There are many ways you would go about building backlinks to your website. As we all know, backlinks are important for SEO. Few understand why it is important or what it is and how it helps you.
This post will discuss backlinks and how to build them.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks can be explained as a link that is pointing back to your website. How it works is that there may be a blog post detailing SEO services and everything that is involved with SEO. They might create a link on the page and link to my website and set the anchor text (highlighted text section). The anchor text might say something like “SEO services” and the link will lead to my SEO services page.
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are important because in 1998 Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed the algorithm. The algorithm would improve the quality and accuracy of search engine results. A fun fact about the algorithm – wasn’t invented by them and the original form dates back to the 1940s.
The algorithm has been improved over time. It now takes into account both the quality and quality of the links pointing to the specific page.
There have been a few times when John Mueller has either said or speculated on the importance of links. He has said that links are becoming less important today and are making less of an impact than in the past.
I do feel that in certain cases that may be true but not in every case.
Different types of backlinks
There are many different types of backlinks you can build for your website. Below is a list of 4 different ways you can go about building backlinks which are simple to get right.
Create blog content
One way in which you can obtain links to your website is by blogging consistently. This method is sometimes called the skyscraper method.
The idea is to write good quality, long-form content that is helpful and useful to the reader – the better it can rank. Once you are ranking, you could naturally get links from other websites to that web page. The links may be linking out to your web page because the user would see it as a resource their reader may enjoy reading.
Social media
Social media is one of the easiest places for links. A link can be inserted in the post itself or on the platform. For example, if I post about my SEO services on Facebook – I would add a link to my SEO services web page as a call to action. You might also want to add the company phone number and email address to the mix as well.
The reason for adding the link to the post is so that the post can be shared and it can drive traffic to the website. The social media account would also have a website link pointing back to your website. This means you get a benefit in that case as well.
Citations
Citations are a very easy way to obtain location-relevant backlinks. They are technically “no follow” backlinks. However, they are location-specific and sometimes niche-specific citations. These types of links can have either a direct or indirect impact on your website’s rankings.
A citation is usually the contact details of your company on a website directory. The contact details usually consist of your NAP.
NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone number. It is important to ensure that these details are correct across the internet. All details should be accurate.
Using a tool such as Bright Local can help you do this with ease. It is an inexpensive All-in-One SEO tool to help you dominate your local SEO rankings.
Guest post
Guest posting is a great way to build backlinks for your website. Guest posting can be frustrating and time-consuming. But it also seems to have the most “weight” behind the backlinks.
The idea with backlinks is that you reach out to niche-relevant blogs and offer to write them a piece of content for their website. In return, a link is placed on that website back to your site.
The easiest way to find these blogs is to type the following into google:
niche/industry “guest post”
From there you can check whether you would like to work with them or not. Something important to note here is 99% of the time, they will charge you for this opportunity. It can be $10 or $1000 per post. Regardless of Google’s guidelines that say you shouldn’t buy links or not – the blogger gets the last say. And there isn’t much anyone can do about it.
Well, there you have it. This a rather simple guide about what backlinks are and how to get them. It doesn’t have to be complicated when it comes to link building. The simplest approach is usually the best in these cases. If you need help building your authority by utilising backlinks, please contact us today to learn more about out SEO services.
