top of page

Getting the right backlinks to optimise SEO for technology

Writer's picture: Dr Tim KannegieterDr Tim Kannegieter

Today, I enjoyed talking with KBA Web founder Sam Kadel. Sam runs an SEO agency based in Sydney, helping businesses increase their online visibility through search engine optimisation (SEO). The company offers traditional white hat SEO services like keyword research, on-page optimisation, link building, and SEO copywriting.


I contacted Sam because of his excellent work with an engineering company I know, taking them to #2 in their category. I took the opportunity to ask him for some tips on how to optimise SEO for technology companies.


For SEO specialists, being experts with the tools of their trade is a core competency, and this was clearly apparent with Sam as he walked me through the use of his SEO tools. KBA Web uses Ahrefs, which is one of the two leading tools in the market, the other being Semrush (which I use).


There are many tricks of the SEO trade, and Sam showed me several, but probably the most important one that flies under the radar is the importance of getting the right backlinks.

It's easy to pay SEO companies to get thousands of backlinks from low-authority websites. However, just a few from the high-ranking companies with ratings above 50 or more will do far more for your ranking. He showed examples of backlinks he had secured, including from MSN.com (Authority Score 95), Hubspot (AS 85), Entrepreneur.com (AS 58) and more.


I challenged him on the relevance of these backlinks for technology companies, as the content was clearly unrelated to the topic of his technology client. The answer was blunt – Google doesn’t really care too much where the backlinks come from, as long as they are from highly rated and authoritative website. The insight is that if Google doesn’t care, neither should you as a technical marketer.


What does this mean for marketing a technically complex product or service? There are two obvious implications:


1. The first is to write content about your technology in ways that will be of interest to the audience of higher-ranking websites, typically business oriented.

In business-to-business marketing, we know that the key decision makers are often not engineers or people who understand what your technology is all about. So, it makes sense to reach out to these audiences in language they will understand.


2.     The second implication is to do your research to identify the highest-ranking websites related to your topic, which will be easier to get backlinks with.

For example, there is a niche online engineering magazine that is very relevant to one of my clients and it’s easy to get articles and press releases published there (if you can tolerate the accompanying barrage of requests to advertise). However, the Semrush Authority Score (AS) for the site is just 25, which is actually lower than leading consultant and technology companies in that field and not much better than small, under resourced companies that don’t take SEO very seriously.


By contrast some sites I have obtained backlinks from have a much higher rating, including leading associations (typically AS 40 to 50) and universities (typically around AS 60 to 70). This takes much more effort but is worth it for the SEO impact. There are many techniques for obtaining backlinks, but my go to strategy for these kinds of organisations has been to organise collaborative, co-branded educational events in your field of expertise. The organisation is usually happy to link to your website as a speaker.



At the top end of the authority ratings are the social media platforms. For example, Reddit’s engineering discussion threads have the maximum AS score of 100, with a massive 18.2 million in organic search traffic each month from Australia alone. However, most links on Reddit have a “no-follow” setting. So social media post links don’t help with backlink driven SEO directly, but they will drive traffic to your website which Google will notice.


Perhaps more relevant is the massive 8.2 billion backlinks directed towards Reddit. That speaks to the incredible value people find in the content that platform generates. So the adage that "content is king" holds true - creating content that people find genuinely useful, so they are motivated to link to it, will help greatly with SEO.



18 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page