Also known as an inbound link, a backlink is a link that comes from another website to yours. These links play an essential part in SEO as they help establish your website's authority to help you rank higher in almost every search engine.
While having links from other websites may not seem that important, this is how others tell search engines, like Google, 'This is a website I trust'. It's not always easy to get this kind of endorsement, especially if you're a new or small business but getting a good backlink profile is vital to set you apart from your competitors.
Of course, you can't just get a backlink from anywhere. Websites with a good backlink profile and authority linking to your website are the best ones to attain. There have been options to use link farm websites to build backlink profiles. However, Google can now recognise websites that do this and using these often enough can lead to Google penalising your website.
Making sure the backlinks you have are of good quality is more important than the quantity. Unique backlinks from relevant websites help your authority and backlink profile. Relevant links will help the search engines learn what your website is and which search queries apply to it, while unique links help give you an edge above your competitors. Backlinks work best when the links appear naturally, so stay away from links that look spammy or branded.
There are a few ways of building backlinks, most of these will involve a little networking on your end, but considering the benefits, it's worth some extra effort. You can track where other websites mention you and reach out with a quick note to anyone that hasn't already linked back to you and ask if they can do so. You can track your mentions, which link to you and the authority with several online tools such as Ahrefs Content Explorer.
Alternatively, you can look for content related to your industry that needs an update. Outdated content is an opportunity to re-create a more updated piece of content on the topic on your website, and once you've created an updated version of this content, you can reach out to those who have linked to the old version to let them know you have a new up to date version of the information they could provide a link to instead.
If there are any tools you can create for your industry, this is an excellent chance to create something others will want to link to and build your backlink profile. You can search what comes up in keywords for 'tool' or 'template' etc. and see what is within your industry. For example, some recruitment/financial sites have salary calculators built onto their website as this is a tool people will often look for planning finances or when looking for work.
If you’re looking to build a better backlink profile for your marketing campaign, get in touch with our team of experts. We can help you with a campaign specific to your needs and discuss a range of options for your business.
