What Are Backlinks and How Does It Help SEO

What Are Backlinks and How Does It Help SEO?

Backlinks are the most spoken about topics we hear about as an agency, and so it should be as it’s crucial for SEO. If you’ve been working on your website’s SEO and online presence, chances are you have encountered the term “backlinks” or “backlinking”, but exactly what are they? Why are they so important?

We understand that backlinks can be difficult to grasp when it comes to explaining to someone how they can impact SEO. So that’s why in this blog we will help you understand what backlinks are, why they’re so important and how they will help with your SEO strategy.

Essentially, the main role for backlinks is to boost your website’s authority by other websites pointing back to yours.

Good backlinks come from authoritative and trusted sites. These could be a mention in an article release, a link from your Google Business Profile, or even a link from a blog post related to your industry.

Are you ready to start implementing backlinks for your website? Find out more below.

What Are Backlinks?

A backlink is simply a link from one website pointing back to your own. In simpler terms, when one website links to one of your web pages, that’s considered a backlink for your site. Backlinks are also known as inbound links or incoming links, and they can come from various sources like blogs, news article sites, or even other businesses sharing your useful content.

Backlinks signal to search engines like Google or Bing that your content is valuable, credible, and trustworthy. Basically, the more quality backlinks you have, the more search engine crawlers view your site as valuable. This will directly impact your search rankings and search engine results pages (SERPs), which makes backlinks a crucial element in any successful SEO campaign.

Why Are Backlinks Important for SEO?

Backlinks are crucial for SEO because search engines like Google use them as one of their major ranking factors. They’re a vote of confidence for your website, helping search engines find and rank your site, which results in improving your domain authority score and drive traffic from external sources.

Improves Search Engine Rankings

Backlinks help search engine crawlers like Google discover your website. When another website links back to your site it signals that your content is valuable. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the better chances you have of ranking on the first page of Google.

Increase Domain Authority (DA)

Search engines like Google want to rank sites that show authority and are trustworthy to serve its users. Using strong backlinks sends a signal to search engine crawlers that your content is worth promoting. It helps to raise your DA score over time, the higher the DA, the more likely you are to rank well for competitive keywords. But it’s not all about getting the number of backlinks – it’s about the quality. A few high-quality backlinks will serve better for your SEO than hundreds of low-quality backlinks.

Boost More Traffic To Your Website

Building your backlink profile from reputable websites not only boosts your SEO rankings but will also bring in more direct traffic. The more visitors to your website from these links, the more chances you have at converting visitors into leads or customers.

Enhance Credibility and Trust

Having quality backlinks are a way of gaining trust from both search engines and users. When a reputable site links to your content, it helps to establish you as an authority in your niche or industry. Users are more likely to trust content that has been endorsed by other credible sites.

Different Types of Backlinks

Backlinks come in various forms, they’re not all the same. Here are the main types of backlinks you will come across:

Dofollow Links

These are the best kind of backlinks because they pass on the most link juice, which helps boosts your SEO. For example, this can be another site linking to your blog post because they found your content to be useful. Dofollow links are the most trustworthy and help increase rankings for your SEO.

Nofollow Links

Although these links still direct traffic to your site, they don’t pass as much link juice as dofollow links do. Google will see the link but will not consider it to help with boosting your rankings.

UGC (User-Generated Content) Links

These links signal to Google that the link is placed in user-generated-content, which refers to comments, forum posts, or any other places on a website where users can add content.

How to Build Backlinks for Your Website

Not all backlinks are created equally, the quality of backlinks you acquire is just as important, if not more so, than the quantity. Building high-quality backlinks takes time and effort, but it’s one of the crucial things you can do to build your SEO presence. Whether you’re a small business or an SEO agency, here are a few best practices to help you get started:

Create Link-Worthy Content

To earn valuable backlinks, your content needs to be worth linking to. This means producing high-quality content that’s useful and engaging that others would want to share. Examples of valuable content including in-depth research articles, informative blog posts, eye-catching infographics, or even tools that provide useful data. Established businesses may already have valuable content to use, but if you’re just getting started, focus on creating high-quality shareable content that provides the highest value to your audience.

Leverage Existing Relationships

If you already have partnerships with other businesses, influencers, or collaborators, ask them for backlinks.

Convert Mentions into Backlinks 

When someone mentions your business online, not all of them include a backlink. If someone mentions your business in their content, reach out to them and ask if they can link back to your website. This is a simple yet powerful way to building your backlink profile.

Use Testimonials

If you’re using a product or service, offer to write the company a testimonial or review. Businesses love sharing positive customer feedback, and will usually link back to your site as part of the review.

Utilise Guest Blogging

Posting a guest blog is a proven and effective way for earning backlinks, if done correctly. By writing quality content on someone else’s website blog, you can build backlinks while gaining exposure to a new audience, and build your SEO presence. When done right, guest posts can help build high-quality backlinks, expand your reach, and earn backlinks from authority websites.

Build with Digital PR

Digital PR is an essential tool for building backlinks and increasing your online visibility. Digital PR focuses on sharing your brand’s story through press releases, guest articles, or creative campaigns that attract media attention and secures backlinks from authoritative websites. It’s a key component of SEO and should be part of every marketing strategy as it can position your brand as an industry leader.

Quality Backlinks Matter

While building backlinks is important, the quality and relevance matter. Google aren’t looking for how many backlinks your website has – it looks at how relevant these links are to your brand.

When a link related to your industry is pointing to your website, it is going to carry more weight than one from a site that isn’t related to your niche.

Let Us Help

Building backlinks can come at a challenge, especially if you’re not sure how to start or where to acquire them from.

At Design Point Digital we have been building backlinks as part of our SEO campaigns. Our team focuses on helping build high-quality backlinks that moves the visibility needle. There are no black-hat strategies, no spam or shortcuts used when it comes to building links, just reliable SEO link building.

Are you ready to start building a reputable backlink profile?

If you want to learn more get in touch with us today and see how we can look at boosting your SEO for your brand!