Backlinks: Why they are important and how you can get them

All businesses that invest in search engine optimization (SEO) have to prioritize getting quality backlinks to rank on the internet. This action allows the business website to improve its search engine position drastically.

The volume of backlinks you generate will determine the popularity of your website in search engines. Therefore, by getting a good position for your desired keywords, you get a higher number of visits from potential customers and consequently an increase in sales for your business.

According to the analysis conducted by Backlinko, websites that rank high on Google have approximately four times more quality backlinks than the rest. Based on this, we can conclude that it is difficult to improve the position of your website without the help of backlinks.

For this reason, at 71Three, we emphasize the importance of backlinks for SEO and the ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). We will share with you the most effective techniques to create quality backlinks for your website.

Importance of backlinks for your business

The positioning of a website or blog requires a lot of SEO work on-page and off-page, and backlinks are part of the positioning strategy developed outside the website, because what you are looking for is links on other websites that point to your website.

Incorporating backlinks transmits to Google the message that your content is good. This is because Google takes these inbound links as a sign of authority for a website. The more quality websites that mention your business, the more likely it is that Google’s algorithm will consider your website to be of quality as well. In addition, if you get a link from a website in your industry, it will have more importance because Google gives more value to inbound links from your industry.

When creating a link-building strategy, you must focus on those pages that have the most authority. Also, preferably choose those related to your industry to bring you even more traffic.

There are many other metrics that Google evaluates, but backlinks are one of the search engine’s main signals to consider a site worthy of appearing among the top positions. It’s probably already clear that having quality backlinks benefits your SEO strategy. However, we will share the top three advantages of incorporating them into your strategy.

1. Improve your organic ranking

As mentioned in this article, having quality backlinks means getting a better ranking from search engines. Therefore, other users trust your content enough to put a link to your website. Google interprets that it is because your page has helpful high quality content and ranks you better.

2. Speeds up indexing

From the time you upload content to your website until the time that Google indexes it to show it to the public. This can sometimes take a long time, especially if your page has been in existence for only a short time.

However, external links make search robots go quickly from one website to another, which allows them to locate your site and your content much faster. Consequently, the time needed for indexing is drastically reduced.

3. Attracts qualified traffic

Backlinks increase the traffic that your website receives, and the good thing is that it is qualified traffic. It attracts users who are already searching for information on topics related to your industry. Therefore, when visitors come to your page, there is a greater chance that they will become customers.

4 effective techniques to get backlinks 

We’ve talked about the importance and benefits of adding backlinks for your website’s ranking and authority, now we need to tell you how to get them. Here are four effective techniques used by the best web design companies to generate quality inbound links.

1.  Link baiting 

Create content of great interest, quality and relevance, always directed to the optimal audience. Its application seeks to get external links naturally, attracting the audience by the quality of the content of your website. 

The objective is to create content so valuable that other websites will want to share and link to this content on their websites. The content you offer can be in different formats: infographics, videos, surveys, reports, maps, etc., so get creative! Here are some additional tips on creating link bait.

2.  Become a guest blogger 

Publishing a guest post is one of the most effective ways to get backlinks to your website. You not only increase the level of visibility but also position yourself as a reference in your industry.

This technique consists of publishing a post on another author’s blog with the content of a similar theme. The idea is to write a post of neutral content. Think more general topics of the blog, without mentioning the author’s qualities or his name and embedding a link to your website. In this way, you can build relationships, gain subscribers and position your website.

3.  Generate social reach

SEO experts know the importance of social outreach for link building. Developing a social outreach strategy is a great option to gain free backlinks for your website. All you have to do is get other influencers or leaders in your industry to help you expand your reach and promote your business. However, focus on building sincere relationships with influencers in your industry that as beneficial for them, as they are for you; spamming people that have no idea who you are with requests is likely going to be ignored, so be genuine!

4.  Imitate your competition

If you have competitors who have been in the digital world longer than you, the job can get a lot easier, and it is one of the most popular strategies to imitate your competition. To put it simply, you have to try to get the same backlinks that they have achieved.

To get more traffic using this technique, you have to first analyze your competitors’ pages and see their best posts and which sites are linking to them. This way, you don’t have to start working from scratch because you have a base that allows you to optimize resources while obtaining results proven to be functional.

One of the particularities of this technique is that surely some of the sites that link to your competitors do it for mutual benefit. However, this factor may not be so easy to replicate since, in these cases, you will have to demonstrate that your site has enough quality and authority to be linked. Using tools like Moz & Ahrefs will allow you to better study your competition.

Get quality links and climb positions

Having quality backlinks is essential to getting your business website to rank well. You must remember that SEO consists of many strategies, and building backlinks is merely one of them, so go out there and get links from sites that both the public and Google already like.

If you would rather that we design your external link building strategy, then we would love to help you attract more qualified leads and increase your sales. We’re a Houston web design company, but we work with companies from all industries worldwide.