SEO Link Building 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'HARO' and how is it used for link building?
- A tool that automates broken link detection across competitor sites
- A service connecting journalists seeking expert sources with people who can provide quotes, often resulting in editorial backlinks (Correct answer)
- A paid backlink marketplace for high-authority publishers
- A Google Search Console feature for monitoring incoming link requests
Correct answer: A service connecting journalists seeking expert sources with people who can provide quotes, often resulting in editorial backlinks
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) connects journalists with expert sources; by providing valuable quotes, you can earn editorial backlinks from authoritative news and media sites.
Question 2: What does 'link equity' (sometimes called 'link juice') refer to?
- The monetary value assigned to a paid backlink placement
- The SEO value or authority passed from one page to another through a hyperlink (Correct answer)
- The total number of outbound links on a referring page
- The trust score assigned to a domain by third-party tools
Correct answer: The SEO value or authority passed from one page to another through a hyperlink
Link equity is the ranking power or authority that flows from one page to another via a hyperlink, originally described by Google as PageRank.
Question 3: How does a 301 redirect affect the link equity of backlinks pointing to the old URL?
- It completely removes all link equity from the old URL
- It passes most of the link equity to the new destination URL (Correct answer)
- It splits the link equity equally between the old and new URLs
- It has no effect on link equity; only the content matters
Correct answer: It passes most of the link equity to the new destination URL
A 301 (permanent) redirect passes the majority of link equity from the old URL to the new destination, making it the preferred redirect type for SEO.
Question 4: What is 'parasite SEO' in the context of link building?
- Building links that slowly drain authority from a competitor's site
- Ranking content on a high-authority third-party platform to siphon its domain authority (Correct answer)
- Using expired domains as PBN nodes to build tiered links
- Scraping competitor backlinks and replicating their link profiles
Correct answer: Ranking content on a high-authority third-party platform to siphon its domain authority
Parasite SEO involves publishing content on established high-authority platforms (like Medium or LinkedIn) to leverage their domain authority for rankings, rather than building authority for your own domain.
Question 5: What is the purpose of using the Google Search Console 'Links' report?
- To submit new URLs for indexing and link discovery
- To view which external sites link to your pages and your most-linked content (Correct answer)
- To disavow toxic backlinks directly within Google's interface
- To monitor the anchor text distribution of your internal links only
Correct answer: To view which external sites link to your pages and your most-linked content
The Links report in Google Search Console shows your top linking sites, top linked pages, and the most common anchor text used in external backlinks to your site.
Question 6: Why might building links to 'inner pages' be more strategically valuable than only building links to a homepage?
- Homepages already have maximum authority and don't benefit from more links
- Inner pages targeting specific keywords benefit directly, and their authority flows up to the homepage as well (Correct answer)
- Google only indexes backlinks that point to pages other than the homepage
- Inner page links are always followed while homepage links are often nofollowed
Correct answer: Inner pages targeting specific keywords benefit directly, and their authority flows up to the homepage as well
Building links directly to inner pages boosts their individual rankings for target keywords while also contributing to overall domain authority through internal link flow.
Question 7: What is a 'brand mention' signal and how can it benefit link building efforts?
- A structured data markup that tells Google your brand name
- An unlinked reference to your brand that can be converted into a backlink via outreach (Correct answer)
- A Google My Business feature that tracks how often your name is searched
- A social media mention that automatically creates a backlink in Google's index
Correct answer: An unlinked reference to your brand that can be converted into a backlink via outreach
Unlinked brand mentions are instances where someone references your brand without hyperlinking to you; outreaching to ask for a link converts these into actual backlinks.
SEO Link Building 5
What is 'HARO' and how is it used for link building?