SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant searches.

The better visibility your page has in search results, the more likely you are to attract the attention of prospective and existing customers to your business (Search Engine Land).

Search engines like Google or Bing are able to use bots on the web, going from site to site, collecting information about various pages, and placing them into an index. These then get ranked, taking into account many ranking factors to decide which order the pages should appear in the search results.

The use of SEO is increasingly important for digital marketing as there are trillions of searches made online every year, often with an intent to make a purchase.

This has become the primary source of digital traffic, therefore greater visibility, and a higher ranking in search results, can have a great financial impact for many businesses.

Are backlinks still important for SEO?

Within SEO, there are a number of different moving pieces and various tasks going on which are all important to the strength of your website. One of these important aspects is backlinks which are essential to helping build your websites domain. Backlinks are a link which sit on another website and direct back to your site.

They directly contribute to search result rankings and the strength and authority of your website; it’s extremely useful to have a backlink strategy for SEO for your business.

Page and domain authorities can directly indicate how authoritative your website is believed to be by search engines, therefore, the more authoritative your site is, the higher it will be ranked for your chosen keywords.

Aside from the above, building backlinks for SEO can also provide another entry point for users to visit your website. For example, if a user is reading an article or blog on another site and sees a link referring back to your site, they could find the topic engaging and click directly back to your website. This is great referral traffic which has a significant positive impact on the reputation of your website.

Backlinks are still important for SEO but it’s about quality over quantity. It’s very possible for a site with less backlinks to outrank a site which has more backlinks. They’re there to help build the trust and authority of your website, giving it the ability to compete with other websites, even if they have more links.

How to get good backlinks for SEO

There are bad and good backlinks for SEO, some are seen as natural, and some are paid. Some examples of natural links could be when bloggers, media companies, or publications mention you as a source or feature your products or services.

A blogger could have a list of resources and extended reading on their page referring back to yours resulting in a natural backlink. It’s also possible for companies to link between other brands in footers or navigation systems to switch between the various web pages.

When we look at backlinks which aren’t natural, we can include banner ads as they’re generally paid placements, badges, feeds, and widgets with keyword-rich backlinks, leaving comments on forums, community websites, or blogs, providing databases to sell products on other sites which link back to yours, and generally anything that isn’t clearly earned by merit.

By utilising a backlink strategy for SEO, you can build trust by working with credible people in your industry, help to ensure that your website is secure, benefit from a solid internal linking structure, and source the content to the author and other relevant sources.

Part of this strategy could include correctly structuring your content using clear titles, properly named images, header tags, and properly formatting tables, lists, etc. which will all help with good backlinks for SEO.

Creating backlinks for SEO is an important task to improve your websites performance in search results, however it can take some time to get it right. You may find it useful to look at listing your website in local or online directories to give you good backlinks for SEO such as Yelp and Yellow Pages; this is another way to make it even easier for your customers to find you.

It’s also possible to use Google My Business to list your business and website on Google Maps making it even easier again for potential customers to find you.

Another avenue to building backlinks for SEO is to visit authoritative websites, comment and engage with on blogs with true appreciation for their high-quality content. This is also a good opportunity to leave the link to your website within your comment which helps you to build relationships with other businesses and websites in your industry.

However, it’s important that you’re only engaging with industry relevant posts otherwise your engagement could be seen as spam and they’ll likely just remove it.

Have you ever thought about guest blogging for other websites in your industry? This can be a high value backlink strategy for SEO but is also very time-consuming.

If you’re interested in exploring this avenue you’ll need to take the time to do your research and source quality sites within your industry to discover which ones are accepting guest blogs before you approach them.

Once you’ve secured your spot, you’ll need to make sure you’re writing relevant and engaging content which fits within their guidelines to be submitting for approval.

Of course, you’ll want to include a link to your website within the copy; focus on creating content which will acquire backlinks itself. You may also be able to find other sites which will consider the free content they’ll receive for a backlink. If you write engaging content which is helpful to people within your industry, they’ll generate links themselves.

Build yourself a strong portfolio of backlinks and help improve your websites domain and page authorities, in addition to helping your website rank as high as possible.

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