If you’ve been focusing on your website’s SEO for any length of time, you have probably come across the term “backlinking.” In fact, for a long time, SEO companies used backlinking as their sole marketing method before the search engine algorithms began prioritizing other techniques, like content.
The term “Backlinking” refers to links on other sites that direct viewers back to your website. The link can lead to your homepage, or specific content. Search engines use these links – both the number of them and the quality of the sites where the links exist – to determine how valuable your content is, how trustworthy it is, and whether it is a better answer for a query.
“Link building” is the process of obtaining backlinks. Because previous SEO tactics included spamming to get links from unreputable sites, current algorithms require the links to be high quality, relevant, and obtained relatively organically. That makes backlinking a more difficult component of modern marekting.
Yet the right links are an important component of getting your website in front of more customers, and if you can get them, they are a great tool for helping your site improve its ranks.
Note: Nofollow vs Dofollow Links
Other common terms around backlinking include “nofollow” and “dofollow.” These are tags associated with each link on your website, which is added directly to the HTML of the webpage or toggled in a content management system. A nofollow tag tells search engines to ignore the link, excluding it from any SEO ranking.
A dofollow tag does the opposite. It tells search engines that this is a valuable link. Having other sites link to yours with dofollow backlinks helps your site rank higher, while nofollow plays a limited role (there is some evidence that nofollow links still play a role in SEO, but not one that is relevant). Keep in mind as you find ways to create links that some websites will let you link to your site for free, but will make it a nofollow link.
How to Get More Backlinks
The best way to build links is to create content that people want to link to.
Posts that answer a question, such as a how to or a common inquiry for your customers, tend to receive more backlinks. Videos are popular too. But also note any pages already getting significant traffic. Focusing on adding to these posts can be an easy way to make them more likely to get a backlink.
In addition to writing more content, there are a few other ways to get good backlinks. These include.
- Create social media profiles for your business and link your website there.
- Write guest posts for blogs related to your industry.
- Let blogs or publicity sites know you have an article on your site they might want to link to.
- Write press releases that are worth picking up on multiple news sites.
- Create reference pages that are so valuable that other websites link to you.
Backlinking is only one aspect of SEO. Strong content, frequent updates to content, keywords, and more are all key in improving SEO, and winning you more organic backlinks. Great Leap Studios uses content-based SEO in conjunction with other techniques to increase website traffic for our clients. Contact us today to find out more about our SEO strategies.
