SEO for My Website: Why Backlinking is Important
That’s all most website owners hear about when the conversation brushes on SEO. Keywords are certainly a cornerstone of getting your website out there into the world, but they aren’t the only stone in the building. In fact, keywords can only go so far in improving your reach.
A topic gaining interest in the SEO world is backlinks. Marketing professionals are beginning to dive deeper into how hyperlinks in web copy and online content can affect the success of a website. In short, if you aren’t taking advantage of backlinks within your marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a world of traffic to your site.
But what are backlinks, and how can they analyse improve the SEO for my website?
What is SEO?
For those of you who need a refresher, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the umbrella term for a collection of methods that digital marketers use to improve site traffic. The end goal is to improve brand awareness and increase conversions.
Without an SEO strategy, your website and brand are likely to fall flat. Your site won’t have the necessary aspects that search engines look for to gather information on your brand. As a result, it won’t be able to promote it to others searching for the products or services you offer.
During website SEO analysis, an expert will assess your company for:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
On-page SEO refers to your actual website. It includes any content you publish and how the website ranks on search engines.
Off-page SEO refers to any way that traffic is directed to your site from elsewhere. This includes social media and other websites.
Finally, technical SEO refers to the technical architecture of your website. Search engines look at the coding of your website just as much as the content you publish on it.
What are the Ways to Use SEO for My Website?
SEO website optimization includes many methods, and marketers argue over which methods are most important. You can utilize website SEO checkers or hire professionals to do SEO audits to find out how your website is performing currently. Then, you’ll get recommendations on methods that will help you improve.
These methods include:
- Setting up and regularly publishing content on a blog
- Choosing and utilizing niche keywords
- Building your website with the correct use of headers
- Improving page titles
- Using keywords in your domain
A huge part of SEO strategy beyond these methods, however, is building a solid base of backlinks. This method requires that you build a plan for how you will get backlinks and in what way these backlinks will refer traffic to your site.
What is a Backlink?
In the simplest terms, a backlink is a fancy word for one website linking to another website. Most of the time, this occurs through published content on one website which mentions another brand and uses a link to provide more information to visitors about that brand.
How Can Backlinks Help My Website?
On the surface, backlinks are helpful because they improve the reach of your brand by having another brand share it with its fans. People who might not have ever found your brand might now discover you because one of their favorite companies has highlighted you. In other words, your new brand now has a shared audience with an established brand.
In this sense, the worth of the backlinks will depend on the reputation of the brand that has mentioned you. Getting backlinks from Forbes, for example, is much more helpful than getting backlinks from an unknown less-trafficked site.
Backlinks, however, aren’t just for sharing traffic. Search engines use backlinks as a way to analyze a brand’s reputation. This is so important because the more trustworthy and respectable your brand seems to a search engine, the higher that search engine will rank you when recommending your site to searchers.
For example, if your site is regularly mentioned with backlinks by huge brands such as Entrepreneur or Washington Post, then your site will be seen as reputable and valuable by search engines.
Further, be wary of getting backlinks from suspicious sites. If your website is linked to sites that have broken terms of committed SEO crimes, your website can be penalized, too.
To learn more in-depth information about brand reputation with Google, read this blog.
How to Get Successful Backlinks
Now that you understand the importance of backlinks, how do you get them? There’s a number of ways you can successfully build up backlinks for your site. Just remember that quality is always more important than quantity.
First, start by creating links for yourself. If your brand has social media profiles, make sure to add links to your site from all of your profiles.
Then, start building content for your website that has a good chance of getting backlinks. For example, try searching for successful articles and blogs in your niche that are ranking high on search engines. Use these topics and expand on them to create even better content that will compete with these articles.
Some great ways to write articles that get backlinks more frequently are:
- Create how-to articles and guides for your niche
- Write listicles, lists of statistics, or provide infographics
- Write blogs for other websites with the backlink to your website included in the content
Finally, contact influencers to talk about your brand. Introduce popular brands and individuals to your site and ask for exposure to their audience.
You can even interview them to create content for your site and send them the link. It’s very likely that they’ll post your article with a link back to your site!
Improve Brand Awareness with Backlinks
How can I improve SEO for my website? With quality backlinks, your site will be scoring high numbers during your next website SEO analysis. Combined with publishing valuable content and ensuring pristine website architecture, backlinks will give your site the boost you never thought possible.
For more advice and guidance on SEO and improving brand awareness, click around on our blog!
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