As promised, I wanted to "quickly" cover a few things about backlinks, so wanted to do it bullet point style (I seem to have killed bullet points on Google Docs atm, so just PRETEND that these are in bullet point format 🤣🤣🤣)

There is a LOT more to backlinks than this, but I just wanted to get some basic stuff down for you, plus, I've left it open-ended, as I can guess that this may produce more questions than answers.

So, if unsure about anything, just ask below and I'll answer (as quickly as possible... promise... I've asked my wife to stop making me go on weekend "holidays" because the weather is lovely 🤣🤣🤣 just in case any of you are wondering where I've been for the last few days, and I KNOW, many of you are waiting to hear from me... I'm coming... promise)

Anyway, here's some "thoughts" that I've just put down for you:

Backlink Bullet Points (without proper bullet points because I broke them 🤣🤣🤣)

• Backlinks are basically another website linking to your website, look upon it as a “vote of confidence” for your article/website.
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• EVERYTHING online is a website, so even the Google Search page is a website, Wikipedia is a website, Facebook is a website, Wealthy Affiliate is a website, OpenAI is a website, etc.
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• The only two types of backlinks you need to really know about are called “Foundational” and “Editorial”
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• Foundational are typically backlinks that YOU create yourself, e.g. social and forum profiles, RSS feed platforms, web directories, social media platforms, web 2.0 properties, blog comments, etc.
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• Editorial are backlinks that you can’t create yourself, but will require another website to add them for you, this is generally done via “outreach” (emailing the website owner and asking, and in some cases, paying for backlinks), e.g. guest posts, niche edits, broken link edits.
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• Editorial backlinks usually carry more weight than foundational backlinks (as you CAN’T create them yourself)
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• Backlinks can occur “naturally”, but only if your articles are getting traffic.
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• Therefore, anyone who says “backlinks occur naturally” doesn’t fully understand the process. If an article is NOT getting any traffic, this means people aren’t visiting it, which in turn means that a website owner can’t link to you because they don’t know your article exists.
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• Therefore, “writing quality articles” doesn’t guarantee backlinks, as if you’re not ranking in Google or getting traffic to that article, from say social media, then NO-ONE will find it (it doesn’t matter how much “quality” that article is, simple common sense, if people can’t find your articles they aren’t going to link to them).
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• Foundational backlinks also form part of your websites “branding”.
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• Your “online branding” simply involves putting your website name in the Google Search Bar and seeing how many different platforms “mention” (or link to) your website name.
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• “Branding” is easiest achieved through creating one paragraph bios and adding this to numerous online platforms that allow you to create a profile, e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Twiiter/X, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, Quora, Linkedin, Medium, SubStack, Instagram, Amazon, Spotify, Forums in your niche, etc.
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• Your bio should look something like:
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• Partha Banerjee is the founder, owner, and main author at mybodyweightexercises.com. Partha is a qualified Personal Trainer and Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist. He shares his knowledge of everything related to health and fitness, mainly focused on strength training, cardio, and nutrition.
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• You would then put your bio through ChatGPT , ask for 25-50 variations that are original and unique, but must include your name and your website address (your “branding” is based on your name and your website name).
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• One of the main ways to create foundational backlinks is to to use web 2.0 properties, such as WordPress.com, Weebly.com, Wix.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Tumblr.com, TypedPad.com, WikiDot.com, Xing.com (i can give you a list of 20+)
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• These web 2.0 properties are basically blogging platforms, so you are essentially creating new websites and new blogs and then linking back to your own website.
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• For quick and easy use of web 2.0 properties, choose 5-10 platforms.
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• Create a “free website” on each platform.
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• Treat each website as a “real website”, so write articles regularly, add internal and external links to your articles, bookmark/share your articles.
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• Aim to add one article a week to EACH web 2.0 property, link to external niche-relevant websites, and link each article internally to each other.
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• Add ONE external link to your own website from 5 articles published to that specific web 2.0 property.
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• So, if you have created 20 web 2.0 websites, you will have 100 articles total (5 articles over 5 weeks x 20 websites), and 20 backlinks to your website (1 article out of the 5 articles links to your website x 20).
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• For more in-depth and potentially more authorattiive backlinks from web 2.0 properties actually create an entire website on these platforms.
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• Therefore, add “2-3 articles” per week to EACH web 2.0 property, DON’T MAKE IT OBVIOUS that the “main backlink” you want is to your website.
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• So, let’s say that you have a web 2.0 property with 100 articles on it, that 100 internal links and 100 external links.
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• If you link 5 times to YOUR WEBSITE from those 100 articles, then ensure that you link to another 3-4 (niche-relevamt) websites at least 5 times as well from your web 2.0 articles.
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• It will look OBVIOUS if you have 100 articles on a web 2.0 property and 90 external links point to your website and 10 links point to 10 completely different websites.
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• It will look even more obvious if you do this with 20 web 2.0 properties, i.e. 1,800 links pointing to YOUR WEBSITE and 200 links pointing to 200 random websites.
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• Although, web 2.0 (foundational) backlinks may not be as strong as editorial backlinks, you can “increase the strength” of web 2.0 backlinks.
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• This is generally achieved by adding a lot of content, getting backlinks to your web 2.0 properties, sharing your web 2.0 articles on social media, and over a period of time the “authority” of your web 2.0 properties will increase.
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• You can “cheat” “increasing authority” on a web 2.0 property by using the types of backlinks I have mentioned in the Parasite SEO Course Group.
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• These are “spammy” backlinks in reality, but these web 2.0 properties receive MILLIONS of backlinks per month, so it’s not a s noticeable, and therefore, these “spammy backlinks” actually work on improving rankings (and authority) of your web 2.0 articles/websites.
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• If you used the same “spammy backlinks” on your website it would be OBVIOUS because you DON’T RECEIVE MILLIONS OF BACKLINKS EVERY MONTH (Google knows exactly what you;re doing, which is why I have said NOT to use the backlinks I’m providing on your websites)
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• SEO agencies are basically people who have created their own “authority” websites, if you have the time and money you can do this yourself.
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• These websites are often referred to as Private Blog Networks (PBNs).
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• PBNs have a bad name and most (unknowledgeable) people will tell you to avoid them.
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• PBNs are still working well in 2024.
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• I prefer to call them Private Blog Portfolio, as “network” implies they are “linked together”.
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• PBNs that ARE “linked together” are what is bad, it is obvious why these were created, and therefore, getting links from them can harm your Google rankings.
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• For the best PBNs you should have different hosting for each website, different domain registrar for each website, basically DO NOT connect the websites in any way.
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• For your own SEO agency you would create websites in all the main industries, e.g. Health & Fitness, Business & Finance, Self Improvement, Home and Garden, Pets, etc.
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• You would then buld these websites as normal, lots of articles, lots of sharing on social media, lots of creating foundational and editorial backlinks to these properties.
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• Once you have decent “authority” (as an example, DA40←– please remember DA is a moz metric and DR is an ahrefs metric, so NOT Google, but 3rd parties, but Google does have a hidden page ranking system, so we have to work off these 3rd party metrics), you can start offering a backlinks service.
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• You can “cheat” backlinks by doing this, as the vast majority of people online will look at your DA, and if it’s decent, they will pay you money for backlinks.
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• In reality, the best backlinks come from a high authority website that has traffic, ranks well in Google, ha traffic from external sources, and everything is “clean” on that website.
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• Most PBNs that you may wish to purchase backlinks from will be “dirty”, it’s likely they’ll have a decent DA, but because of manipulatitiive practices they have probably been “hit” via a Google Update, they’re getting no traffic, so the backlink is basically worthless (yet, many people would be willing tp pay $300+ for a backlink from a DA70+ websites WITHOUT checking that website with a fine tooth comb ←– the difference between experience and not knowing)
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• I’ve mentioned “editorial backlinks” require “outreach”, therefore sending an email asking for a backlink.
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• The “easiest” option is ask whether they accept “guest posts”, as in business you always want agreements to go “both ways”, i.e. you give me something and I’ll give you something.
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• Next, would be niche edits, whereby you email a website owner and note that they have an article about a particular subject, and within tat article they mention something of interest within that subject, but don’t really go into great detail. You email them, butter them up, talk about the article, mention the “subject they didn’t go into great detail” and then provide a link to your article and say they can link to that if they wish just to ensure their readers have all the information the require.
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• Next, would be broken link building, which will require a tool like ahrefs. Think about how many EXTERNAL links you’ve created on your articles over the years. Do you ever go back and check to see if they’re live? Imagine you wrote an article 4 years ago about “WordPress plugins”, and then linked from that article to a website that had a list of 1,000 plugins, but that article is no longer online (the owner deleted it), you would NOT KNOW, but now you have a “broken link”. So, by using ahrefs to find broken links on websites in your niche you can email those people, tell them that the link is no loger valid (404), but you have an article on your site that covers the same topic, would they link to you? You’ve done them a favour by pointing this out, as it isn’t good customer experience to click a link and find nothing there.
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• Next, you have websites that provide citations or have a resources section.(you can find these through simple Google searches, something like “niche name + resources page”), but be careful, you would need to check the “quality” of that website (you actually should be doing this for ALL backlink acquisition), as many websites with “resource pages” or even that OPENLY offer “guest posts”, may have great DA, but it’s likely their quality isn’t that great (why would you need to advertise that you allow “guest posts” or “have a resource link page” if you’re making millions of $$$$$ ?)
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• The more articles and links a website has the LESS POWERFUL their backlinks will be 
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• The more articles YOUR WEBSITE has the LESS POWERFUL any incoming backlinks will be.
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• Basically, if a DA70 website provides you with a backlink (sounds great initially), but they have 10,000 articles on their website and 100,000 OUTGOING LINKS that DA70 is “shared” between every single article.
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• If a QUALITY DA70 website links to your HOME PAGE and you have 10,000 articles on your website, that DA70 is “shared” between ALL your articles (are you starting to understand why many people create their OWN websites for backlink purposes now?)
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• Backlinks can be DO FOLLOW, “Hey Google, please pass on some “link juice” to the article or website I am linking to”, or NO FOLLOW, “Hey Google, please DON’T pass any link juice this website or article” 
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• Most FOUNDATIONAL BACKLINKS are NO FOLLOW
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• It is important to have a mix of Do Follow and No Follow backlinks, looks more NATURAL (April 24th 2012 was a BIG DAY for this, we had the Google PENGUIN Algorithm update which dealt primarily with backlink spam, very obvious is a website had ALL “do follow” backlinks ←– clearly manipulated. The “penguin update” is now a normal part of the Google SPAM algorithm updates, in much the same way as the “Helpful Content Update” is now part of the CORE update)
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• Personally, while “do follow” is still “better” I actually think it makes much less difference in 2024 than before, if you steadily and consistently getting a VARIETY of backlinks, regardless of their follow attribute, you can increase website authority, which is a major art of ranking in Google.