Are you a small business owner with a website that isn’t getting any organic traffic? Are you worried about all the money you are pouring into website marketing, but never getting any traction out of it?
You might be missing a big piece of the puzzle, i.e., backlinks. The importance of backlinks for SEO (search engine optimization) cannot be overemphasized.
But backlinks are not all created equally either. Low-quality backlinks can hurt, rather than boost your Google rankings.
Read on to learn more about the importance of backlinks and how to create backlinks that help your website ratings.
What Are Backlinks?
When one website links to another, those are called backlinks. They are also known as inbound or incoming links. For example, if you have a business selling cat food and another website that sells cat clothing links to your cat food collection, that link would be considered a backlink.
Importance of Backlinks for SEO
Google is always pushing us to prove that our website content is valuable and deserves to be shown on the first page of search results. One way you can prove to Google that your content is valuable and your website is worthy is by using backlinks.
This is because other websites would only link to your content if they found it valuable or useful in some manner. The more backlinks you get, the more value Google assigns to your content and website.
How to Create Backlinks
If you are wondering how to create backlinks that Google likes and doesn’t consider useless, there are 2 important ways to do so (and one not-so-great way):
- Natural links – when you as an owner did nothing to receive a link (like in the example above)
- Manual links – when you reach out to a website and request a link
- Self-created links – when you add a link to a forum or blog content
Google loves natural links and manual links but could downgrade a website for using too many self-created links. So remember to avoid using those as much as possible, even though they are the easiest ones to get.
Also, remember that each website has a certain level of authority on the website and in Google’s eyes. For example, Forbes is a website with high authority and it would be valuable to get a backlink from them. But a random website with barely any visitors, wouldn’t matter as much.
‘How many backlinks do I need?’ – click the link to learn more about that.
Are Backlinks Still Important?
YES, absolutely! There’s always false news roaming about the blogosphere saying that Google doesn’t care about backlinks anymore. But that’s not true!
The importance of backlinks for SEO is still crucial and therefore, you must pay focused attention to this aspect of your marketing plan.
Keep reading through the various articles on our website about related topics on website building, ranking, and more, so you never fall behind when it comes to Google’s changing SEO standards. You may also want to work with a Denver SEO agency like Octiv Digital to help you build your backlink profile.