Blog
Backlinks: What Are They, And How Do You Get Them?
Rebecca McIntyre
Head of Operations
10 May 22

OK, so you’ve done everything right. You’ve optimised your website’s structure, tweaked some HTML and CSS, used a variety of tools to make sure your site’s performance scores are off the charts…so why aren’t your customers beating down the door to buy what you’re selling?

Meet backlinks, the unsung heroes of SEO.

Backlinks are a way for people to get to your site. They’re also called inbound links, incoming links, and one-way links. They’re links from one site to a page on another site. You can think of backlinks as “votes” that Google and other big search engines consider as a measure of your credibility and authority. The more backlinks you have, the more credible you are deemed and thus, you rank higher. Pages with a lot of backlinks are more likely to get good organic search engine rankings.

Why Are Backlinks Important?

The competition to rank higher in any search engine is a tough one. There are literally thousands if not millions of pages and websites around. So how do you stand out from the rest? 

Backlinks are the cornerstone of most SEO campaigns. If you don’t have quality backlinks pointing to your page, you will struggle to rank well. As we’ve said, they are votes of confidence that help Google and other search engines figure out how well your site is doing. 

If your content is valuable, credible, and useful, your backlinks tell that to the search engines. 

Backlinks are like a reflection of your site’s popularity. They play an important role in SEO. The higher the number of backlinks your site has, the higher it will rank for targeted keywords.

Quality Over Quantity

Backlinks are the contributor of reputation and authority to your website. The thing is, the importance of backlinks has moved from quantity to quality. Simply having a lot of backlinks is no longer enough! Even Google has moved away from this SEO practice. Now it’s about earning links worth having, which means you need to engage with your audience and earn the respect of others in your industry. So, how do you go about doing this?

How Do You Get Backlinks? 

Local Citations

One of the easiest ways to build links to your business is to get some local citations or listings on online directories.

There are a lot of good, well-known websites that let you build these citations for free or with very little money.

In most cases, you can search for the website on Google, run it through an SEO tool like Ahrefs to see how well it ranks, and then sign up through a form on the website.

Local citations, on the other hand, also give search engines more information about your business, which helps them better understand you and your content.

Article Inclusions

If you want to get a link back to your site, write about yourself in a blog post or article.

You can do this by making great, linkable content and telling other websites that might want to link to your content about it. But it takes a while for those backlinks to start coming in on their own.

You can also try and keep an eye for journalist call outs. Journalists are very busy, and they often look for sources with a lot of expertise and influence on a field. 

Following journalists and writers in your field is a good idea because it will make sure you know what stories they’re working on at the time.

Guest Posts

You can make it look like you were naturally part of an article by writing a guest post.

A guest post is when you write a post for someone else’s website, and they post it. Most of the time, you’ll write the content, and the publication will let you link to it.

Maybe the article is based on some of your own blog data that you’ve written about, and then this will be shared on their website. There would be a bio for your business, and it would usually have a link to your website. 

By Giving Credible Data

Data and statistics are very important and very easy to link to.

When it comes to blogging and content development, people may use your ideas without crediting you because they may be pretty common.

However, when it comes to data or a statistic, it’s self-evident that you deserve credit for it, and secondly, that link is required to demonstrate they didn’t invent the statistic.

Thus, gathering data and distributing it in a novel and engaging manner is another strategy for generating backlinks.

We Got Your BACKlinks! 

How to get on page 1 of Google goes beyond keyword density. Links don’t just bring traffic to your website. They are also a key factor in the rankings process.This can make backlinks confusing if you don’t know how they relate to SEO.

These website links affect your search ranking and are a vital part of your SEO strategy. It’s not just external links that matter. The more backlinks you have and the better quality they are, the more likely you will rank well in Google.

If you’re interested in learning more about backlinks, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ve helped many clients incorporate quality backlinks in their websites.