By now, you’re probably familiar with what backlinks are. But do you know why they’re essential to your SEO strategy?
What is a Backlink?
Need a quick refresher?
A backlink, also known as an inbound or incoming link, is a link from one web page to another. Google considers backlinks when ranking websites in search engine rankings.
When a website links to another web page, it signals to search engines that the website it links to is credible.
Web pages with many backlinks from credible and reputable websites typically rank higher in search engine rankings.
According to data from Backlinko, the top Google result has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than pages in positions two to ten.
Why Is A Backlink So Important?
Backlinks are a critical ranking factor in search engine optimization. A backlink is important because it tells Google your page is trusted and valuable.
Many people use black hat strategies to accumulate large numbers of backlinks, but not all backlinks are valuable. If Google sees multiple links from low-value websites pointing to your website, you won’t see any benefit. If those links seem unnatural – an attempt to manipulate rankings – you might be penalized.
This means your content will appear further down in search engine results, and fewer people will see it.
The more quality websites that link to your website, the higher your website will rank in search engines.
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Characteristics of High-Quality Backlinks
Your website needs to have high-quality backlinks for your page to rank well.
This means the backlinks need to:
- Come from authoritative websites: Google considers reputable, authoritative websites highly valuable. Google puts more weight on links from authoritative websites.
- Include anchor text: Anchor text is the readable text in a link. Anchor text that relates to search queries and accurately reflects your content will improve your chances of ranking higher.
- Relate to the content of your website: The link should be helpful and provide value related to your website’s content.
How To Create A Great Backlink Strategy
A good backlink strategy can significantly help improve your SEO rankings. But how do you start building them?
Here are some of our top tips:
1. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a great way to improve your online presence and add a backlink to your website.
Start by contacting a relevant, high-quality blog and offering to write for them. With their permission, you can input a link to your website that is relevant to the article’s content in your blog post.
The key here is to make sure the sites you offer to write for are quality websites in your specific niche. Offering to write for any site that will accept articles is not a good strategy.
If you write a post for a high-quality, authoritative website, the backlink will significantly help your SEO.
2. Linkable Assets
To get other web pages to link to your website, you must create content that is worth linking to. These linkable assets can be content that provides users with value.
This isn’t just blog posts, either. It can also include videos, static web pages, and other content.
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3. Reach Out to Websites
Another effective way to get backlinks is to reach out to web pages that link to outdated or old websites with incorrect information.
You can let these websites know the information they are linking to is outdated and that you can provide them with a valuable, informative link that benefits their readers.
You can also do this for websites that link to web pages with broken links.
This broken link building strategy is a less competitive but highly effective way to gain backlinks.
4. Infographics
Visual content like infographics tends to be shared and linked back to frequently. This is a good strategy if you want backlinks from other websites looking for visual content.
Create a niche-related infographic with useful information, and see how many backlinks you can get from people sharing it.
5. Partner on Content
Create collaborative content with influencers or industry experts, such as joint blog posts or podcasts that both of you can promote on your respective platforms.
This is not to be confused with link farming. This is a smaller-scale partnership that
focuses on creating high-quality, valuable content that benefits both parties.
6. Skyscraper technique
Find the most successful content in your niche and create something even better. Then, contact the websites that linked to the original to see if they’d change their links. Since yours is the most up-to-date or comprehensive, many will.
7. Directories and Local Listings
Get your site listed in business directories and local listings. These backlinks aren’t typically as powerful as guest posts or organic mentions, but they are important for local SEO.
8. Social Sharing
The more you promote your content on social media, the more likely it is to be seen and for people to want to link to it. Social shares are an indirect way to promote backlinks because they distribute your content to the masses.
What to Avoid
Along with some of the best practices, there are also specific strategies to avoid:
- Buying backlinks: Purchasing backlinks is a black hat SEO tactic against Google guidelines and may result in penalties or de-indexing from search engine results.
- Unrelated links: If you have links from completely unrelated sites, they won’t help your site in the eyes of Google and other search engines. As the algorithms continue improving, Google is better at detecting authoritative backlinks from related sites.
- Repetitive anchor text: Repeatedly using the same anchor text with keywords can seem spammy to search engines. Try to vary your anchor text as naturally as possible across your backlinks.
Improve Your Backlink Strategy Today
Backlinks are important, but they are just one of the many ranking factors in search engine optimization.
When creating or changing your SEO strategy, include a backlink strategy focusing on quality links relevant to your content.
Want to talk more about creating high-quality content and how it benefits your overall SEO strategy? Book a call with Blog Works to find out about the SEO-rich blog articles we can publish right on your site.
Along with writing and publishing new articles, we also update and republish old blog posts or turn your draft article into a finished post. And we can regularly promote your content on your social media feeds.
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