How to Build Backlinks for Churches
What is a backlink?
A backlink is a link to your website from another website. For example, if you go to a church’s Facebook page and then click on the link to their website, you are clicking on a backlink. Building backlinks is then creating backlinks to your website. But how do some sites get hundreds of links from a variety of sites, while others can also get links from their social media pages?
The key is understanding both the art and science of backlink building. I like to define backlink building as the art of giving people reasons to link to your website. The science comes in when you use different tools to track your progress and see what’s working and what’s not. We will get into using those tools later on.
Why are backlinks important?
So now that you know what a backlink is, you may still be confused as to how building backlinks does anything to help you get more visitors to your website or get more people through your door. Backlinks are viewed as a referral in the eyes of Google. If I linked to your website from my website, I am referring you to other internet users as far as Google can tell. But not all backlinks share the same importance. Let’s think about this by using an analogy. If you see two shout outs on Facebook of a local restaurant, and one of the posts is from a guy that you went to high school with and haven’t talked to since, and the other is from your state’s governor, which one is going to convince you to check out that restaurant?
The same thing applies to backlinks. If you have a backlink from a site that has little or no authority in the eyes of Google, that is likely not going to boost your authority because that referral is essentially worthless. But, if you get a backlink from a major, reputable website such as a news station doing a story on your organization, that is going to carry a lot more weight. But how do you know who is authoritative and who is not? That is where domain authority comes in.
What is domain authority?
Domain authority is exactly what it sounds like; the authority of your domain or website. But how do you know what your domain authority is? Is it a magical number granted to you by Google? It can feel like it, but it is just as much science as it is art.
There are many tools out there that help you see what your domain authority is, and what other sites domain authority is. Tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs can provide you with a lot of great data that you can use to up your SEO game. While these tools aren’t perfect, they are typically able to keep a fairly accurate measure of website domain authorities, backlink profiles, and a handful of other information that can help you gauge how your website is performing compared to others in the Google rankings.
If you aren’t able to afford a subscription to one of these SEO tools, there are some free options you can make use of when first starting out. Ahrefs offers a free backlink checker that will tell you the domain rating of any website and give you the sites top 100 backlinks. This can be used to show you how your site is performing, as well as let you see how you stack up to any competition you may have from other churches in your area.
While the free version has many limitations compared to a full subscription, your account will allow you to do the things you need to start getting real results, which includes reverse engineering backlinks that other churches are getting, and keeping track of your backlinks and domain authority to monitor your progress.
How Do I Know If I’m Doing Good?
Using any new tool or software can be incredibly intimidating at first. Luckily, you don’t need to understand the entirety of SEMRush or Ahrefs to know if you’re on the right track with your SEO strategy. By using a free tool such as Ahrefs’ backlink checker, you can see your website’s domain authority, as well as a list of your top 100 backlinks.
Ideally, your domain authority will increase as your number of backlinks and referring domains increase. However, that does not mean you should prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to backlinks. Google will penalize you if you use what are referred to “black hat” tactics to build your backlink portfolio. For more on that, check out this article from HubSpot.
