There’s no denying that the online world has completely revolutionized the business world. But, if you’re not using quality backlinks to show up high on search rankings, your business may well become invisible.
Today, it’s taken as a given that all businesses must be online. But, having an online presence is no longer enough.
If you want to set yourself apart from the competition, and if you want to boost your sales and your brand identity, you need to show up high on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
Quality Backlinks and the SERPS
What’s the best way to improve your organic ranking on the search engines?
With quality backlinks.
You and your business have got to embrace the idea.
And, more than that, you’ve got to build a strategy around them.
Of all the proven Search Engine Optimization tactics out there, acquiring quality backlinks is one of the big ones.
Why is this?
Well, it’s simple, really. Because it’s awesome and it works.
So, if you’re looking to show up higher on the search engines (and who isn’t?) then getting quality backlinks isn’t just important; it’s essential.
New to SEO or curious to find out more?
Read on! We’ve got quite the scoop for you.
Success Begins with Backlinks
When a web page links to any other page on the web, we call that a backlink. For you and your business, a backlink is directed towards your website.
The more backlinks you receive from other websites, the more authoritative and popular your website appears to the search engines.
How does a Search Engine Use Backlinks to Rank My Site?
Google and other search engines give enormous sway to backlinks. They use it as an essential metric for the ranking of your page.
How do they do this?
Search engine web crawlers extract the content of your page for their indexes. And, to rank your page, it’s all about the perceived quality of your page relative to the relevant keywords.
They look at two core things:
- The quality of your website content
- The number of links pointing to your page from other websites
As a result, the more backlinks you have on your site, the higher your search ranking will be.
But…
There was a time when all backlinks were deemed important by the search engines, but those days are gone.
Backlinks do affect search results profoundly, not all backlinks are created equal.
What is a Quality Backlink and Why Do I Need Them to Rank?
There is no single definition of what exactly a quality backlink is.
Because the online world is bursting with a myriad of different business with a variety of different offerings, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work.
There are, however, a number of criteria that make a backlink high quality.
Here they are:
1. The Link Should Come from a Trusted Source
Google and other search engines will not consider a backlink from a random website to be high quality. Quality backlinks always come from trusted sites.
What is a trusted source?
Search engines use a set of trusted seed sites to determine the quality of a site. Some sites are now automatically trusted because they have a proven track record. These are authoritative sites like the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, etc.
Trust begins with these seed sites and it decreases the further away from the seed site you are.
2. The Link Must be Relevant
Search engines are in the business of providing highly relevant content to people who are actively searching for specific things.
If you want your page to rank highly, quality backlinks are ones that are exceedingly relevant to your business offering and your content.
Google attaches more importance to relevant links, and rightly so. Make sure that sites linking to your site a relevant to your business, the information you provide, the content you share, etc.
3. Quality Backlinks Come From Different Sources
When you’re aiming to rank higher on the search engines, you always want your quality backlinks to come from a number of different websites.
Variation is the holy grail of backlinks. The more variety you have, the better those backlinks will be.
So, rather than having 5 links from one or two sites, you are much better off having 5 links from five different sites.
4. The Links Should Go in One Way
While reciprocal backlinks were widely used in the past, today, the value of reciprocal links has been hugely diminished.
Quality backlinks generally tend to go one way. That is, they should come from a site that you are not also linking to.
It’s important to remember too that a high-quality link is never easy to come by, and, there should be nothing but quality content and relevant information on any site that is linking to yours.
5. It Should Send Traffic
For a backlink to be considered high-quality, it should drive traffic from one page to another. If it doesn’t do this, it loses value in search engine rankings.
The positioning of the backlink on the page is important. If it is in a prominent place on a page that is visited by large numbers, that backlink will be considered high-quality.
And, what’s more, it will bring a large number of prospective customers to your website.
6. Backlinks from Sites that link to High-Quality Sites
As part of your SEO strategy, quality backlinks are those that come from a website that also links to other high-quality sites.
If a website links to your content and it also links to authoritative sites, the search engines may consider your site to be on the same level as those trusted sites.
Link Building and Quality Backlinks
So, there you are. You are now fully versed on the need to use quality backlinks to rank highly on the search engines.
To push your business forward, it’s imperative that your online presence offers quality content as a standard.
If you do that, you will find yourself with an endless supply of high-quality websites that all want to link to your site.
Quality backlinks really are the key to appearing high up on the search engines.
Fail to get them and your dreams of appearing high up on Google could be are over.
And, your dreams are only getting started, right?
Should you need any further SEO advice, reach out and talk to us.
We’re always happy to help.
