Google confirmed in a press release that backlinks (also called inbound links) are the second most important ranking factor, after content when it comes to boosting your site’s ranking on their search results.
A hugely important factor in the promotion of a website then. It seems like a system every business owner or manager should put in place, right? Right!
The question lies in how exactly you can implement this yourself for your business or product, and that is what we plan to answer in this article. Read on to find out everything you need to know about backlinks and how to use them!
Firstly, What Is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around since the dawn of search engines. Way back in the mid-1990s, people started using search engines regularly. Very quickly, it became apparent to business owners that this was a massive factor in the traffic heading towards their website. It seemed that being on the first page of a web search meant you would be more successful!
At this point, business owners realized they needed help getting on to page one of Google (or similar) results page. In came SEO. Once people had figured out how to work the algorithms and seen exactly how these sites are ranked, SEO was born. These days SEO is a huge business, and many experts like this Australian link building services are selling their SEO services.
And Backlinks?
As Adam White, author of The 3 Step SEO Backlink Strategy That Works Like Magic, explains, “So how do you get Google to trust your brand like they trust big brands? Through your homepage link building.” Clearly, backlinks are a hugely important tool when it comes to search engine optimization.
But what exactly are they? Simply put: they are links within a body of text on a third-party website that link directly back to your website or the website you are trying to promote. When done right, they can provide the most significant increase in traffic in your whole SEO strategy.
How This Can Increase Rankings
Search engines rank their results on a simple basis: trust. They trust that certain websites are more worthy of higher positions on their results using web crawler bots and algorithms. One of these examines the links between sites. More links towards you will build authority within their algorithms, seeing each link to your site as a vote that your page is trustworthy.
Every link to your page is considered a backlink, whether you design it that way or not. However, search engines don’t rank all links the same. Links to your page from poorly ranked or non-trusted websites will not help your cause. This is why backlinks are placed within quality articles on trusted websites! The more trustworthy and linked your site is, the higher up the results you will appear. This is just one tool of effective SEO, but probably the most powerful one.
Is This Strategy For You?
There is almost no business out there not suitable for such a process. If we suggest, for example, you are trying to start a new men’s clothing brand. If you search ‘Smart T-Shirts For Guys, your page might turn up on page 400 of the results pages. Using SEO and backlinking on a phrase such as this could definitely push you up to the top results pages. It’s a no brainer to try to get yourself as up the ranking high as possible!
How To Use Them
1. Branding And Wording Are Key
As previously mentioned, a lot of this works on your site’s search engine’s trust level and, therefore, the level of trust in your brand. Google, for example, will have 100% trust in sites such as eBay and Walmart. You want to build that level of trust in your brand, right?! To do this, you need to create the right link. You should regularly use your brand name or domain as the backlink. This creates continuity and a very high trust level with the search engines.
For example, if your website from our previous example was ‘SmartGuyTshirts.com,’ for the most part, you should use that as the wording for your link. You could also use the full brand website or just ‘SmartGuyTshirts.’ The more links with those as the text, the more trusted your brand will become.
2. Make Your Chosen Website Perfect
The link is just one part of the story! At the other end of said link, there needs to be a great site. All the above links should link to one page on your website. That page should be a long-form piece with lots of quality content within it. This content should be a great article your customers would love to read, which in turn makes the google web crawlers view it as a strong website. They love quality, in-depth content. Some call this an SEO Power Page.
3. Write Good Content
For your backlinks, you want them placed within great content. A page that just holds hundreds of backlinks would not work again because it would not be deemed trustworthy. So you, or someone you employ, will need to write this content. SEO Companies do this for you, but if you’re doing it yourself, ensure that it is a well-written piece of content, and the link is seamlessly added to it.
4. Putting Content In The Right Places
Finally, this content needs to be in the right place. As we said, you can’t just place links wherever you want! Once you have a well-written piece of content, you need to place it on a respected and trusted website with links added in. This can be hard to do if you are not experienced in SEO.
A larger SEO company will have contacts at 100’s of other sites where they place guest posts on your behalf. If you are reaching out to sites yourself and asking to place guest content, this could take a very long time! Many companies are offering full service to do this or even software that can help you do it in a much shorter time.
So there you have it! We have covered the basics of SEO, backlinks, and how search engines rank websites. There is a lot to it, and plenty to digest here! Hopefully, we have helped you start your journey into building an excellent backlinking strategy for your business. Good luck climbing those search engine results pages!
