From the time Search Engine Optimization came into vogue, backlinks were always a part of the process.
The idea was simple: links from other more authoritative websites in the community point to your website, establishing you as a legitimate voice.
Apart from getting a share of their traffic, it would considerably improve your SEO strength because 'link juice' would flow into your website from theirs. Let's take a look at backlinks in more detail.
To put it in the simplest terms possible, backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website.
Why should you do it? There are several benefits to doing it.
The average top-ranking page on Google search has 3.8 times the number of backlinks than the following pages!
It increases your business credibility in the community and shows potential customers that you can be trusted.
They act like 'votes' of credibility from a more authoritative brand to yours. The backlinks can either be dofollow or nofollow.
Dofollow links are beneficial for SEO as link juice is passed from the external website to yours. Nofollow links are normally added for paid or sponsored posts and so have little to no benefit SEO-wise.
Now that we understand the basic concept of backlinks, we need to figure out how search engines evaluate backlinks.
Backlinks are used by search engines to measure the website authority of your website. It is a prime ranking signal which means it is vital to score big on the SERPs, provided that the backlink profile is good.
Search engines use your backlink profile to analyze your website's relevance to the linked external website.
If you have spammy or low-quality links, search engine algorithms can penalize you based on the severity. Even lower numbers of natural and quality links are better than many bad links.
It comes as no surprise that one of the most consistent ways to improve website domain authority (DA) is through a strong backlink profile.
From the search engine's perspective, a good backlink profile signals high authority and so it directs customers from relevant search keywords to your website.
A high authority website linking back to your website can naturally improve website trust scores with search engine algorithms and people.
It strengthens your overall backlink profile and improves the authority of your website.
In a competitive market, a high DA can mean the difference between the first three places and the second page.
DA helps you to outrank competitors sometimes even in the short term. It also boosts your website's crawlability and leads to quicker indexing.
One of the most challenging parts of the entire SEO process is to climb the SERPs organically.
The open secret when it comes to search engine algorithms is that they prioritize more authoritative links in searches.
Organic rankings for keywords trump paid ads because they happen naturally and are much more cost-effective.
A quality backlink profile can push your keywords to rank higher than your competitors.
It gives websites better visibility on the rankings page which can turn into higher quality leads and conversions.
Building strong backlinks with other leading brands in your niche will give you long-term ranking stability.
Your website will be resistant to algorithm updates and other SEO-related hazards, a blessing when you consider how volatile these updates can be!
Professional backlinking can give you the edge you need in a crowded marketplace.
Referral traffic is a great way to get more people to your website. When you get a visitor from a backlink on a website, it is called a referral.
This process can be especially hard to do when you're the smaller fish in the proverbial large pond!
Naturally, there are more chances of referrals occurring on websites where there is a high number of people visiting them.
The advantage of referral links is that they are more likely to be high-quality leads, provided that the website you linked is relevant.
This gives you a much more 'targeted' traffic funnel that is more consistent and reliable than other lead generation methods.
All this means a much higher chance of converting them to long-term customers.
These visitors will also have a higher dwell time and increased engagement considering that they were interested enough to click on the link in the first place.
With thousands of business competitors coming up every day, it can be hard to build credibility, especially for newer players.
But you should know that link building is not an easy process, and this is precisely the reason why it works! Just like how in real life getting endorsements from authority figures helps you, so does backlinking.
Authority backlinks act like a vote of confidence in your product and can be beneficial for both people and search spiders.
It can help your brand establish a more reputable position in the market.
And once you start gaining traction, you will naturally gain backlinks from high-authority websites without even having to reach out to them.
A strong backlink profile also plays in your favor when you want to engage influencers. It makes relationship building a lot easier and cheap as well.
The modern business can be brutal for brands that are just entering the fray. With well-entrenched businesses already controlling the market, they leave very little for the rest.
Building a strong backlink profile can have a tangible effect on the brand visibility for the average customer.
It can help smaller companies break into the top echelons of authority brands given that backlinking is done properly.
Getting authority backlinks means more mentions about your business across the community. And as word-of-mouth marketing increases, it is bound to influence more brand searches.
All these factors can considerably strengthen a brand's online presence. There are more chances of people engaging with popular brands rather than lesser-known ones.
It also improves brand recall which translates well into offline situations as well.
Local SEO is an area that needs powerful optimization for businesses to do well. The reason is that competition is much higher locally because the footprint is smaller.
Since you're also competing with all kinds of businesses, including brick-and-mortar, getting local SEO right can be a tricky business.
But even here, backlinking can be the telling difference for your business. Getting citations from high-traffic local directories and geo-tagged forums can be great for your brand.
Adding to this, featuring on local websites can also improve search rankings for keywords that have local relevance.
With enough time, you will also begin to see your Google My Business page ranking higher for local searches.
A great side effect of all this is the trust you gain with the locals. People begin to trust your business and that is worth more than what money can buy!
For any business today, engagement has become a vital part of its online reputation.
You can observe this yourself, most successful companies have hundreds of people engaging with them on various platforms.
However, to feature in the conversation, first, you need to be a part of it!
Getting high-authority websites linking to an excellent piece of content you created is a great first step.
It gets more people interested in what you have to say. The more people talk about your brand, the more are chances that your business is mentioned on social media.
It can drive discussions around your business among people which can improve engagement and encourage social shares of your posts.
All this conversation increases trust and chances of your content going viral!
| Good Links | Bad Links | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contextually relevant links are placed inside content that is related to your business and customer profile. | Links that are gained from businesses that are not at all related to your business. |
| 2 | Gaining editorial links, links that are naturally earned because of your high-quality content. | Opting for paid links, links that are bought from the website that violate Google's guidelines. |
| 3 | Links from high domain authority websites, usually having the extension .edu or .gov. | Links that are inherently low-quality from spammy websites or automated directories. |
| 4 | Links obtained from guest posting quality content on other niche-related websites. | Links derived from low-quality PBNs that create spun articles with bad SEO metrics. |
| 5 | Natural shares and comments from verified users on social media platforms like Facebook, X, or Reddit. | Automated sharing on cheap blogs with spammy, duplicate comments, and spurious links. |
Backlinks have always been part of the bigger SEO picture and we predict it will remain so for the foreseeable future.
94% of the SEO community thinks that links will be an important signal Google is going to use.
As search engines become smarter, they will recognize spammy link-building methods and penalize them accordingly.
There is no reason why backlinks will ever become irrelevant, rather, they will become even more important as time goes on.
Strong backlinks are a reliable indicator of the quality of a brand.
It is helpful to users and gives them additional information on a specific topic. Since backlinks also drive user engagement, it will become another important metric during the evaluation of SERPs.
Investing in a powerful backlinking process for your business website will hold you in good stead for a long time to come!
Backlinks can consistently boost several SEO metrics like search rankings, domain authority, and brand visibility. It can drive referral traffic and help build credibility and trust.
Backlinks improve one of the most important metrics in modern SEO - trust. Higher quality backlinks mean more trust and better rankings on SERPs. More backlinks mean better brand visibility and topical authority.
The first thing to consider for backlinks is the quality. It should be relevant to the topic discussed and be from an authoritative website. Poor backlinks that are unrelated can hurt your ranking numbers.
● Build high-quality links over just numbers - quality is always better than quantity.
● Audit your backlink profile regularly because spammy and low-quality links are bound to happen.
● Create valuable and shareable content that can help your link-building process.
● Foster productive relationships with authority websites and influencers.
● Adapt to evolving trends in your niche as well as search engine algorithm changes.
● Reach out to authority websites for collaborating on backlinking but leave money out of it.