Why High-Quality Backlinks Matter for Boosting Your SEO
A solid SEO strategy doesn’t work with a quick-fix approach. You’ll need a long-term plan that builds up your website’s credibility. Enter high-quality backlinks. Backlinks are one of the most effective weapons to get your brand noticed online, and they’re worth taking the time to get to know. You’re about to become a backlink genius.
The Basics
Backlinks are any link on a webpage that directs the user to another website. The last time you clicked on a product recommendation from your favorite blogger? That’s a backlink, also known as an inbound link. When your website has multiple inbound links from multiple well-ranked websites, you’ll typically have higher amounts of organic traffic from relevant users.
Why SEO Uses Backlinks to Rank Your Website
SEO works like this: search engines use various elements of your website to determine its authority, relevancy, and user-friendliness. Your website’s design, the quality of its content, and how long users stay on the page are just a few of the factors search engines use to rank your website against the rest. Backlinks signal to search engines that other websites trust your site’s content.
Think of it almost as a “vote” in your favor. You would never link to another site’s content in your website unless you viewed it as a relevant and legitimate source of information. When multiple sites link back to yours, Google sees your site as a reliable one and will rank you higher.
How to Get High-Quality Backlinks
A common misconception about backlinks is that quantity is more important than quantity. This causes businesses to buy low-grade backlinks, so they appear on more websites. For the best results, your backlinks should come from reputable websites that are relevant to your own. Luckily, there are numerous ways to get these backlinks!
Guest Posts
One common strategy is to write guest blogs for other people’s websites. You can find websites that are relevant to your brand and offer to write content for them in exchange for including a few links to your website within the post. Many websites are happy to do this because it gives them valuable content to drive up user interactions with their site without spending all of the resources to create that content.
For guest posting to work, you’ll need three things: connections with reputable sites, a writing team that can consistently produce good work, and hours to spend on each post. Seem like a big commitment? You may be better off trusting the content-writing experts at SteadyContent to handle your guest posting strategy. We collaborate with top websites and strong freelance writers on a daily business, so you can focus your time and energy on running your business.
Natural Backlinks
Although it’s a great idea to write content that will get you spots on other websites, you should never neglect writing great content for your own. Top-notch content will generate natural backlinks, which happen when other websites see what you’ve written and choose to include your backlink in their content on their own accord.
If you’re writing great stuff, you back it up with research, and you deliver your message in a unique way, it’s only a matter of time before other websites take notice of you and reference you within their own work. If you’re not sure you have what it takes to write the top 1% of content and land high-quality backlinks, we recommend that you try out the services of our vetted freelance writers at SteadyContent.
Local Business Networking
When it comes to backlinks, never underestimate the power of your local business community. Many small businesses in your area are looking for ways to connect with other business owners and help each other grow. One way to build a backlink is to interview one another and post about it on your websites with a link to the other business’s page. Another opportunity would be to find a local online business directory and contact the admins to add your business profile.
News Releases
A great PR strategy can be key to generating high-quality backlinks. If your company is doing something innovative or newsworthy, why not contact media outlets and see if they’ll pick up a story about you? Check out Twitter, where many editors will post requests for pitches. For the highest chance of success, write a solid pitch and send it to local media outlets or publications that specialize in your niche.
Backlink Location and Visibility
A great backlink is about more than just the website it appears on. Backlink quality is also affected by its location on the page. The first backlink on a page is usually the most powerful one because it is the one that is most visible to all users, while the subsequent ones generate less traffic because they require you to scroll down the page. And if your backlink is on a page with 10 others, it’s not going to seem as valuable as one that’s the only one in an entire article.
Proper Anchor Text for Backlinks
Anchor text is the way your backlink is displayed within the content. Any text that you can click that takes you to another website is the anchor text for the backlink. Certain kinds of anchor text are better than others when it comes to search engines reading and indexing your website based on a backlink.
The best anchor text will use words that are relevant to the content they reference. For instance, if the backlink goes to your website’s blog post titled “10 Digital Marketing Strategies That Are Always Effective,” great anchor text would include something like “marketing strategies” or “digital marketing.” Anchor text words that won’t be as beneficial are generic things like “click here” or “find out more.”
Not All Backlinks Are Created Equal
We’ve mentioned it before, and we’ll mention it again: just because you have a backlink doesn’t mean it’s a good one! You should steer clear from buying backlinks from random websites. Only generate backlinks from legitimate efforts, even if it takes more time. If you’re seeing slow but steady improvement in your website traffic over a long period of time, that means you’re doing something right.
Build Backlinks With SteadyContent
Boost your brand’s online presence the right way with high-quality content that generates strong backlinks. With the resources of our experienced team, your digital strategy will be more effective than ever, all while giving you time back to focus on your business. Contact us at SteadyContent for a trial run and 50% off your first order!