Backlinks are links from other websites that lead directly to your own website. For example, if a blog post from another site linked to your page, that would be a backlink to your site. Backlinks are essential for SEO because they indicate to search engines how popular and relevant a website is. Search engines, including Google, crawl the internet looking for links and determine how much weight to apply to each one based on a mostly unknown criteria. A website with many backlinks shows that it is popular and relevant, which can lead to higher rankings in search engine results and therefore gain more organic traffic.
However, the truth about backlinks is that having the most number of links is not necessarily a good thing because all backlinks are not created equally. If a backlink is tagged as ‘nofollow’ then it provides no power to the linked website. Spammy links also won’t help as backlinks are given power based on the referring website, so it must be relevant to the linking site to have the best effect.
Niche Relevant Backlinks are Most Important
High-quality backlinks signal to search engines that the website is deemed to be more credible and reliable. This is because other reputable websites are linking to it, which indicates that it contains good content and is deemed as more valuable to other users. For example, if a popular and reputable website or blog posts a link to your website, search engines will deem that your website is worth checking out.
Getting links from sites that are most relevant to your own is seen as the most important. These niche relevant backlinks will provide the most power to your own site, but are also the hardest to acquire. Getting new backlinks to your own site can be difficult to do, but manual outreach to other site owners and creating high quality content is the best way to start.
Conversely, if your website has a lot of poor-quality or spammy outbound links, it can harm your search engine rankings. This is because search engines view these connections as warning signs, and may give negative consequences to websites that use them. This type of spammy backlink is least important to acquire for your own website. Therefore, it’s important to create quality backlinks from reputable and related websites to boost your website’s search rankings.
Determining the Quality of a Backlink
To determine the value of a backlink, several elements, including the relevancy and trustworthiness of the linking website, must be considered. For example, a link from a trusted, noteworthy website in your niche or category will be more beneficial than one from a low-quality or dodgy looking website. The location of a backlink is also important. A backlink that appears in the main content of a page, surrounded by relevant information, is more effective than one placed in the content header, footer, navigation footer or sidebar.
It’s essential to remember that having a large amount of backlinks is not a reliable indicator of a website’s overall health and chance to rank highly in search engines. In reality, link quality is more important and having many poor-quality backlinks could hurt your website’s ranking in search results. Broken links pointing to and from your site can also cause more harm than good so it is important to maintain the upkeep of your site including noting any redirects and broken pages.
To be successful in SEO, it is important to focus on acquiring high quality links from reliable and relevant sources, rather than attempting to generate a high volume of backlinks. Quality always trumps quantity when it comes to backlinks.
Backlink Best Practices
It is important to follow best industry practices for acquiring and maintaining a positive backlink profile for your website. Here are some tips for building high-quality backlinks:
- Creating both useful and shareable content: Developing high-quality content for your audience can be a great way to get more backlinks. This could include link building with images, a blog post, video, or any other type of relevant content depending on the target audience. Creating any valuable piece of content can help your site land many more high quality links.
- Create connections with other websites: Developing partnerships with other sites in the same niche can allow you to acquire high-quality backlinks. You could offer to compose guest posts for them, or present their content on your website by including a backlink as an offering.
- Post on relevant directories and forums: You can submit your website to online directories and forums to gain backlinks as a form of citation building. Make sure you choose ones that are relevant to your business and reputable for quality links. This could result in many bad links if the process is spammy or done on websites that don’t provide any valuable links.
These tips can help you create quality links that can boost your website’s visibility in search engine results. This can therefore lead to other opportunities such as more sales and customers for your business.
Prioritise Link Quality Over Link Quantity
SEO relies greatly on backlinks, which help the search engine make a decision about a website’s overall status and domain authority. Even though the number of backlinks matters, the quality of the link is a more significant factor. If you want to maximise your website’s ranking in search results, concentrate on building top-notch backlinks from trusted sources that are relevant to your website. You can take some simple measures like creating worthwhile content that generates shares, connecting with external websites, and utilising credible directories to gather superior backlinks that can raise your website’s ranking in search results.
Ultimately, backlinks are a key factor and component of any SEO strategy and campaign. To boost rankings in search results, focus on building backlinks that are high quality, from trustworthy sites, and from niche related websites. The team at BeOnTop understand how acquiring links can prove beneficial to your website. Click the button below to receive a free SEO audit of your site and get started today.
