Backlinks are the hard-won badges of honor that seal your status as an industry expert in the eyes of Google.
What are SEO Backlinks?
SEO backlinks are inbound hyperlinks from other websites that point to pages on your own website.
These links are considered a signal of quality and authority by search engines like Google, contributing to higher rankings in search results.
Think of it this way…
SEO backlinks are the foundation upon which your website’s authority is built. Just as trust is the bedrock of any successful team, quality backlinks signal trust and credibility to search engines.
Imagine your website as a new employee looking to prove itself. The more respected colleagues that vouch for you, the more likely leadership is to give you prime projects and promotions. In the world of search, established sites linking to you are like senior team members advocating for your skills.
But not all links hold the same sway. Context matters when building a compelling case. Links from authoritative sites in your industry act like testimonials from company veterans – their word carries weight. On the flip side, links from unrelated or sketchy sources are like dubious references. Rather than build trust, they can raise red flags with search engines.
The key is securing endorsements from reputable sources whose content aligns with your own. By earning links organically over time, you build a diverse portfolio of advocates.
This network of quality backlinks becomes your hard-won reputation, opening up opportunities for visibility and growth. Just like in an organization, there are no shortcuts to establishing credibility. But the investment in relationships pays dividends in the long run.
Why are Backlinks Important for SEO?
Like leaders who have risen through the ranks, websites earn their place at the top through years of dedicated work, not quick fixes. And in SEO, few factors influence rankings more than backlinks – those votes of confidence from peers across the web.
Here are a few key reasons why backlinks matter:
- Backlinks signal to search engines that other sites find your content valuable and relevant. The more high-quality sites linking to you, the more authoritative your own site appears.
- Backlinks can help improve rankings in search results pages. Google uses backlinks as one of the top ranking factors when determining organic search positions.
- Backlinks drive referral traffic. Quality links allow new visitors to find your site and boost overall traffic numbers.
- Backlinks build brand visibility and awareness. Earning links from industry resources can expose your brand to new audiences.
- Backlinks demonstrate social validation. Links essentially act as votes of confidence from peers, lending credibility to your content.
In short, backlinks remain one of the foremost ranking signals and traffic drivers in SEO. Building a natural link profile from trusted sources is essential for any effective search strategy.
SEO Backlinks Help Google Find Your Website
Backlinks are what Google spiders use to find web pages. These spiders follow links to your site and then crawl and index all the pages it finds on your site.
Your site will be found faster if it has numerous backlinks pointing to it. That means your site can enjoy quicker indexing and higher rankings in a shorter time frame.
Because Google uses backlinks to find new web pages, building more links to your site reduces the average time it takes for SEO to work.
SEO Backlinks Drive Referral Traffic
Having a backlink on a reputable and popular site can really boost the web traffic to your site. This referral traffic is valuable because a visitor has been recommended to your site from another site.
To that end, Google trusts sites with strong traffic metrics over sites who receive little or no traffic. Google figures that high traffic sites must be helpful and offer value in order to receive that traffic in the first place.
In your link building efforts, try to get backlinks from relevant and reputable sites. Most SEO tools, such as Ahrefs and SEMRush measure the reputation of a website with a metric called Domain Authority (DA). If you’re using an SEO tool, aim for backlinks from sites with a DA of 50 or higher, and, preferably, with high volumes of monthly organic traffic.
All in all, links from high DA sites will net you more visitors and boost your authority in Google.
Backlinks Boost Your Site's Organic Rankings
Google is the world’s premier search engine because they offer the most relevant search results. Most people use Google every day because they know they can find what they are looking for very quickly.
Thus, Google wants to vet your site and make sure it is relevant, trustworthy, and authoritative. Using their proprietary RankBrain technology, they determine if a web page delivers value for a keyword search.
Let’s say you want to rank for the keyword phrase “treadmills for sale.” You create an in-depth post reviewing all the treadmills for sale on your site.
If the backlinks to that page are from non-related websites, such as a food review site and a tennis instructor, you’re not sending any relevancy signals to Google. The backlinks have limited value as they are not relevant to the keyword phrase “treadmills for sale.”
However, if your site has numerous links from treadmill manufacturers and treadmill review sites, it will surely rank higher in the SERPs.
Example of How LInks Affect Rankings
Below you’ll see a chart from Ahrefs, an SEO software we use every day here at Direction.com.
We wanted to see how many links would be needed to rank at the top of Google organically for the search term “accounting software”.
What you’ll see is that the sites with the most backlinks are in the top three positions organically, while a site with hundreds of less backlinks is below the top three results.
What Types of SEO Backlinks Are Most Valuable?
When it comes to link building, quality trumps quantity every time. Here is an ordered list of the most valuable backlink types in SEO:
- Editorial links – Naturally placed links within the content of articles on authoritative sites related to your industry. These carry the most weight since they are editorially given.
- Links from .edu or .gov sites – Educational and government websites tend to have high domain authority. Links from them signal trust.
- Links from high domain authority sites – The higher the domain authority, the more value the link carries in Google’s eyes.Aim for sites with DA 50+.
- Links from industry resources – Links from major hubs and influencers in your specific niche are incredibly meaningful for establishing authority.
- Links in lists/roundups – Getting included in expertly curated lists suggests your site provides utility to readers.
- Links from local citation sources – Having consistent NAP listings across key local directories assists with local SEO rankings.
- User-generated links on forums – Organic links from real users discussing your brand or content in communities. Shows genuine awareness.
- Links within infographics – Having a link integrated naturally into an on-topic infographic published on other sites helps.
Focus on earning authoritative, editorially given links. Those carry the most weight in your link building efforts.
No-Follow vs Do-Follow Links
The difference between nofollow and dofollow links comes down to how they pass on link equity or ranking power.
Nofollow links include a rel=”nofollow” attribute that tells search engines like Google not to pass on link equity or count them as a ranking signal. Nofollow links do not directly help with rankings but can drive traffic.
Dofollow links pass on link equity and inform search engines that a page is worth ranking. Dofollow links help pass authority and influence search rankings when acquired from reputable sites.
There are a few ways to check if a backlink is nofollow or dofollow:
- View the page source code – Right click on the page with the link and choose “View Page Source”. Ctrl+F to search for rel=”nofollow”. If present, it’s a nofollow link. If not, it’s a dofollow link.
- Use a backlink analysis tool – Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz allow you to enter a URL and see all the backlinks pointing to that page. They indicate whether a link is nofollow or dofollow.
- Check link attribution – Some sites apply nofollow to all outward links. Check the website’s linking guidelines to see if they use nofollow by default.
- Make a temporary link – If you have access, temporarily change the link to add rel=”nofollow” and view it. If the link disappears, it’s most likely a nofollow.
- Disavow the link – Disavow the suspicious link in Google Search Console. If it was a dofollow link contributing equity, you may see ranking changes.
Getting link attribution information and using backlink analysis tools are the easiest methods. But viewing the source code or testing the impact of a disavow are foolproof ways to directly see if a link passes equity.
How to Get Backlinks
Now we know the importance of backlinks, but how do you get them? You get them from some good old-fashioned link building, that comes from a backlink strategy put together by an SEO expert.
Link building, in short, is the process of acquiring links, sometimes referred to as hyperlinks, from other sites to your own website.
There are numerous link building techniques that vary in terms of time, commitment, and difficulty. Most SEO professionals will tell you that link building is one of the most difficult and time-intensive duties they must carry out.
Because this process is so demanding most of your competitors likely put in limited time and effort to acquire quality links. And many others don’t pursue link building at all and, instead, focus on all of the other rankings factors in Google’s algorithm.
That means if you can learn and master the art of high-quality link building, you can position yourself ahead of your competition in the search results pages each and every time you try.
Tactic 1: Outreach
Outreach is the lengthy process of reaching out to editors at relevant websites in order to get a backlink.
For instance, you might ask an influencer in your industry to review your products or services on their site.
Probably the most common outreach technique is to email a web publisher who has published an article that links to other content such as yours. You might say something like:
“I really enjoyed your article on (topic). I especially liked the part about (name something specific). I just published a similar piece on (topic) and I thought you might enjoy it. You may find the post to be a good addition to your page. Either way, keep up the good work.”
This process is tedious and it takes time, but it works. You won’t get a backlink from everyone you contact, but you’ll get quite a few.
Tactic 2: Publish Great Content
Creating relevant content is one of our favorite link building techniques. The more high-quality content you produce for your website, the more links you will attract from people with related content.
Simply put, the better your content is, the more shares and engagement it will get, which send “social signals” to Google that your page is being talked about.
Your best content increases your online reach, attracting followers who share your content on their various social media channels.
Tactic 3: Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is when you write a helpful post for an authoritative site in your niche.
Google claims that guest blogging no longer works for rankings. Frankly, we believe that’s because everyone was doing it and too often guest blogs were posted on irrelevant sites.
Nevertheless, we’ve found that guest posting still works as long as you post quality content on relevant and authoritative sites.
Let’s put it this way: Google doesn’t want you trying to “game the system” with link building. They want you to acquire links the natural way. That’s why they discourage guest posting for link building.
But when you remove Google from the equation, guest blogging makes business sense. Why wouldn’t you want to post on a popular site in your niche? A quality post positions your site in front of another site’s audience who is interested in what you are talking about.
At the very least, you’ll get a fair amount of traffic from a relevant site.
And we believe you’ll get some positive link juice from Google as well. We believe Google’s public stance on guest posting is due to web publishers who abuse the practice.
Let’s put it this way, if the majority of your backlink profile is from guest posts, Google understandably considers that to be “unnatural.” We believe selective and prudent guest posting has SEO benefits as long as it doesn’t make up the majority of your link profile.
Tactic 4: Broken Link Building
Broken link building is very simple. First, you find relevant broken links using an SEO tool like Ahrefs. Next, you create something similar to the resource with the broken link. For the final step, you alert the web publisher to their broken link and suggest they link to your resource as a solution.
To multiply your links, plug the broken link into your favorite SEO tool and look at the backlinks to that page. If a broken link has 100 links pointing to it, you can potentially contact 100 web publishers to notify them of the broken link. And naturally, you suggest they substitute the broken link with a link to your fresh content instead.
Do you see how you can add dozens of links to your web resources in a short period of time through broken link building?
Tactic 4: HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
This website allows you to sign up to receive emails that include topics/questions reporters and editors at publications online have and are looking for answers to. It’s free, and all you have to do is include answers to the journalist’s questions, any specified requirements and a bio with your contact information (typically including your website so that they can link back to you as the source of their information).
If the journalist is interested, they’ll reach out! Or they’ll publish your answer, link back to you, and email you to let you know that your answer went live on their website!
Internal Backlinks (Interlinking)
External backlinks are obviously valuable, but hard to acquire because you don’t have any control over them. However, you do have control over internal backlinks.
By inserting links to other pages on your website, you can alert Google to new content and even tell them what the content is about.
Anchor text is the words that display in a link. It’s an important variable that search engines take into account in ranking to a page. It usually indicates what the page is about.
So don’t forget to link to your new content. But don’t use the same anchor text over and over. For example, let’s say you want your newest post to rank in the search engines for the keyword phrase “DIY mosquito repellent.” If you link to the page from six pages on your website, don’t use that keyword phrase all six times. It looks like spam to the search engines, or like someone is trying to game the algorithm. Instead, use anchor texts that flow naturally with the content and are relevant (don’t use click-bait techniques to drive users to a new webpage. That’s a BIG no-no).
As we said, quality backlinks pass valuable link juice to the pages they link to. You can pass some of that relevancy strength to other related content on your site through internal linking, creating a hierarchy that shows search engines what your power pages are.
The Bottom Line
Along with quality content and relevancy, backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for Google and other search engines. Relevant backlinks alert search spiders to find your content and let them know what the page is about.
Finally, if the backlink is from a quality site, the strength of their authority is partially passed on to your site. You can then link internally to pass some of that link juice to other pages on your site.
Your business can gain a competitive advantage over other sites through consistent link building efforts.
Would you like some help with your link building strategy? Contact us to receive a results-driven SEO strategy for your company.
