With the number of websites out there, standing out can be a challenge — and this is where backlinks come in. Statistics from the World Economic Forum note that there are over 200 million active websites online, which means that your website can get lost in the significant number of search engine results.
Backlinking can improve the visibility of your website and grow your brand authority through guest posts. Here’s how.
What is a backlink?
Put simply, a backlink is when one website mentions another and provides a link to it. They are also known as incoming or inbound links. When an external website points back to pages on your own domain, it signals to search engines like Google that your page has content that is valuable, accurate, and worth reading.
In essence, it is similar to receiving a vote of popularity. The more votes you get from websites with authority, or reputable websites, the better your website will rank on a search engine. This means that it is more likely to appear in the first few pages of a keyword search and be more visible to your target audience.
Why is the quality of backlinks important?
The reason why backlinks are so important for both users and search engines is that they signal to both parties that your site is authoritative and relevant in terms of their search query. By ranking websites, it helps filter out lower quality websites while emphasizing those that are reputable and providing useful information to the public.
Backlinks are also useful for users because it helps connect them with useful information that is linked to the topic of their research while they’re reading a guest blog or article online. They can choose to click on this link for added points of connection. Once they click on the hyperlink with descriptive text, they are directly transported to a website.
Previously, search engines looked at the number of backlinks to determine the popularity of a website. However, your SERP (search engine results page) ranking is now typically based on more sophisticated algorithms. This means that the quality of your backlinks is what matters over the quantity of your links on Google, in addition to a number of other factors.
How can you build backlinks?
Because backlinks are clearly vital, you might wonder how to start building backlinks to your website. The best strategy to build backlinks is to make it of your SEO campaign right from the beginning. Gaining more organic traffic to your page is a slower process that can take some time as opposed to paid search traffic. Some top strategies to build backlinks include:
- Guest blogging on popular websites to expand your audience
- Staying updated on the linkbuilding tactics of your competition
- Building internal links to pages on your domain
- Promoting your blog content through email outreach
- Contacting journalists and important bloggers to feature your brand
- Giving interviews to interested websites
- Creating original research and comprehensive guides
However, without previous experience, it can be rather time-consuming and difficult to build backlinks from the ground up. For new websites that are just getting started with keyword research, it may be difficult to know where to start in terms of link building.
To get your page off the ground, investing in our comprehensive backlink packages means that you’ll get a custom-tailored strategy in no time at all. Get started today and browse our wide selection of national and local SEO packages at Automatic Growth!