..And Why Is Link Building Important for SEO?
A backlink (or inbound link) occurs when another website links back to your website with the aim of using the information you offer, or part of it, to support its own content.
Backlinks are fundamental in the application of an SEO strategy aimed at favouring the positioning of your site within the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages).
The aim is to help you attract authentic links from external sites that are useful to you, increase traffic, scale the SERP and improve the authority of your site.
One of the main pillars of any good SEO campaign that relates to content (but not the only one) is backlinks.
How Backlinks Work
Backlinks play an important role in search engine crawlers, SEO and overall website growth. The simplest way to think about backlinks is to think of them as conversations between websites.
For example, Claire is a blogger, and she writes an interesting article about a holiday destination in France.
Another blogger, Michael, links to Claire’s article because he wants to share or add his point of view on the topic. Since Michael writes about the subject on his blog and links to Claire’s blog post, Michael thus creates a backlink to Claire’s blog.
As Claire’s blog is rather popular in the travel industry, other sites link to her article as well. This increases the authority of Claire’s blog, and Michael’s blog, in turn, gets a free boost from the backlinks from an authoritative site.
Win-win for everyone.
Why do you need backlinks for SEO?
Backlinks are important for an SEO strategy because they represent a vote of confidence from one site to another. The backlink signals to the search engine that the site is of quality, thus causing an increase in the rank of the site that receives them.
- Increase in visits for those who receive inbound links.
- Greater authority for the target domain.
- Relevance of the content to whoever inserts the link.
Building quality links is an SEO optimisation technique because links are a signal to Google that the website is a quality resource worthy of mention. Therefore, sites with more backlinks tend to earn higher rankings on the SERP.
How To Get Backlinks
In truth, the only sure way to get good backlinks is to get them organically, without forcing it, without fancy tricks or the need to buy backlinks, for which Google can penalise your website.
There are several ways to get quality inbound links or backlinks to your site, but there are a few quick and easy ways that work best.
To get quality links, focus on creating valuable content that attracts the attention of your audience, such as:
- Do a Google search for a well-ranked blog post or site in your market segment and then create your own content to improve and expand on it – inserting the original page’s link in your content.
- Write pillar articles. These are long-format articles that contain several thousand words and cover every aspect of the topic you’re focussing on.
- Write guest posts on other blogs and websites that you can use to link back to.
- Contact influencers or industry leaders in your niche or industry and tell them about an article on your site they may want to link to.
Backlinks Are Essential For Growing Your Website
Getting more quality backlinks is one of the most important strategies for improving your site’s ranking on Google.
However, don’t take shortcuts and buy low-quality directory links, comment links, spam networks, or other cheap linking services that promise to boost your site’s rankings.
Instead, post high-quality content and build relationships with other sites in your industry to generate natural, high-quality backlinks from related sites.
Need Help Creating Quality Backlinks?
Get help from a local SEO agency, Bristol
If you intend to rely on a professional SEO agency, then UK Digital Marketing has the skills to support you in the implementation of effective link building strategies so that you can increase the authority and improve the positioning of your site.
Website Design Agency, Bristol UK
UK Digital Marketing is an award-winning digital marketing agency that creates high-quality, responsive websites and digital marketing solutions that enable you to engage with consumers effectively to grow and succeed online.
Contact us to get started.