We’ve had a lot of questions recently about Backlinks, specifically what they are, how they affect your site and what they do for your SEO.
Let’s start with a bit of a primer. To understand Backlinks, you must understand that behind your website is an intricate spiders web of interlacing threads that keep everything held together.
Think of it like the cords at the back of your television, they all go somewhere, and they all play an essential role in projecting the images you watch onto the screen.
Backlinks are the cords that connect the tv to your other devices like Blu-ray players and consoles.
In short, they connect one entity (an outside website) to your entity (your website).
It’s a common practice in contemporary SEO campaigns to build up a strong portfolio of good quality backlinks for your website.
This could be anything from guest blogging on another site, to a simple mention in the footer of someone else’s landing page directing consumers to the specialised products or services you provide.
But why go to the trouble?
Think of backlinks as votes of confidence from other websites. They trust you and your site enough to provide a link to it and this vote tells search engines that your website is both useful and most importantly credible.
Just like in real life, the more votes you possess, the more power your website has. Websites with a large stock of quality backlinks will rank higher in Google and other search engines very quickly.
So, all I have to do is get more links to my site and reap the benefits?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Notice that we’ve chosen our words carefully and referred exclusively to ‘good quality’ Backlinks. To quote SEO guru Brian Dean “A single quality backlink can be more powerful than 1,000 low-quality backlinks”.
But what makes a good quality backlink?
We’ll be delving more into the topic of establishing quality backlinks in a follow-up blog soon. But for now, remember that above all else, Google’s search algorithm values links from trusted websites.
To put it simply, which do you think Google would prefer, a backlink to a renowned university or a random website set up only a few months ago?
When starting to build your backlink portfolio, make sure that links to your website appear on reputable websites that are relevant to the products or services you provide.
It can be tempting to go for tangentially related backlinks but resist this urge! Remember that Google’s algorithm is a machine, it sees in black and white with no grey in between.
Check back soon for our follow up tips on how to create and choose the best backlinks for your website’s SEO growth!
