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What is Backlinking And Its Importance in SEO
Have you ever wondered how sites and blogs gain ranks and recognition through search engines like Google and other popular search platforms? If this is your first time hearing about backlinks, you will gain all the insights and quality information to learn how to use them for your next projects. Or if you are already aware of backlinking and struggle to apply this strategy to your current projects online, you have come to the right place to learn all about it!
In order to stand out from the crowded online marketplace, finding new ways to improve your overall performance is a must. Everyone uses various strategies, such as optimizing their website for search engines and creating rich quality content, to improve their website’s ranking and visibility. But why is it not working for you? You will get to learn about that pretty soon. SEO is complex and a huge advantage for small business owners when you apply it with strategy. Your main target should be to gain more viewers, and you can most certainly achieve that with backlinks.
Underestimating the importance of backlinking can lead to significant setbacks in your marketing strategy. But fear not—we’ve done the research for you. We’ve delved deep into the world of backlinking and compiled all the essential information you need in this comprehensive blog. By the end, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge to master SEO and rank high in search engine result pages, paving the way for successful projects!
What Are Backlinks?
In short, backlinks are links included from another website on your website. These backlinks should be relevant to the industry to make them high-quality and rank on search engines. This improves your overall visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), which in turn increases your website’s traffic.
Backlinks are one of the most crucial principal aspects of SEO because they demonstrate to search engines like Google that your website has recognition and authority. For instance, a popular blog in your industry linking to your website can drastically boost your credibility in the eyes of search engines. Backlinking is an effective strategy that SEO writers, professional marketers, and web designers use to ensure their success in SERPs. The more backlinks you gain, the higher you rank on search engines. SEO backlinks are links posted on other websites or blogs from one of your websites or blogs.
For example, if I include a link from one of the blogs I have previously written, that won’t be recognised as a backlink but instead will be known as an internal link. Internal links are links that target another page on the same website. They are useful for navigation and can help spread link equity (ranking power) around a website. However, if another website uses one of my websites or blogs and backlinks it to its content (ensuring that it is relevant to the industry), it would rank my blog or website higher on SERPs.
There is a misconception where individuals believe that the amount of high-traffic keywords, which are popular search terms that drive a significant amount of traffic to a website, used in a website or blog makes your website or blog rank, and with this mindset, backlinks are overlooked. Then, we wonder why our websites or blogs are not ranking. By no means is it that these keywords don’t work, but SEO keeps changing, and SERP requirements do change at times. This is why, in our profession and industry, we require continuous research, understanding, and updates about new and relevant concepts. So here we are to deliver that information to our trusted readers.
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Now that we have explored the definition of backlinks and their impact on a website, it’s time to see how SEO backlinks can open up new pathways for your industry or organization to flourish. If you aspire for your website to truly stand out and grace the first page of SERPs, conduct thorough research. At times, small businesses or startup industries primarily rely on targeted keywords and their traffic to climb higher in SERPs. This is known as on-page efforts. As they embark on their journey, it may take such an establishment to gain recognition among bigger industries and eventually secure their own website backlinks to a larger corporation’s website. This is the potential for growth and success that backlinking can offer.
Our Fact: Websites that regularly gain the first rank on Google and continuously rank in this position have 3.8 times more backlinks as compared to the rest of the top sites on the list.
In simpler terms, the more high-quality websites that link back to yours, the more likely your website is to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords. This translates into increased organic traffic, brand awareness, and potential customers.
Here are a couple of more reasons why backlinks are important:
1. Improve Your Rankings
Backlinks in SEO improve your rankings since the website that uses your link views the quality and quantity of the links to vote for and gains confidence in your site. So, the more backlinks your website has from popular and relevant industries, the higher your website or blog will rank for search terms. Apart from backlinks, other factors, such as on-page SEO and page speed, can also affect the rankings for relevant search terms.
Related Read: Tips To Rank Higher On Google: Your 10-Step Guide.
2. It’s Easier to Find Your Website
Finding your website or blog will become much easier, and a larger audience will view your page. This will increase your site’s traffic and overall ranking on Google, improving your overall visibility. Search engines filter out pages that they have already filtered out, which are the most revisited pages. Once backlinking starts, search engines will be able to discover your content much more easily.
3. Gain More Visitors
Your website will be easier to find, and once you appear more frequently on SERPs, this automatically means that you will gain more viewers, which in turn adds up to increased traffic. Backlinking would provide you with more website visitors through referral traffic. This way, people who read popular websites will end up clicking on your backlinks, which will bring them to relevant pages (within the same industry).
4. Boost Your Domain Authority
Although domain authority is not a direct ranking factor for Google, many SEO tools utilize this metric to help businesses identify ways to improve their strategy by comparing their website with that of their competitors. Essentially, the higher the domain authority, the more likely a website will earn top positions on SERPs. Therefore, even though domain authority does not impact a website’s rank on its own, using it to measure progress can help businesses determine if their efforts are effectively improving their website’s ranking.
5. Increase Brand Awareness
It is important for companies to keep investing in brand awareness campaigns to attract new customers and showcase new products and services. One effective way to increase brand awareness is by earning backlinks from authoritative websites that receive high traffic. This helps you reach out to the visitors of those websites and promote your brand.
Although backlinking may sound easy, it actually takes time and strategy, which could eventually be tiring for an individual. But this does not mean that you should give up. You do not need to be an SEO expert to build your website’s backlinks, but it is still good to know!
Our Fact: Backlinking is not always a walk in the park. When it comes to SEO practices, it has been reported that 41% of companies agree that backlinking is a struggle on its own. But it is worth it in the end.
Could There Be Any Drawbacks Of Backlining?
Like all things in life, you have to be careful when it comes to backlinking. While it is necessary for growth and to rank in search engines, backlinking can also cause major drawbacks if used incorrectly. As mentioned on Google, there are specific guidelines for how you can earn backlinks. Attracting backlinks that go against Google’s or other search engine guidelines can seriously affect your entire SEO strategy, ultimately dropping your rank. Google prefers backlinks that are natural endorsements instead of being forced. When other websites link to yours, it suggests your content is valuable and relevant.
Here are a couple more drawbacks which you must consider:
1. Overdoing Backlinking
Too many backlinks can and will give off a spammy vibe to search engines. The reason is that marketers and writers took way too much advantage of how easy it was to buy off backlinks for their websites. Search engines have figured this out and have established a rule to cut out spammy backlinks.
For example, just as Google detects AI content on blogs or websites, it is not preferred, and this kind of content is so overused that people personally do not even appreciate it now.
Additionally, let’s say you did not buy your backlinks but ended up gaining them too quickly. This could make search engines think you are engaged in SEO hack tactics. This is known as toxic backlinking, and it can really become an anchor to your blogs or websites. So steer clear of that.
2. They Aren’t the Only Ranking Factors
Usually, it is a combination of strategies that work together to make the best-ranking site for your brand. If you only focus on gaining backlinks, you will lose the advantages of developing quality content for your websites, which is what satisfies user intent.
Our Fact: According to Google, the quality of backlinks matters more than the quantity of them. When you manage to create strong and relevant content that viewers find interesting, they naturally want to use your website or blog as a reference (backlink).
3. Loss of Control
It is natural that you cannot control backlinks once they are created. If a website linking to you publishes negative or irrelevant content or even becomes associated with spam, it can severely damage your website’s reputation. Now, you don’t have to be afraid of this since you can request the owner of that site or blog to remove the link or provide you with justification, but there is no guarantee that they will listen; it is unpredictable.
4. Link Schemes
Avoid buying backlinks. It may sound very tempting, but remember, it is a trap. Even if you do get an offer, do your research and do a thorough background check on the website which sent the offer and whether it is related to your industry or not.
5. Time Consuming
Previously, it has been mentioned how backlinking can take time to get recognition and so on. If you feel you aren’t getting it, don’t waste your time on that one thing. Gaining backlinks from reputable websites will take time. So, instead of waiting for that request, keep posting valuable and relevant quality content at a steady pace. Backlinks will come to you over time. However, the wait for some industries can be a drawback to their business.
Small businesses should prioritize building quality backlinks over quantity despite top-ranking pages typically having the most backlinks.
Read More: 10 Powerful Ways To Maintain & Level Up Your Website.
What is a Good Backlink?
Although it seems difficult, it is not unachievable. Although there are bad backlinks out there, here is what you should consider to stay out of that red zone. You should prioritize the link’s relevance (we cannot stress this fact anymore since it is crucial).
The best backlinks usually come under the fact check that they are authoritative, relevant to your industry, and bring referral traffic to your website.
Relevance for a good backlink is so important, and here is why: For instance, you are a popular website that posts content about high-end beauty products, but if a content writer somehow manages to backlink your site to a baking blog site, people would certainly get confused, and Google would not recognise that either. However, if a beauty influencer backlinks your site to its content over reviews, people will be drawn to your content much more.
It’s important to consider the type of backlink you use, as it can affect its benefit for your website. There are two types of backlinks: no-follow and do-follow links. No-follow backlinks don’t have as much influence on rankings as follow links, but they can still transfer some authority. Therefore, prioritizing do-follow links is the best strategy to improve your rankings through backlinking.
Authority is something you should consider in order to gain good backlinks because backlinks from high-authority sites have much richer quality content that is transferred over to your page. This does not always have to be true, but it is possible.
It’s necessary to keep in mind the anchor text you use to promote your backlinks. Anchor text refers to the text that is hyperlinked and contains the URL that leads back to your website. Surprisingly, not all anchor text can be used for your backlinks. Using keyword-optimized anchor text can give the impression of spamming to Google and other search engines. This might make them think that you’re trying to manipulate them instead of providing useful and relevant content. Therefore, it’s better to use natural anchor text that seamlessly blends in with the website content.
Your primary aim should be to boost your website traffic. It’s important to note that backlinks that don’t drive traffic to your website are ineffective. Instead of utilizing backlinks to manipulate search engines for higher rankings, consider them as a means to drive site traffic and enhance your visibility on search engines. Measuring campaign impact can help you identify the most effective backlinks that bring the most traffic, allowing you to improve your strategy. This means that you can use tools such as Google Analytics to trace your website’s traffic and overall web traffic.
Relevant Read: Is Google Analytics Free Of Cost? Unveiling Its Power.
Wrapping it Up
There are several ways to improve the SEO of your site. However, hiring professional agencies like WebsVent can boost your website traffic and provide better linking opportunities. It can be tiring for the average person, but those who have built their missions and professions around this domain are available and, better yet, affordable. With WebsVent, you can earn backlinks and improve your blogs and your site’s SEO with a cooperative team of professionals who have your back.