Are you looking to build on your website’s visibility within search engine result pages? Do you feel you’ve tried everything and don’t know where to turn next?
You may have been improving your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy through great techniques such as adding long-tail keywords, optimizing title tags and meta descriptions, writing longer, more relevant content, or inserting internal links.
However, along with these great techniques, and many more, there is a technique that you may not have tried yet – building backlinks.
Building backlinks is essential when it comes to optimizing your website and getting it to show better on search engine result pages. This is something you will definitely want to build out, for it’s one of the most weighted ranking factors, so let’s dive into what they are and how they can benefit your site.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links on other sites that point back to your website. You may be familiar with internal links, where you have links on your site pointing to another page on your site. Similar to these, backlinks are pointing to a page on your website, but from an outside source. Each backlink you have essentially tells search engines that you are valuable and trustworthy.
How do backlinks benefit your company?
Backlinks are important for several reasons, such as building brand authority and gaining site visibility. The goal, however, is to get backlinks from other pages that already have high page authority.
We often like to think of this in comparison to recommendations on a resume. Suppose you have a recommendation from the President of the United States, or the CEO of your previous company, saying that you qualify for the job position that you are applying for.
In that case, the future employer will see that recommendation as a higher authority than say if your mom was the one promoting you. In other words, a site with a higher page rank linking to your site will give you a better reputation than one with low page rank.
How many backlinks should a website have?
While there is no limit on how many backlinks you should have, it is best to get as many as possible. However, keep in mind that quality trumps quantity.
If you have more backlinks, then it means multiple sites are referring to your website, which shows Google how important you are. When Google starts to see that other authoritative sites support your website, they will ultimately begin to rank you better and increase your site visibility.
Although having a significant number of backlinks on your site can be beneficial, you want to ensure you are doing it honestly. It is best to build them out over time.
Some companies will try and sell you multiple backlinks at once or convince you that they are getting you the highest ranking, but this is often spam and something you will want to avoid.
Gaining thousands of backlinks within 24 hours or a short period of time will, in fact, drop your ranking. Keep in mind, having one high quality, authoritative, link pointing back to your site is better than having ten low-quality backlinks.
How to build quality backlinks
As you know, backlinks are important to your SEO strategy, but building them can be a challenge and can take some time.
However, taking the time to build them will be worth it in the end. A great place to start is with the content on your website. You want to make sure that your content is compelling and relevant.
If other websites see that the information on your site is interesting, attention-grabbing, and pertinent, they will be more likely to link to it! Some additions that you might want to consider are adding videos or a compelling infographic.
One question you could ask yourself is, “Is this something that I would want to link to if I were an outside source”? Asking this can help guide you in writing linkable content.
Simply going out and asking for links is not the best approach to obtaining backlinks. You want to instead build a relationship and trust with other site owners. You will also want to make it simple for sites to share your content, which can be done by adding social sharing buttons. Many people also dabble in writing guest blogs that include links back to their own website.
We get that you are running a business and have a lot of responsibilities to take care of, so time is of the essence. You may want to consider investing in companies like WebFX to build your backlinks for you. They have a lot of experience in building backlinks and know just how to get them. Putting your trust in professionals will help you save time and still gain quality backlinks.
How to know who to reach out to for backinks
You know you want authoritative sites to link back to your site, but how do you know what sites rank well? Utilizing tools like aHrefs can help you determine if a site has a high domain authority before you reach out to them. Simply insert their URL into aHrefs to see their domain authority rating.
Domain authority is the ranking given to a website that indicates their relevance or overall strength.
To know whether the ranking is high, you’ll want to rank the domain authority with other industry-related sites. Although a domain authority of 100 would be excellent, it isn’t easy to obtain.
For instance, if you see that other industry-related sites are ranking around 60-70s, you know that this is a high ranking compared to a site that is ranking 20. You will then want to get your site to be as close to, if not higher, than the 60-70 range.
Another valuable process to go through is searching for sites that are referencing your own but are not linking to it.
You may find that outside sources are already mentioning your site and it’s content, but aren’t providing that backlink. This would be a smart company to contact.
Express that you loved their article, and be sure to thank them for mentioning your site. Then, politely ask if they’d add in a link and provide them with the one you would want them to use.
Providing the link will make it easier for them to apply it, rather than making them find one. To see where your site is being referenced, you could try site searching for mentions or using tools that help find them for you.
Be aware of site changes
One important thing to keep in mind is how changes on your website could affect your backlinks. It’s normal to redesign your website or make redirects. However, if you make significant changes like these, you” want to be sure that you are updating the outside sources that are providing your backlinks.
Let them know of the change and what the updated link is that they should use. The last thing you want to do is make a change that will lead your backlinks to a 404 page.
Start building backlinks for your business
Building backlinks are essential to ranking well on search engine result pages and building your site’s trust with both users and search engines. Getting backlinks from authoritative sites will help to increase your website’s authority. Remember to keep your content relevant and compelling, and build strong relationships with other industry-related website owners.
If you are looking for more guidance or help with gaining backlinks, we’d be happy to help. Be sure to contact us will any questions you have.