What Is The Importance Of Backlinks? – Is It Better For SEO?

Many of my team members ask what is the importance of backlinks. A backlink is a link back to your blog from somewhere on the world wide web.

This is what drives me to write this article and give my view on this. I like to think of them as a road back to my blog.

There is nothing fancy about a backlink. The more of them you have the more chances you are giving people to find your blog.

However, not all backlinks are created equal. Think about this…..

Would you rather have a backlink on a blog that Google is ranking on page one for a highly searched keyword phrase and is getting a lot of high-quality traffic every day or a backlink from a blog that has no rankings on Google and is getting zero traffic?

Answering that question pretty much gives you a BIG clue on the importance of backlinks and on getting the right kind of backlinks. With that in mind let’s talk a little bit about different kinds of backlinks and how to get the best ones possible pointing back to your blog.

SEO

Search engine optimization is optimizing your blog in a way that search engines like it and rank it. We focus on SEO for Google primarily because they still are the king of search online today.

Google gets more traffic than Yahoo, Bing, and every other search engine combined. When you do SEO with Google in mind you will still rank on other search engines and get traffic from them, but you don’t care because Google is where you want to rank.

If you are on page one for keywords on Google you are getting a free backlink from them for that keyword phrase. This could be ranking your homepage, another highly ranked page on your blog, or a post on your blog.

This is why you want to title your page or post with a keyword phrase you want to target. Doing this tells Google what that page is about and gives them a starting point to ranking you for it.

Other important things to include in SEO are meta tags, longtail keyword phrases, keyword variations, a longer text of 1000 words or more, and other ranking factors for Google. Read Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List if you want to focus on ranking your blog or a specific page.

Google takes SEO very seriously and you can get them paying attention to you implementing as many of these factors as possible.

What Is Link Building?

Link building is the process of getting external pages to point back to your blog. I call it a process because it is never-ending.

If you worked 24 hours a day for the rest of your life you could never get a link on every relevant external page on the Internet today.

You literally have billions of pages you can try and get a link from. The process of getting these links is link building and you can go about it systematically or by trial and error which is what most people do.

Where Are The Quality Links?

This is really the key to making backlinks important. Go for quality over quantity!

It is better to have 1 high-quality link than 100 or even 1000 low-quality backlinks. So, how do you define a quality backlink?

I like to think of a quality link is one that comes from an authority site. A link from a high-ranking blog on Google is better than a link from a brand new blog.

Authority sites are the ones Google has determined are the ones they will rank because they deliver the best content for the keyword phrase being searched.

Let me give you an example…..

If I do a Google search for affiliate marketing I see Neil Patel’s blog come up on page one. This is not his home page either, but a post “What Is Affiliate Marketing” he made that he has done SEO on and gotten high-quality backlinks to.

If you could get a link from Neil Patel, or this page specifically it would be a high-quality link that would help you rank your own blog and would drive some high-quality affiliate marketing traffic.

Here are some of the ways to work at getting backlinks from…

1. Content. Create high-quality content on your blog that people would reference and link to for you. I personally love getting backlinks this way because it is never-ending and the links are ones I do not have to get.

2. Blog comments. Post comments on high-quality blogs like Neil Patel. This can be tedious but focus on getting a high-quality backlink and don’t worry about just making a lot of comments to hit a backlink goal or number.

Read How To Ask Websites To Link To You, And Make Them Say Yes for a really good article on getting high-quality backlinks.

3. Anchor text. Use internal linking in our content by targeting a keyword phrase and linking to another page of yours with that phrase as the main keyword. Don’t link using the keyword click here.

4. Social marketing. Get to know other bloggers and ask to trade links. This can be as easy as mentioning each other in a blog post and linking to a page you want to get a backlink to.

5. Guest blogging. Write an article and contact bloggers and ask them to publish it. Only do 1 article per post. Include a backlink in your article or bio box back to your blog.

My Final Thoughts

Backlinks are so important that beyond working on content the majority of your time should be spent getting as many high-quality backlinks as possible. These drive traffic and help you rank on Google which drives more traffic!

Read this article for a more in-depth look at getting free backlinks: Link Building – How to Build Links for Free

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