What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important for SEO?
One of the most powerful ways a business can be successful in our digital era is to show up on the first few pages in Google search results. If you’re an ophthalmologist, you want to be one of the first to appear when someone in your area searches for “eye doctor” or “contact lenses near me.” The only way to do this is through a collection of search engine optimization strategies, but there’s one strategy in particular that few businesses know about or know how to use safely: building backlinks.
You may have heard backlinking called by a few names, such as link building and gather inbound links. As helpful as the right backlinks can be for your SEO, you need to use caution because the wrong links can backfire and hurt your credibility as well as page ranking on Google. If you’re not familiar with backlinks and how crucial the right ones are for your SEO, here’s what you need to know.
What Are Backlinks?
Simply put, backlinks are links to your site from another site. For example, let’s continue to use the eye doctor example. If you have a great blog post about cataracts and another website links to that blog as a reference, that’s a backlink.
Backlinks are important because search engines use them as a measure of credibility. In a search engine’s eyes, that backlink means someone else finds your content so valuable that they’re referring their readers to you. In addition to the number of backlinks, search engines also weigh the quality of your backlinks. This is very important to keep in mind, as some sites may try to set up unscrupulous backlink exchanges that could hurt your SEO rather than helping it. The more popular, well-known, and reputable a site is, the more it helps you to get a backlink from them.
How Can I Get More High-Quality Backlinks for My Website?
Building a strong network of backlinks is a great way to improve your search engine optimization (or SEO), but it’s easier said than done and it doesn’t happen overnight. The good news is that there’s hope and following the right tactics can help you build your catalog of backlinks over time.
- Prioritize Quality
First and foremost, you need high-quality content in order for other content creators to link to it. They’ll only link to your page if you can offer something they can’t. Your content needs to be genuinely valuable and useful information that your readers are looking for. Make sure your topic makes sense and that it stays within your area of expertise. The content also needs to be well-written and easy to understand. If writing web content isn’t a talent that you have, there’s no shame in hiring a professional writer to put your thoughts and expertise into words. Your professional brand image depends on it.
- Do Your Own Research
Originality goes a long way when it comes to gaining backlinks. One of the most helpful ways to get that originality is to publish your own research. For instance, using the eye doctor example above, you could conduct a survey on patients’ most common complaint with their contact lenses. The internet is full of content creators who are looking for statistics and original research and they’ll be happy to use (and link to) your article. If you use sources for your research, though, be careful to stick to reliable sites and accurate data.
- Use Social Media
As important as it is to publish high-quality blogs and other content on your website, leaving them to get discovered on their own won’t do the trick. Building a social media presence and using it to get publicity for your blogs will go a long way. Of course, readers don’t know your content is high-quality until they click on it. That’s why your blog titles need to be impactful and enticing, and it’s why you need to base those blogs on reputable sources as well as your own expertise.
- Publish Press Releases
Press releases have plenty of merits, like gaining publicity and adding variety to your marketing and PR strategies. As an added bonus, though, they contribute to your backlink catalog. When your release publishes on a press release website, all the links you include in the press release are backlinks to your site. In addition, press releases get your information in front of the news media. News websites are typically very high-quality backlinks to have, so if those sites write a story about you and link to your site, it’s a strong backlink to have in your corner.
- Get Visual (And More)
As important as written text is for your SEO, it has its limits when it comes to backlinks. Other websites could reference your information without actually linking to it. The solution is to use visual media instead, which isn’t as easy for other content creators to describe without showing it (and linking it) for their readers. Infographics in particular are valuable and sharable, so they’re more likely to accumulate backlinks than if you were to simply write out the data in text form. Another great way to add variety to your blogs is to create videos that offer helpful hints, informative tips, and other valuable content.
Overall, the key to successful SEO is to use a variety of strategies. Search engines use many pieces of data to determine how relevant and valuable your content is, so the best way to get all that great data is to use a collection of techniques together. Backlinks are a powerful tool for your SEO, but they’re only one piece of the puzzle and they need to be used in the right way. To get a cohesive and effective strategy and put it into action, call our digital marketing experts for a consultation.