Will Backlinks Help My Website?
If you have heard that backlinks help your website then you might be wondering what they are?
If you want your business to thrive online then backlinks will be the missing piece of the jigsaw that you have been looking for. Our Web Design Surrey UK team is all over this with their SEO counterparts.
Despite this, it’s important to understand that backlinks will boost your SEO rankings and help your business to grow. Whether you’re a start-up or an established small business that is looking to expand, you might think that backlinks are only for those who have a significant online presence or run a large, multi-million-pound business.
They are critical for any website, so if you want to benefit from backlinks, it helps to understand how they can underpin the success of your business.
What Are Backlinks?
What are Backlinks? Backlinks are one-way external links from one website to another. These links can take the form of a keyword link or a full URL displayed link within a page of another website. For the receiving website, this inbound link is essentially the Backlink. When clicked on, users will arrive at the other site.
However, the benefits are not just the extra referral visits to your website, rather it’s the vote of confidence you have gained from another site. The more the merrier, because search engines love them and see them as verified support for your content.
Think of it like going for the leader of a political party. You need the support of Members of Parliament. Each supporting MP provides a vote to increase your ranking in the party and % share of the vote.
That was just an analogy to explain how backlinks help your website and how it gains authority and rank within your larger universe/niche.
Backlinks Boost Your SEO and Help Website Authority
To improve rankings with search engines, your business has to get noticed and many SEO factors feed into this.
The SEO industry agrees that backlinks help your website, it’s simply that they create authority and this can be compounded by the QTY of them and varying degrees of authority the links come from.
Research has found that over 99% of the top-ranking websites have at least one external link that points to their website. And these are not just business directory links, but solid relevant links.
Backlinks can take many forms but when Google comes across a backlink it makes a number of decisions.
The first is to see if the link is relevant, i.e. is the link on a spammy blog website, is it simply placed on an irrelevant website with many other backlinks for other websites. If so, it could ignore it or it will penalise your ranking because it will consider it as manipulative.
However, you can earn links whereby businesses naturally link back. This is where your website is used as a relevant reference to back up their article topic, these are considered blog backlinks.
This will work in your favour if the linking website is authentic, relevant to your sector, and has a stronger SEO value. The SEO juice will flow onto your page and search engines will see that vote of confidence.
There are many strategies available to earn backlinks but ultimately, if you get it right, it’s likely that your business is going to rank well and that could be the difference between being on the 1st page of search or page 5.
Despite the influence that backlinks have on SEO, there is more to them and that’s why they are so important for your business.
Backlinks Are Clicked By Potential Customers
Backlinks are so much more than just links that connect back to your website. Of course, they boost SEO score and that helps organic search, but there is more to it.
One of the most significant ways of increasing traffic and e-commerce profits is through potential customers clicking on backlinks.
If your website’s front page or your blog post has been linked to from a high-quality site then you are more than likely going to see a significant spike in traffic.
Backlinks help your website only when from high-quality, popular sites, this drives traffic.
These sites have a large number of users and readers and so, the content that they provide is informative and useful. What this means is that readers are likely to click on backlinks and the traffic you receive is real.
What’s more, the people who have clicked on the link to your website are feeling positive about your business or brand. After all, the publication that they have been reading has recognised you and that means that they trust you – it’s the reason they clicked the link.
Users now become potential customers who might want to purchase your products or services. These customers are now way down the marketing funnel, near the purchase intent phase.
Backlinks Help Your Website Long Term
It can take time to create backlinks that work effectively. But once you have high-quality backlinks they will always work hard for your business.
This means that as long as backlinks are trustworthy, reliable and authoritative they will help your website rankings continuously over time.
It doesn’t matter whether this is weeks, months or years, mature backlinks have been around for many years and still successfully contribute to your ranking.
Once the content is out there on the internet, it is always reachable, readable, and relatable and that means that the long-term benefits are there to be seen.
If possible, it could be worth researching how to carry out link analysis on some of your posts that have seen the most success. This is regardless of whether they have been posted on your site or external sites.
Backlinks Help Your Website
by Creating Trust
The way in which consumers behave and the decisions they make are mainly based around trust.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a b2c small garage or a major b2b print company, there are going to be many other businesses out there doing exactly the same.
Therefore, consumers will do research and will choose the right brand based on whether they trust them or not. It’s vital that you do all you can to stand out from competitors.
The smallest % gains of originality with backlinks will stand you above the competitive set.
If potential customers see that you have been featured with backlinks on top, widely recognised blogs and news stories then trust is going to increase.
The reality is that consumers are always looking for a reason why they should use a brand. When it comes to their priorities, trust is high up the list.
The more people that trust your brand and business, the more they are likely to purchase from you. Along with this, complementary businesses are going to want to suggest business opportunities and partnerships.
Furthermore, you might gain a lot of attention. Publishers might want to know more about your business through an interview, giving you more reach. They may also take more notice when you request a guest post or fire out a press release.
How To Get Backlinks
As we have mentioned, if you do things the wrong way, backlinks can work against you, so it simply isn’t worth cheating. Doing it the right way can prove challenging and you might need assistance but it’s worth the effort but how do you get them?
Make Use of Reputable Directories
It’s possible to place your business on human-edited directories as this will increase the number of backlinks helping your website.
While there are some useful free directories out there, you might find that you will need to pay to take advantage of trustworthy sites. The results are wafer thin but should be considered as a minimum you can achieve yourself.
Create Backlink Bait That’s Effective
If you can create and publish content that is engaging, informative and well written then you are going to increase the likelihood of achieving backlinks naturally.
The reason for this is that content that is considered to be of high quality, is likely to be shared and linked to.
To find success through this route, you should consider thinking about your audience and what they want to read as well as those within your industry.
The content should be well written and easy to digest while ensuring you come across as an expert with your own research and findings.
Build Backlinks With Guest Blogging
Guest blogging can be a highly successful way of achieving quality backlinks. However, one thing to remember is that you never pay to be a guest blogger.
To do this successfully, you will need to make sure that you are involved with the targeted blog. You should comment where necessary and share posts that you believe are interesting.
Essentially, the aim is to build a relationship with the blogger and when you are given the chance, you should make sure that the content you create is engaging and informative. If you do it the right way, guest blogging can prove to be extremely beneficial.
The downside is that you have given up a quality piece of content for your own website.
You shouldn’t duplicate something you had written about before. However if sacrificing it delivers the backlink from a better site than yours, then your SEO will improve.
Some journalists for example don’t allow backlinks. It’s best to watch a few sites for a while and study what their pattern of reciprocation. If a select few are backlinking, then approach them.
The guest site can provide a link to your website in the footer of the article or you could agree with them to allow, what is called a contextual link, deep in the body of the text.
Create Backlinks to Other Websites
Now, this approach must be used with caution, yet if the analysis is done correctly you may be fine. This is basically like back-scratching or widely known as Link Exchanges.
From your website, you can link out to other websites, giving them a little help with Google and their ranking. If you do this and it becomes recognised then you are going to find that they might give you something back. This is one of those situations where you gain backlinks for doing something helpful.
Also known as reciprocal linking, you will need to do it in moderation. So, avoid linking out to as many sites as possible just for the sake of it because it won’t always generate the response or the results you expect.
What’s more, you will be losing a lot of authority in doing so and if a large portion of the websites link back to you then it could get picked up by Google, which could lead to you being penalised. What this means is that Google could deindex your website.
With algorithm updates comes new best practices for website owners, and the Google Penguin update put the nail in the coffin for manipulative backlinks.
How do I check for Backlinks
for free
Log into your Google Search Console (GSC), click on Links 2/3 thirds down on the left. Then review Top Linking Sites to see all visible back links to your website.
Here you will find all your Business Directory listings, and backlinks to sites you were completely unaware of. Contact site owners if you feel the backlink was unnecessary, ask them to delete our re-edit the links to ‘do not follow’.
Keep monitoring backlinks from this page of GSC so you can keep track of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some links can be toxic and they will drag your site down.
There are many free backlink search tools out there, looking for you to subscribe, but you can get some minimum value from them, such as Moz, and SEMrush.
Simple Advice for Creating Backlinks for your Website
We’ve written a fairly limited post and we hope it gives you the backstory on how backlinks help your website succeed.
Backlinks are clearly an important part of ensuring your business is getting recognised and noticed online.
It’s a highly competitive world and improving your search engine ranking could see you significantly increase traffic at the same time.
There is a fine line between getting it right and getting it wrong. Which means you might want to consider using a professional service to ensure that you reap the rewards.
Backlink packages are expensive because, to be honest, it does take time approaching website owners or journalists for approval to work with them.
Your best approach for backlink building is to continue releasing original content via blogs, spreading your content across social media, and building your website authority to eventually get backlinks for free. Make sure your website designers have these functions built-in.
However, make sure you correct your SEO basics fist i.e. Headers, before you start down the backlink road.
You can contact Cream Soda Media and we can show you how to check competitor backlinks, another level of understanding your competitors SEO.
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Email: support@creamsodamedia.com | Tel: 01276 490448
