SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is incredibly important for anyone who has a website. Even if it’s a site that doesn’t necessarily require high search rankings it’s still good to have that extra traffic for your site.
Today we’ll tackle backlinks, a very important topic for SEO, all their changes through the years, and what they mean for you as a site owner.
If you need help deciding between different apps that can assist with backlinks we recommend checking their reviews out on an aggregator site such as Truely.
Backlinks? What are those?
We can’t explain if and how backlinks are important without understanding what they are and how they work. Backlinks are URLs that lead to your website that were published on some other sites. They are among the top three ranking factors for Google search results.
The more backlinks (of sufficient quality) that you have the higher your search result ranking will be when people look up related keywords in search engines. These backlinks show that people are interested in your content and view it positively which tells Google to rank you higher. It of course isn’t the only factor at play but it is an incredibly important one that should not be ignored.
That sounds awesome, how do I get them?
As stated these are links to your site posted on another website, naturally, this means that there are a few ways to get them, each with its own upsides and downsides that we will discuss in further detail. The main types of backlinks that you can get are the following:
- Organic backlinks
- Manual backlinks
- User-created
Each of these types of backlinks is created via a different method. Not only do the methods affect how difficult it is to get said backlink, but they also greatly affect the quality of it and thus how well search engines value it.
High-quality backlinks can be worth quite a lot for your SEO, while low-quality ones can be worth very little or possibly even have a negative effect on your search rankings which is why most people recommend avoiding shady methods of obtaining backlinks or those methods which create many but very low-quality ones as it can be counter-productive
Organic backlinks
These are created when someone links your site without you asking them to or any of your input whatsoever hence the name. They have a very high value for search engines which is why they are some of the best backlinks you can get most of the time.
Their only downside is the fact that you can’t directly get them, you can create consistently good content for a long time but even then you need a bit of luck for people to actually link it. Regardless, they are the best option you can get so if you do manage to get some that is amazing.
Manual backlinks
Manual backlinks are made when you ask someone to link your site on theirs. This can be part of a promotion or something similar. While they are not as highly regarded as organic backlinks they are still quite good and are worth looking into if you have the option to get them.
The lower value of manual backlinks is offset by the fact that you can directly influence their creation and thus get more of them on average than organic backlinks.
Self-created backlinks
As the name suggests these are made when you personally link your site somewhere online publicly. These are by far the easiest to obtain, but the issue lies in the fact that these backlinks are viewed incredibly poorly by search engines and can greatly hurt your rankings.
Despite the fact that you can easily get many of them, we recommend avoiding self-created backlinks as they usually cause your site to be ranked lower on search rankings rather than higher as backlinks usually should.
What does all of this mean for site owners?
It is inarguable that backlinks are incredibly important for SEO and that they should not be ignored by anyone who wishes to increase their site traffic. Considering that according to Google the average top-ranked site in search results has 35 000+ backlinks it is obvious that they play a critical role.
The main issue with focusing on backlinks is the fact that most of the time the only ones you can actively obtain are of mediocre quality at best. This is combined with the fact that since 2012 search engines value quality over quantity and it is obvious that you can’t increase your search ranking too much by actively focusing on generating backlinks you should instead focus on making good content and hoping that it gets linked elsewhere.
Are they truly the B&B of SEO?
Based on everything we’ve shown you so far you may think that it’s obvious they are the bread and butter of SEO, but that doesn’t mean they’re the thing you should focus on for your own SEO.
While their importance is massive, they’re one of the factors of SEO that are hardest to directly affect. It can be somewhat difficult to call something the bread and butter of a certain endeavor but be unable to actually use it yourself and have to resort to indirectly affecting it hoping for some luck for others to link it.
We wholeheartedly believe they are the most important aspect of SEO. You should be mindful of them, but not stress about their creation too much as it truly does take time, effort, patience, and luck to get a decent amount of high-quality backlinks
Conclusion
Take your time, enjoy the content creation process and if you do so backlinks will naturally follow over time. Due to the way site traffic works, it grows exponentially. You may be worried about your slow growth and then have a sudden boom.
We wish you the best of luck with your website and hope that you will be able to better understand the importance of backlinks for SEO after reading this article.