Since 2016, the SEO industry has been worth over $65 billion. And it’s growing every year.
Every online business has to be aware of what they need to do to make sure they continue to rise up the Google ranking pages. You can’t ignore any of the SEO tips and tricks to get to the top.
Link building is a strategy that you simply can’t afford to ignore. And the cornerstone of link building is inbound links (IBL’s). If you want to achieve your dreams of the top spot of Google, you can’t overlook the importance of inbound links.
Where you rank on search engines really matters. But most of all, Google is the king of the internet. In fact, over 40 percent of the whole internet is Google.
Do you want to find out more about the importance of getting quality inbound links for your marketing strategy? Keep reading to find out more!
What are Inbound Links?
Inbound links, also known as backlinks or IBL’s are links from one website to another website. But specifically, an inbound link is when you receive a link from another website.
The more inbound links to your website, the more search engines, such as Google believe that you’re providing great content. But it’s not really about the number of links.
The importance of inbound links is related to the quality rather than the quantity of the links. In other words, it’s better to have only a few high-quality links than twenty poor-quality ones.
What is a High-Quality Inbound Link?
Now you know that what matters is quality rather than quantity of links, you’re probably wondering – what counts as quality?
There are a number of things that determine the quality of the inbound link. Keep reading to find out more!
1. An Authoritative Website
But this raises the question – what makes an authoritative website. It’s simply a website that has a reputation for producing content that people trust.
If you need to hear it from the horse’s mouth, according to a Google spokesperson:
“We have no one signal that we’ll say, ‘This is authority’. We have a whole bunch of things that we hope together help increase the amount of authority in our results.”
But it certainly means that getting an inbound link from your friend’s blog won’t count for much. You want to concentrate your efforts on obtaining backlinks from recognizable websites, such as the New York Times or CNN.
2. The Diversity of the Backlinks
While many website owners realize the importance of generating inbound links from some of the top websites within the industry, they don’t know about the value of diversity.
By developing a diverse number of links to your website, you can ensure that the number of different places linking to your website is greater.
For example, if you promote women’s health products. You don’t just want to across online magazines and news websites that promote women’s health. You want to find crossovers, such as healthy diet websites or sportswear websites.
This allows online users to discover your website across a wide number of sources.
3. The Use of Anchor Text
The anchor text is the text that holds the link together. It’s an alternative to using the URL of the external website you’re linking to.
For example, if you were linking to the Huffington Post.
You could either write the URL (https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk). Or you could link by writing: “…as reported in the Huffington Post).
4. The Anchor Text Description
One of the main advantages of the anchor text technique of linking to another website is that it provides the reader with a description of what the other website is about.
If you’re searching for inbound links to your website, it’s more effective to get backlinks with anchor texts. This means that the search engine has more information about what kind of content you’re providing.
The best anchor texts include a keyword search that attaches the website with the specific search term. For example, if you’re a company that sells women’s shoes, you should get a backlink with the anchor text: “shoes for women”.
Why Inbound Links are Important
Now you know what makes a quality inbound link. You already know that high-quality links result in a higher ranking on Google.
But why does this matter? And what else makes inbound link building so important for SEO? Let’s take a look at the top 6 reasons why inbound link building matters.
1. Generate More Traffic
There are two main ways that inbound links help you to generate more traffic.
The first way is that inbound links improve your ranking of SERPs (search engine results pages). In other words, you’re higher up the rankings. This way you increase the traffic you generate to your website.
In fact, without any inbound links to your website, you have a really low chance of ranking on Google’s results page at all. Forget getting the top spot in your niche, you’ll be searching for hours to find a link to your website.
But if you develop a comprehensive inbound link strategy, you can see some awesome results.
According to research, the higher you rank on Google, the higher the number of clicks on your website. See below for average traffic share:
- Number 1 Spot on Google: 32.5 percent of traffic
- Number 2 Spot on Google: 17.6 percent of traffic
- Number 3 Spot on Google: 11.4 percent of traffic
- Number 4 Spot on Google: 8.1 percent of traffic
- Number 5 Spot on Google: 6.1 percent of traffic
It’s clear that how you rank on search engines is crucial to boosting traffic to your website.
The second way that inbound links drive traffic to your website is through referral advantage. In other words, simply with backlinks, you open up another source of increasing the number of clicks to your website.
It’s important to make sure that you take advantage of the backlink by including information about your website to the linking website. This means that you’ll generate traffic from your target audience. This is the kind of audience that you can effectively convert into sales.
2. The SEO-Optimized Content
Since Google’s Panda update, the quality of the content on your website matters a lot more.
The days when you could sprinkle poor quality content on your website with keywords and phrases are over. Now it’s really important to produce content that people actually want.
But what qualifies as quality content?
While Google is not clear on what constitutes high-quality content, it’s fair to assume that it meets the following criteria:
- Relevant – relates to your content
- Unique – like nothing else on the internet
- Creative – clever, interesting and useful
It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing weekly blog posts or producing monthly Youtube videos. What matters is that your content is relevant, unique and creative.
If you want to convince other websites to backlink to your website, it’s important to make sure that you provide content worthwhile. This can really make the difference when it comes to increasing the number of quality backlinks to your website.
3. Raise Brand Awareness
In addition to boosting your SEO strategy, inbound links are another great way to build awareness of your brand. Search engines treat a quality backlink as a sign of approval for another source.
If CNN links to your website, this suggests to Google that your website is a source of credible, relevant and legitimate information. Not only does this ensure that you rise up the SERPs. But also, your target audience is likely to become aware of your brand.
By improving your inbound links, you show that you’ve done your research to find websites that are credible and authoritative. By generating backlinks from other websites with great content, you associate yourself with quality websites.
Along with social media and other marketing techniques, backlinks serve as a way of demonstrating your authority within your niche or industry.
4. Networking and Building Relationships
If an online user has enjoyed reading the quality content on another website, which includes a backlink from your website, they’ll be tempted to click on it to find out more.
You can safely assume that if someone liked reading a blog related to your website, they’re probably going to be among your target audience too.
By increasing the number of inbound links to your website, you’re opening up the possibility of users clicking on a link to your website. As a result, you’ll start receiving a higher rate of traffic to your site.
This way you totally avoid search engines such as Google. By developing multiple channels for traffic, you ensure that your SEO strategy is more resilient against the changing algorithms.
5. Stay Ahead of Your Competition
You need to make sure you have a wide range of SEO and digital marketing strategies for staying ahead of the competition. This includes everything from tracking the keywords of your competitors to inspiring you with ideas for great content.
Nevertheless, inbound link building really improves your standing against the other key players in your niche industry.
If you’re promoting a product or service that is really niche, getting another player in the industry to backlink to your website can really put you ahead of your competitors.
The top emerging technologies want to acquire backlinks from Wired (the tech news website). Whereas, if you’ve brought out a novel, you want to get reviewed in the New York Times.
Whatever your niche, you can get exposed to a wider audience by improving your inbound strategy.
6. Develop Resources for Your Business
After you’ve been in the business for a while, you can develop a directory of your top partners in link building.
You can implement a “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” approach. By backlinking to your partners, you give a greater incentive for others to link to your website. Everyone benefits this way.
You might even found that there are other ways that you can collaborate with other online businesses to benefit both partners.
Maybe you can promote each other’s products on social media? Or perhaps, you can share data about your target audience?
How To Get More Inbound Links?
Now you know the importance of inbound links, you need to know how to get more. So, what’s the secret to getting lots of quality inbound links?
Even though there are a number of tips and tricks for boosting how many links are directed to your website, you can’t avoid the hard truth. It’s hard work and time-consuming to build an effective link-building strategy.
You need to make sure you’re producing high-quality content that people actually want to read. Your content also needs to be aligned with your brand, as well as your product or service.
If people enjoy your content, they’ll keep returning to your website. The more people flock to your website, the more likely authoritative and relevant websites will start linking to your website.
What’s Your Inbound Links Strategy
By ensuring that you develop a wide range of diverse and high-quality inbound links, you can make sure you show search engines that you’re running a legitimate and authoritative website.
If lots of other websites link to your website, you must be providing great content. It’s as simple as that as far as Google and others are concerned.
There are no signs that anything’s going to change in the SEO techniques and tips that are going to make the difference. Inbound links are here to stay.
Do you want to find out more about how to improve your SEO strategy? Get in touch with us today for more advice and tips on SEO related topics.
