Why a strong backlink strategy will pay dividends for your business!
It’s easy to get tunnel vision when working on SEO and marketing, focusing heavily on one area while completely ignoring another, such as your backlink strategy. Did you know that Google considers backlinks to be one of its top 3 ranking factors? That’s a factor that, as a business, you can’t ignore.
In the following article we’ll focus on:
What Are Backlinks?
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Creating A Good Backlink
Internal and External Links
Developing A Backlinking Strategy
A strong backlink strategy ties directly into your content creation, so understanding how to craft the perfect blog is essential. If you need any tips or advice on writing blogs that drive organic traffic, check out Writing The Perfect Blog Post.
Everything You Need to Know About Backlinks
In this section, we’ll cover what backlinks are, why they’re important, how to create a backlink, the differences between internal and external links, and how to develop an effective backlink strategy for your website.
1. What Are Backlinks?
If you’re new to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you’re probably asking yourself, ‘What’s a backlink, and why would I need one?’ After all, isn’t the point of SEO to drive potential customers to your website, not point them toward a different one?
Backlinks will link your website with another website. High-quality backlinks will significantly improve your website’s ranking and visibility on search engines such as Google, which means more people will visit your website. A good backlink is like someone saying, ‘This website is great. They know what they’re doing, and you should check them out.’
The more search engines believe you know what you’re doing, the more they’ll recommend them to potential visitors as an authoritative source.
2. Why Are Backlinks Important?
If you want to rank at the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), you’ll need great SEO, and part of great SEO is valuable backlinks. Unfortunately, for a lot of small or new businesses, their SEO focus is highly geared towards on-page SEO, such as keywords, while forgetting about their off-page SEO, backlinks. Some of the reasons why backlinking is so important include:
Backlinks make it easier for potential customers to find your website because search engines such as Google make your website more visible.
Backlinks provide more traffic through referrals. Someone reads a popular post on another website, sees your backlink, clicks it, and is referred to your website.
Backlinks increase your domain authority by ranking your website higher than your competition, resulting in your website being more likely to be recommended for searches.
Backlinks can boost brand awareness by establishing your business or brand as an expert in its field.
Ranked as the number one program, over 55% of SEO professionals use Ahrefs for link building.
3. Creating A Good Backlink
The best backlinks are always authoritative and relevant, and most importantly, they will bring traffic to your website. Let’s look at the three factors which determine a good backlink:
Authoritative – If a website that’s already established itself as an authority or expert in its field recommends you, they’re transferring their authority to your website.
Relevance – If your website sells clothes, a backlink from a hardware store selling lumber and nails isn’t relevant. Consider the relevance of the website you’re trying to get backlinks from and focus your efforts on websites relevant to your business.
Traffic – Ultimately, you want your backlinks to generate traffic. High-traffic websites with a lot of backlinks don’t necessarily mean you’ll get a lot of referrals. However, websites with a steady flow of traffic and fewer backlinks generally develop more traffic.
The final thing you need to consider with your backlinks is the anchor text you use. The anchor text is the line of text which contains your backlink. Don’t try to stuff as many keywords as possible into the backlink. Instead, make your anchor text appear as natural as possible.
If you’re struggling with backlinks, don’t worry; you’re not alone. Over 50% of digital marketers find link building to be the most challenging part of SEO.
4. Internal and External Links
There are three main types of links you’ll need to focus on for SEO:
Internal Links
Backlinks
External Links
Internal links help search engines understand your website and also direct people on your website to different areas, including your contact page, services pages, or other relevant blogs and articles where they could learn more information.
As we discussed above, backlinks help to increase your website’s authority and drive traffic back to your website from other sites.
External links take people from your site to another site. While it may feel contradictory, external links are an essential part of any effective link-building strategy. External links allow you to accurately cite sources and can add credibility to the website content you create.
5. Developing A Backlinking Strategy
Below are some effective ways to build backlinks:
Reclaim Any Unlinked Mentions – If someone mentions your company but doesn’t provide a link, send them an email and ask them if they’d like to include a link. Not only does it get you a backlink, but it helps their article because it provides them with a credible link to a relevant source.
Obtaining Contextual Links – Have you ever read an article and included at the bottom or scattered throughout is a read more or learn more section where it provides links to other relevant articles? Reaching out to the author and pitching your content as worthy of being in this section is a great way to obtain contextual links. It’s also a great way to build relationships with other content creators.
Build Free Tools – People love free stuff, and building templates, tools, calculators, or programs that they can use is a great way to get your content featured in other people’s articles. For example, if someone is writing an article on creating the perfect book outline, and your website provides a free book outline creation tool or template, they’re highly likely to include a link to that in their article. As an added bonus, if your tool is good, people who read the article and use the tool are more likely to share it and generate more traffic.
A Strong Backlink Strategy
Creating and implementing a robust and effective backlinking strategy can take time, and although you may not see immediate results, it’ll genuinely pay great dividends over time. High-value backlinks that establish your business as a leader in your industry are priceless. With the right backlinking strategy, you’ll find search engines such as Google, which will start to rank your website higher while also driving more traffic and leads in your direction.
If you need help with your brand, website, SEO, business marketing, or social media, including blogs and articles, to improve your search rankings and website conversion rate, please don’t hesitate to contact us at 6° Media & Marketing. Our experienced and professional team not only understands the importance of online marketing, but we can help you grow your business organically.
You can contact us directly using the contact form, email us at info@6degrees.media, or even book a complimentary 30-minute phone consultation to discuss your needs.
About 6° Media If you want to create a digital culture for your company that wins over customers' hearts, 6° Media is here to help. Our skilled marketing experts can foster your business's continuous growth at scale and on budget.
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