What is a backlink? How to Get More Backlinks to Improve SEO

You might not even have to read this article if you are churning away at great, helpful, and innovative content. People will link to your website. Great content will rise to the top.

But if you’re just getting started and are being conscientious of your SEO strategy, we can walk through our thoughts on backlinks. 

Crosby Digital Marketing is an internet marketing company in Franklin, TN. We specialize in SEO, content strategy, and inbound marketing for small businesses. If you’d like to improve where your website is ranking on Google, we can help.

What are backlinks? 

Backlinks come from someone linking back to your website. Backlinks are sometimes called inbound links because they bring people into your site. 

You want to have links to your website on other high-quality websites. Think of it as a vote for your website. Google and other search engines see it as a vote for your site. Someone out on the world wide web thought your content and website were helpful to their audience to link it.

Why are backlinks important for SEO?

Google wants to put the highest quality at the top of the search results. It’s a business that wants to show you reliable and consistent results.

Backlinks signal to Google that other websites trust your site and value it. So backlinks are one of the factors that go into Google’s algorithm. 

Backlinks also let your user find out more information. If you’re linking to other quality websites, your audience can find the information they are looking for at the end of the day. 

What makes a good backlink?

In our opinion, a few quality backlinks are better than a lot of low-quality ones. But how do you tell the difference?

Relevance

Google places a higher value on links to sites that are relevant to your content. They are judging the backlink as higher quality with this mindset. 

So as an example, a financial planner linking to an article on tax deductions will be worth more than a link to a sandwich recipe. Even though sandwiches are awesome, Google will assess both links and value the tax deduction link more. 

Authority

Is your website being linked to by a higher-quality website? How do you know? A quick way to evaluate is to look up the strength of a website with a domain checker. You want backlinks to live on websites with a higher domain authority than your site. 

Traffic

A high-traffic website linking to your site can be great because you will get referral traffic. But it doesn’t affect SEO in the same way as a high-quality website linking to your site. But it is still worth mentioning. 

Placement

Your backlink means more if it is featured prominently on a website. So before you work hard for a link placed in a footer, really consider where to put your energy. 

How do you build more backlinks for your website?

So you know how backlinking works, and now you’re ready to get going with this strategy. We can help create an SEO strategy. 

Organic backlinks: earn it

Create content that people organically find, and they find it so valuable that they link back to your website. This is the very essence of why Google values backlinks for SEO.

Organic backlinks are what you should be aiming for, and content should be the foundation of your inbound marketing strategy. 

Create backlinks: take matters into your own hands

You can put your own backlinks on other websites. This could look like a forum comment, submitting a link to your site on a directory, or a blog comment. It might not be considered a strong link, but it is a start. 

Building backlinks: what SEO agencies talk about

There is a lot of networking that goes into building backlinks. This includes reaching out to other sites that might want to have you and your site in their content. Some examples of this include:

• Guest blogging
• Finding broken links and asking to replace with a link to your site
• Asking for a link from scratch

These examples take a lot of networking and time to accomplish, but they can be incredibly worthwhile. 

What is backlink buying?

Backlink buying is when someone purchases a link to a website on another site. When an SEO agency promises quick results, this is often a tactic they use. We don’t like this process.

To be honest, buying backlinks usually means your link will be housed on a low-quality website which can hurt your site’s SEO.

Backlinks are just one piece of the puzzle

Seriously. We see people get hung up on backlinks. But a holistic SEO strategy based on consistent and quality content will bring results. Gains in SEO are not made overnight. They include thoughtful and concerted efforts. 

We take on SEO and content marketing together, as they should be. Reach out today to learn how we can help your business take the next step.