Backlinks play an important role in your website’s Google rank, but why? Read more and learn exactly what are backlinks and why they are so important!
Learning search engine optimization can be complicated for an amateur.
When you’re looking into what you need to do in order to rank on Google there are a ton of factors which you’ll learn about.
Anyone who’s spent time trying to learn has come across the word backlinks.
What are backlinks? What are they used for? Why are they so important?
Read on and we’ll show you the what and why of backlinks so you can better incorporate them into your own SEO strategy.
What Are Backlinks?
Backlinks are simple: when another page links to yours you have a backlink.
Not all are created equally, however.
A backlink from a well-known and trusted site is much more important to have than a bunch of them on no-name blogs and stuffed deep in link directories.
Backlinks thrive on authority. Joe Schmoe’s Carpentry blog with 100 monthly visitors and enough spam to feed an army isn’t going to do much for your search engine page ranking.
On the other hand, a link from a high authority website in the same niche can give you a substantial bump.
Link-building is the art of building up high-quality backlinks to help you get a boost on Google.
They’re the foundation of off-page SEO and ignoring them can cause even the best content to stay stagnant. No one wants to find themselves sitting in the depths of Google, especially if you’re trying to make money.
Why Does Google Use Backlinks?
Think of backlinks like academic citations.
The more times a paper has been cited, the more authoritative it ends up being. When you’re gathering backlinks you’re pretty much getting citations for your page.
In the early days of SEO tactics were much different but Google’s focus has always been on the experience for the end user.
Tactics like ghost text and keyword stuffing are pretty much dead and so is the use of large quantities of links from useless pages. While they’re not entirely useless, and you should definitely get backlinks where you can, they just don’t carry as much weight as links from the big boys in a niche.
How Do I Build Backlinks?
Some people would tell you to just buy them.
This isn’t only expensive… it’s not a fantastic idea for a variety of reasons. The big one is that Google will penalize you for them.
Organic backlinks tend to be the strongest. If you’ve got excellent content then other people will naturally link to it. Those links can get you more links and so on down the line.
Guest posting is another big one that people use in order to get their links. Essentially, you trade great content for a link back to your own page.
A proper link building strategy is beyond the scope of this article. It takes a lot of time and effort to get the ball rolling.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is your page’s ranking.
Hire the Experts
When it comes down to it you probably want to focus on your business and not your web page.
SEO takes a lot of time and specialized knowledge to be done correctly. You have to answer a ton of questions like what are backlinks and then implement that knowledge properly.
On top of that, you’ll be competing with experts in the field.
For most people, hiring an expert is the best option and frees up time for you to make sure your product and services are up to par.
If that sounds good to you then contact us and we’ll start smashing your page right to the top.
