you were?
If you're getting links fromlow quality sites?
(06:09):
So I would avoid.
So there's lots of differentways they'll get the quality
of a website,but a lot of times if it's just
like a startup and it's a brandnew business and they're only
around for like a couple monthsor a year, Google,
they're a low quality site,but if they're really relevant
to what you're doing and they'rea real business,
I would say go for it becauseyou hope in three or four years
(06:30):
they become from that lowquality site to medium
and a bigger one.
So going after those low qualityones or smaller sites I
would say are fine.
But low quality would besomething that's like in a
foreign language or what arecalled PBN's private
blog networks,where they look like a real
website but it's really just ablog and they're just taking any
industry, any article in there.
(06:51):
It's kind of like a free for allwhere there's no real
quality standards,those are the ones I'd avoid.
But if it's a real business andthey're just a startup and they
don't have much trafficor much SEO rankings.
You hope in the longrun that they will.
So those ones I wouldstill go after,
but the ones that seem a littlespammy or where it's
just too easy,or you see like websites that
have nothing related to whatyou're doing in those websites,
(07:13):
like if they're bloggingand about.
If you're like a mechanic andyou see them blogging about
auto body shops and cars,but then you see like gambling
and casino sites in there,I would say, all right,
maybe stay away from thisbecause it's really not a good
website in the long run.
It's totally not. Again, it's.
I don't want to hangout with them.
It's not the kind of people Iwant to hang out with
(07:35):
in real life.
I don't want to hang out withthem online either.
So as you're building yourwebsite and you're building your
authority and you're workingwith companies maybe to get
articles publishedor cross promote,
are there things that you shoulddo when you're considering
adding backlinks to your site tosome of these other people?
(07:58):
Because I went through a periodthere where I probably got three
emails a day offering me contentif I would give them a backlink.
And I usually turned it downbecause it wasn't good.
It just didn't fit who we were.
But what do you advise smallbusiness owners to do when
thinking about backlinksfor their site?
Yeah,that's where I do that cold
(08:20):
outreach where I reach outto targeted websites.
But a lot of the onesthat you're getting,
and I get the same ones I get,probably like 10 of them a day,
are really spammy and they'rejust blasting emails
out to everybody.
And they're not really focusedon providing value.
They're just trying to spam andget anybody to say yes.
But if you become a little moremeticulous with it and really
(08:41):
pick and choose who you reachout to and build those
relationships,then it works better.
But when people email me,usually I just delete them.
Unless it's coming from a goodwebsite or someone that's
reputable and trustworthy,then I'll look at it.
But you have to understand,like Google looks at who you
link to and who links to you.
So you want good websiteslinking to you,
and you also want to linkout to good website.
(09:01):
So if somebody offers you a freearticle or blog post and it's
from a gambling or some otherweird kind of sketchy site,
if you link out to them,that actually negatively
impacts you.
So you want to pick and choose.
And you only want to link out togood sites that are relevant to
your industry because Googlelooks at who you link out to
and who links out to you.
Both of them are prettyimportant.
(09:22):
Absolutely.
And I think also from a user andalso from a user experience,
if I put a link on my websitethat goes to something
that's irrelevant,that visitor that I worked so
hard to attract is gone.
They may not come back becausethe link they followed wasn't
(09:44):
very good quality.
So in their eyes,I'm perhaps not as good a
resource as they thought.
Yeah, we lose that trust andcredibility from Google
and from humans.
So you have to have thatbalance. And just think,
if you're on your website andyou click on this link,
is this actually providing valuefor your readers, your visitors,
or is this just something thatyou're doing just to try to
(10:05):
game the system for SEO?
Absolutely. Well, Brandon,this was great.
I can tell you that when wepublish this particular episode,
we will link to SEOoptimizers.com because it is
going to be a valuefor our listeners.
Thank you so much for beinga part of the show.
(10:27):
Thank you for havingme on today.
If you've enjoyed today'sconversation,
if you'd like to find otherresources for your business,
subscribe to mtfw.
Wherever you listen to podcasts,listen to too. They're short.
This has been another episodeof more than a few words.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to More Than a Few WordsMarketing conversation
for business owners.
This is your host,Lorraine Ball.
In Life and Online,you are judged by the
company you keep.
And how do you demonstrate thoseconnections online? Well,
it's through backlinks.
What are backlinks?
How do you get them,do you need them,
(00:21):
and where do they come from?
Well, that's what we're goingto talk about today.
And to have this conversation,I've invited Brandon Leibowitz
to join me.
Brandon runs and operates SEOOptimizers and he's been
doing it since 2007.
It's a digital marketing companythat focuses on helping small
and medium sized businessesget more online traffic,
(00:42):
which in turn converts intoclients, sales and leads.
Brandon, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much forhaving me on today.
I am so excited to have you andto have this conversation about
backlinks because I think it'ssomething that a lot of business
owners don't really understand.
(01:04):
So maybe let's start with adefinition. What is a backlink?
A backlink is a clickable linkfrom another website that
points to yours.
So let's say you're reading anarticle online on Forbes.com and
there it says Brandon Leibowitz.
And if you click on that andit goes to my website,
I'd be getting a backlink fromForbes.com so the more websites
(01:27):
that have clickable links thatpoint to your website,
the more popular or trustworthyGoogle sees you as.
Okay,so I need to get backlinks and
how do I go about maybecultivating some backlinks?
There are tons ofdifferent ways,
but the first way that I alwayslook at is let's look at your
(01:50):
competitors. Because the SEO,it's not really a one size fits
all. Every website's different.
And we gotta figure out whoyour competition is,
who ranks for your keywords inGoogle. So going into Google,
typing in your keywords andseeing who's on that first
page of Google,taking those websites and
throwing them into differenttools. These are all paid tools.
Unfortunately,there's no free tools that will
(02:10):
let you look at backlinks.
They're all about like a hundreddollars a month.
The more popular ones would belike mods or Semrush or Ahrefs.
But these tools will let youlook at any website's backlinks
and then you can see where yourcompetitors are getting
talked about.
Are they running articles?
Are they doing blogs?
Are they doing press releases,are they doing podcasts?
Are you doing interviews?
(02:31):
Whatever it is,you can reverse engineer their
entire strategy and look throughall their backlinks and find the
ones that are good qualitybacklinks.
And what is a qualitybacklink to Google?
A quality backlink means itcomes from a site that's related
to what you're doing andit has some authority.
So you don't want just anyrandom site linking out to you.
You want to find somewhatrelated sites. So like I do SEO,
(02:54):
I'm not going to get any otherSEO companies to link out to me
since we're all pretty muchdirect competitors.
But I could find other websitesrelated to marketing or business
or entrepreneurship or anythingsomewhat related.
That's what Google wants to see.
Lend authority. Like,how popular is this website?
If I give you a backlink from mywebsite, it's a good website,
but it's not the same as like aWall Street Journal or New
(03:15):
York Times or Wikipedia.
So the bigger the website,the more SEO value and the more
related to your industry,the better off it's going to be.
Awesome.
Well I want to go back and breakdown several things
that you said.
And the first thing that yousaid is that the good tools for
figuring out who's linking toyour competitors are all paid.
(03:36):
The nice thing is that it'sa monthly subscription.
So in theory you could hop infor a month and hop out.
The challenge is that using alot of those tools also requires
a certain level of expertise.
And the average business ownerhopping in may stumble around
for a month and a half beforethey actually figure out what
they're looking at.
(03:57):
And so I might argue that that'sa place you might want to invest
in getting some help.
Are there ways,other ways to find some
of those links?
Maybe not as comprehensively,but can you do creative Google
searches that will help youfigure out where your
(04:17):
competitors are showing up?
Yeah There's different ways tosearch called advanced
search operators.
But one way I like to searchis just by, well,
blogging on other people'swebsites.
So like I was saying earlier,you might be on sites that are
related to what you're doing,and the best way to do that is
offering them somethingfree or a value.
If you just ask a website,can I get a backlink?
(04:38):
They're not going to say yes.
But if you offer value,like offer a free article or
blog post or be a guest on theirpodcast or do an interview
or something like that,that incentivizes the website a
little bit more topossibly say yes.
So you could go into Google andsearch and if you want to put
like advanced Search operator.
I would put like in URL,so in URL that put a colon.
(05:02):
Then in quotation marks I'd putthe word like guest post.
And then I put your keywordafter that.
And that's going to say that inthe URL it has to have the word
guest post and your keyword.
So that's an advancedsearch operator.
There's tons of them out there.
If you're just a littletoo confused,
you can just really just go toGoogle and just type in your
keyword and type in blog afterit and you'll be pulling up
(05:24):
websites that are relatedto what you're doing,
that all have blogs or changeblog to podcast and you'll be
able to pull up podcasts if youwant to be a guest on podcasts
or whatever it is thatyou're trying to do.
But you can really get granularwith those searches if you want.
And so the second thing that youtalked about is getting these
links from reputable sitesbecause there's all sorts of
(05:47):
sites out there that willhappily link if you link to
them. But the truth is,if it's not a high quality link,
it won't impress Google.
But will it actually causesearch engines to perhaps look
at you a little askance andthink you're not nearly as good
as they used to think you were?
If you're getting links fromlow quality sites?
(06:09):
So I would avoid.
So there's lots of differentways they'll get the quality
of a website,but a lot of times if it's just
like a startup and it's a brandnew business and they're only
around for like a couple monthsor a year, Google,
they're a low quality site,but if they're really relevant
to what you're doing and they'rea real business,
I would say go for it becauseyou hope in three or four years
(06:30):
they become from that lowquality site to medium
and a bigger one.
So going after those low qualityones or smaller sites I
would say are fine.
But low quality would besomething that's like in a
foreign language or what arecalled PBN's private
blog networks,where they look like a real
website but it's really just ablog and they're just taking any
industry, any article in there.
(06:51):
It's kind of like a free for allwhere there's no real
quality standards,those are the ones I'd avoid.
But if it's a real business andthey're just a startup and they
don't have much trafficor much SEO rankings.
You hope in the longrun that they will.
So those ones I wouldstill go after,
but the ones that seem a littlespammy or where it's
just too easy,or you see like websites that
have nothing related to whatyou're doing in those websites,
(07:13):
like if they're bloggingand about.
If you're like a mechanic andyou see them blogging about
auto body shops and cars,but then you see like gambling
and casino sites in there,I would say, all right,
maybe stay away from thisbecause it's really not a good
website in the long run.
It's totally not. Again, it's.
I don't want to hangout with them.
It's not the kind of people Iwant to hang out with
(07:35):
in real life.
I don't want to hang out withthem online either.
So as you're building yourwebsite and you're building your
authority and you're workingwith companies maybe to get
articles publishedor cross promote,
are there things that you shoulddo when you're considering
adding backlinks to your site tosome of these other people?
(07:58):
Because I went through a periodthere where I probably got three
emails a day offering me contentif I would give them a backlink.
And I usually turned it downbecause it wasn't good.
It just didn't fit who we were.
But what do you advise smallbusiness owners to do when
thinking about backlinksfor their site?
Yeah,that's where I do that cold
(08:20):
outreach where I reach outto targeted websites.
But a lot of the onesthat you're getting,
and I get the same ones I get,probably like 10 of them a day,
are really spammy and they'rejust blasting emails
out to everybody.
And they're not really focusedon providing value.
They're just trying to spam andget anybody to say yes.
But if you become a little moremeticulous with it and really
(08:41):
pick and choose who you reachout to and build those
relationships,then it works better.
But when people email me,usually I just delete them.
Unless it's coming from a goodwebsite or someone that's
reputable and trustworthy,then I'll look at it.
But you have to understand,like Google looks at who you
link to and who links to you.
So you want good websiteslinking to you,
and you also want to linkout to good website.
(09:01):
So if somebody offers you a freearticle or blog post and it's
from a gambling or some otherweird kind of sketchy site,
if you link out to them,that actually negatively
impacts you.
So you want to pick and choose.
And you only want to link out togood sites that are relevant to
your industry because Googlelooks at who you link out to
and who links out to you.
Both of them are prettyimportant.
(09:22):
Absolutely.
And I think also from a user andalso from a user experience,
if I put a link on my websitethat goes to something
that's irrelevant,that visitor that I worked so
hard to attract is gone.
They may not come back becausethe link they followed wasn't
(09:44):
very good quality.
So in their eyes,I'm perhaps not as good a
resource as they thought.
Yeah, we lose that trust andcredibility from Google
and from humans.
So you have to have thatbalance. And just think,
if you're on your website andyou click on this link,
is this actually providing valuefor your readers, your visitors,
or is this just something thatyou're doing just to try to
(10:05):
game the system for SEO?
Absolutely. Well, Brandon,this was great.
I can tell you that when wepublish this particular episode,
we will link to SEOoptimizers.com because it is
going to be a valuefor our listeners.
Thank you so much for beinga part of the show.
(10:27):
Thank you for havingme on today.
If you've enjoyed today'sconversation,
if you'd like to find otherresources for your business,
subscribe to mtfw.
Wherever you listen to podcasts,listen to too. They're short.
This has been another episodeof more than a few words.
Thanks for listening.
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