Backlinks an important seo strategy

In this Blog Tutorial we will look into Backlinks, what they are and why they are an important part of a strong SEO strategy. Creating backlinks is a time consuming process and is also a job that is never complete, more the merrier! We encourage all of our clients to have an active roll in creating backlinks. In a future blog we will explore different ways to create backlinks, but for now we will explore what they are and their benefits.

What is a backlink?

Quite simply put a back link is when other content on the internet links to your website though a hyperlink like this one that goes to our home page

A backlink can be from a piece of text , like the above home page link, or it could be from clickable content like a picture or button on a website. 

Primarily a backlink is website content that links to your website

Why are they important?

Google use backlinks to determine the popularity of your website in turn this has a positive or negative impact on your Google search page position.

A backlink is like a recommendation, if lots of other websites link to yours, its like lots of people recommending your services. Google want to deliver the best content at the top of their search results. By tracking popular content based on backlinks or recommendations, Google can find the very best or most popular content and deliver it at the top of their search results.

Good & bad backlinks

So we now know that backlinks are important to a good rank, but not every backlink has a positive impact on your websites search engine position. 

Google has complex algorithms that can determine the quality and relevance of the content that is linking to your website. Strong backlinks come from pages which carry a high authority with Google, for instance reputable institutions like the BBC would be a credible source. It also looks at the relevance of the content, there is little reason why a mechanic would link to a bakery, however a flour supplier would be a good link to a bakery.

When making backlinks try to find reputable sources and ones that are relevant to your industry. Other good sources are miscellaneous websites like directories and news websites that cover a multiple of subjects and categories.

Follow or No-Follow 

There are two types of backlinks Follow and No-Follow

In simple terms its when a website codes a link with a HREF tag that tells Google to Follow or not to Follow the link. You tend to find that large websites like Facebook and Youtube etc use the No-Follow tag as standard on links. This tells Google not to credit your website with the backlink, thus not having a positive impact on your website.

The reason for this is that these high authority websites do not want people to cheat the ranking system on search engines, piggy backing off their websites which would encourage SEO agents to bombard their sites with links.

Although it is good to have a backlink on sites like these to increase website traffic through these websites they wont have a positive nor negative SEO impact.

Don't buy, build!

Many websites offer a backlink service where you buy backlinks. Avoid this at all costs! Google looks for organic back link building. If your website suddenly had 1000 backlinks it would flag up that you are trying to cheat the system and you could get your website blacklisted.

Also the quality of these type of backlinks are usually very poor and Google already has the source of the backlink on their radar of a bad backlink.

Spend time each month building quality backlinks with industry partners. Quality over quantity.