Don’t overlook backlinking in your marketing strategy. Here’s everything you need to know about backlinking and why it’s a crucial aspect to domain authority.
To stand out in a crowded marketplace, you must find ways to bring new customers to you. You may already know about SEO and how it can bring in more qualified website traffic by helping you rank in search engine results pages (SERPS). However, SEO is complex, and it's difficult for small business owners to understand every ranking factor that affects where they're placed on SERPs, ultimately impacting their number of web visitors.
Backlinks are one of the most important aspects of SEO because they demonstrate to search engines like Google that your website has authority, especially if other high-authority domains are linking to it. W Having an effective backlink-building strategy is key to ensuring your success in SERPs. The more high-quality backlinks you obtain, the higher you can rank on search engines. But, what is backlinking?
What are backlinks?
If you know only a little about SEO, you may wonder, "What is a backlink?" SEO backlinks are a link from another website to your website. High-quality backlinks can increase your ranking on search engines and improve visibility in search, translating to more links pointing to your website.
Backlinking is just one aspect of SEO. Since backlinking occurs off your website, it's referred to as off-page SEO rather than on-page SEO, which focuses on the content on your site. High-quality backlinks are like endorsements; they're recommendations from another website to view your content to learn more about a specific topic.
Ultimately, backlinks are how search engines determine the authoritativeness and relevancy of your website for search queries. Since the more authoritative your website content, the more Google will reward you. This makes backlinking necessary for SEO.
Why are backlinks important?
Now that you understand what a backlink is, you may wonder why they're important. SEO backlinks enable website growth in many different ways. If you want to rank on the first page of SERPs, you'll need to stand out from your competitors.
Backlinks in SEO improve your rankings because they view the quality and quantity of the links as authoritativeness and votes of confidence from other websites. Therefore, the more backlinks your website has, the higher it can rank for search terms. While this isn't always the case, it can increase your page rankings for relevant search terms. However, there are many other factors to consider, such as on-page SEO and page speed.
Backlink building also makes it easier to find your website online, improving your visibility. Search engines find content to crawl by revisiting pages they've already crawled, focusing on the most popular ones. When you begin backlinking, search engines may discover your content easier.
Additionally, backlinking may provide you with more website visitors through referral traffic. Individuals who read a popular website may click on your backlinks, directing them to a relevant page where they can find more information about a particular topic.
Backlinks can also boost your domain authority. While domain authority isn't a Google ranking factor, many SEO tools use this metric to help identify ways to improve your strategy by comparing you to the competition. Ultimately, the higher your domain authority, the more likely you are to earn top spots on SERPs. Therefore, even though domain authority isn't a ranking factor, using it to measure your improvement can help you determine if your efforts are improving your rankings.
Backlinks also increase brand awareness online. Companies should never stop investing in brand awareness campaigns because they must always attract new customers by highlighting new products and services. By earning backlinks from authoritative websites that get thousands of monthly visitors, you can increase your brand awareness by reaching the other website's visitors.
Backlinking is fairly easy, but it takes time and strategy. However, you don't need to be an SEO expert to build backlinks for your website.
Are there disadvantages of backlinking in marketing?
While backlinking is necessary for your website pages to rank in search engines, backlink building can become disastrous if done incorrectly. Google and other search engines have specific guidelines for how websites can earn backlinks. Collecting backlinks that violate Google's rules can negatively impact your entire SEO strategy, potentially leading to a decrease in your rankings.
Too much backlink building is considered spammy to search engines. Because marketers took advantage of how easy it was to purchase backlinks for their websites many years ago, search engines have cracked down on spammy backlinks. However, getting too many backlinks too quickly can make search engines think you're engaging in SEO black hat tactics. These backlinks, known as toxic backlinks, may all have the same anchor text or come from websites with low trust scores.
Additionally, even though SEO backlinks are an important ranking factor, they're not the only ranking factor. Spending too much time building backlinks and not enough developing quality content for your website that satisfies user intent and utilizes keywords prevents your web pages from ranking for their target keywords.
Backlinking is also time-consuming, and many people who try to accomplish backlinking on their own run into many low-quality websites, which may have the opposite effect on your rankings. Instead, you must pursue high-quality backlinks from other authoritative and popular websites.
Even though the top-ranking pages typically have the most backlinks, small businesses should focus their energy on building quality backlinks instead of going for the largest number of backlinks.
What makes a good backlink?
While there are plenty of bad backlinks, knowing the attributes of a good backlink can help you develop the right backlinking strategy. The best backlinks are relevant, authoritative, and bring referral traffic to your site.
One of the most important things to consider is relevance. Your backlinks should be on sites or pages that are relevant to the page you're sharing. For example, you can look for backlinking opportunities on dog blogs if you sell dog products. Additionally, readers of a dog blog are more likely to click your link than readers of a beauty blog.
Authority is another important consideration because backlinks from high-authority sites are of higher quality and transfer their authority onto your web page. Of course, this isn't always true since the authority is split between all backlinks on a specific web page.
Unfortunately, high-authority websites aren't always high in traffic. However, traffic is always something to consider because the more traffic a website gets, the more likely it is to send referral traffic to your target page. That being said, backlinks from high-traffic pages don't necessarily affect rankings.
The type of backlink also affects its overall benefit to your website. There are two types of backlinks to consider: dofollow and nofollow links. Nofollow backlinks don't influence rankings as much as follow links, but they can still transfer some link equity. Therefore, prioritizing dofollow links is your best bet to ensure your backlinking strategy can improve your rankings.
Additionally, you should consider the anchor text used to promote your backlinks. Anchor text is the hyperlinked text that contains the URL back to your website. Believe it or not, you can't use any anchor text for your backlinks. Keyword-optimized anchor texts can look spammy to Google and other search engines because they'll think you're trying to manipulate them instead of offering relevant and useful content. Instead, opt for natural anchor text that fits nicely in the website copy.
Backlinking is a process with a single goal: to increase website traffic by helping your website pages rank higher in SERPs. However, that's not their true purpose. After all, your main goal should be to increase your website traffic. If your backlinks aren't sending traffic to your website, they're ineffective.
Instead, think of backlinks as a way to drive site traffic and increase your visibility on search engines rather than using them as a method to manipulate search engines to rank higher. Measuring campaign impact can help you determine which backlinks bring the most traffic to improve your strategy.
How backlinking fits into your overall SEO strategy
Backlinking works hand-in-hand with other search engine optimization tactics to boost your website's performance. While keywords and content form the foundation of your on-page efforts, inbound links serve as external validation, indicating to search engines that your site is trustworthy and valuable.
Think of your link building strategy as the bridge that connects your quality content to higher search engine rankings, helping search engine bots discover and prioritize your pages in search results.
Backlinking vs. other SEO tactics like keywords and content
While keywords and content optimization focus on what's directly on your website, website backlinks work from the outside to boost your credibility.
Your blog post might have perfect keyword placement and amazing content, but without external validation through links, it's harder for search engines to determine its true value.
The best approach combines strong on-page content with a solid link building strategy since both elements work together to improve your positioning on search results.
How backlinking supports domain authority and visibility
Inbound links tell the bots crawling your site that your content is worth referencing. When search engine bots crawl websites online and find multiple sites linking to yours, they interpret this as a signal that your domain has authority in your industry.
This increased domain authority helps all your pages perform better in search engine rankings, creating a compound effect where each quality backlink strengthens your entire website's visibility.
Common types of backlinks
Not all backlinks are created equal. Understanding the various types of backlinks can help you develop a more effective strategy for acquiring external links. Some links come naturally when other sites reference your content, while others require active outreach and relationship-building with website owners.
Knowing which types of backlinks to pursue can make the difference between wasted effort and real improvements in your search performance.
Editorial backlinks
Editorial backlinks happen when a link appears on a website that naturally references your content. These links typically appear within articles, blog posts, or resource pages where the author chooses to cite your work as a source or additional reading.
Since these links are earned through the quality of your content rather than requested, search engines view them as highly credible signals of your website's authority.
Guest blogging backlinks
When you write for external websites in your industry, you can sometimes earn a link back to your site in the blog itself or your author bio. This strategy allows you to tap into another website's audience while demonstrating your expertise to both readers and search engines.
Directory and forum backlinks
Directory submissions and forum participation can provide backlinks, though these tend to carry less weight than editorial or guest post links. Business directories, industry-specific listings, and relevant forum discussions can contribute to your overall link profile when done strategically.
However, focus on quality directories and meaningful forum contributions rather than spamming low-quality sites, as this approach includes broken link building opportunities where you can help sites fix dead links while earning a backlink in return.
Make sure to link to other sites besides your own
If you've already started investing time and money into SEO, you know there are two important types of links: backlinks and internal links. While backlinks help increase page and domain authority, internal linking can help search engines understand the structure of your website and the importance of different pages.
However, there's a third type of link to always consider when trying to improve your rankings: external links. External linking refers to when your site links to another site. While it may seem like these links take visitors off your page, they can actually be incredibly beneficial for SEO.
External linking can improve your credibility by allowing you to cite your sources and provide links for references while helping search engines determine the relevance and usefulness of your pages.
Key Takeaways
- Backlinks are links from other websites on the internet to your site, indicating to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy.
- Quality backlinks from relevant, high-authority websites matter more than having a large number of low-quality links.
- Backlinking is most effective when combined with high-quality on-page content and effective keyword optimization as part of a comprehensive SEO strategy.
- Editorial backlinks earned naturally through high-quality content carry the most weight, while guest blogging and directory submissions can also help improve search rankings when done strategically.