Wondering what backlinks are and how they could affect your search rankings and SEO efforts?
To understand what backlinks are, let us use the scenario of Elections as an analogy. In the elections, there are a number of candidates competing for the position. Who wins depends on the number of votes secured. The candidate with the highest number of votes becomes a reliable & trustworthy person for the public.
The same stands true for backlinks. When authoritative & trustworthy websites in your niche link back to your website, Google and other search engines treat it as “votes” for ranking your website. The higher the number of good backlinks, the higher the organic search engine rankings will be. Google will view your website as a credible, reliable and trustworthy source of information.
But there is one small difference – in elections, it’s totally a game of numbers; whereas for backlinks, “quality” numbers also matter. Google has made it very clear with the Panda and Penguin update that there is no place for spam links from link farms by penalizing websites with undeserved links.
The two types of backlinks present are:
- Dofollow backlinks: these contribute directly to your site’s domain, page authority and pass on the authority of the origin site to the destination site through a link.
- Nofollow backlinks: these do not pass on-site authority but help the visitor find your site easily.
From helping your website rank better, building brand authority, site domain and getting conversions; backlinks today and have always been are an important aspect of SEO and are one of the three most important search engine ranking factors by Google.
Some ways to get backlinks to your website are:
- Writing quality content
- Looking out for Resource Pages
- Getting testimonials
- Answering questions on Quora
- Using the broken link method
- Guest blogging
- Submitting to web directories
Now, back to why backlinks. Backlinks are important for:
Raising brand awareness. Building brand awareness is a top priority of any business. When your brand gets backlinks, Search Engines view it as an indication of useful information that could serve their purpose. With the help of backlinks, people from reputed websites will read your content and follow it to your site. Once this happens, they’ll start considering your brand for any solution, problem or information related to your service or product. This will also present your company as an information hub resulting in websites naturally linking to your content which starts an upward cycle.
Improving search ranking. Who doesn’t love higher ranking on Google? The most popular benefit of backlinks is improving your search ranking. Google and major other search engines consider the number of quality backlinks as an important factor for ranking. To ensure you get quality and relevant backlinks, consider these factors of the website you wish to get backlinks from:
- Domain & Page Authority
- Content Relevance
- Website Diversity
- Better Placement
Boosting referral traffic. People continuously click on links within the content and are taken to different places, resulting in referral traffic. The beauty of referral traffic is that it is highly targeted and economical. So if you have high-quality backlinks to your site, it will drive targeted traffic to your website 24×7. The visitor gets to your website through a backlink, Google Analytics then tracks that click and woohoo, you have a referral visit to your website.
Building new relationships. A person who has followed a link and reached your website is interested in your product/service- be it even just a little. And, if they find relevant and quality information, they’re likely to sign up for the newsletter, follow your business on social media or bookmark your website and blogs. This will help you widen up your network, build new relationships and improve visibility.
Attracting new backlinks naturally. If you already have some quality backlinks on a busy website, people will automatically write, share or link it – without you even asking. Some of the type of content that will make this job easier for you is:
- Infographics
- Whitepapers
- Data / Research
- Webinars
- Videos
Fast indexing. Search engines follow backlinks from various web pages to find new site pages.
If your site has zero backlinks the search engine crawler may face difficulties in finding your page. And, in the case of new websites, this job becomes even more challenging.
So better the backlinks, the faster the process of site finding and listing.
Get in touch with us to learn more about how backlinks and SEO could influence your brand growth and help you gain higher search rankings.
