Introduction

If you’ve ever attended a meeting with your SEO agency, or just cast your eyes over the monthly SEO report, well you will know that the term “backlinks” often crops up time and time again.

Yet, many business owners will be asking themselves what exactly are backlinks? And also, why are backlinks so important?

What are backlinks?

So, in a nutshell backlinks make it super easy for you to jump across to a different website.

For example, you may be reading about a holiday destination that you wish to visit on a travel blog, and you click a tab that takes you the another website that allows you to book a holiday.

So, for example, to land on the other website you may have clicked a bit of text (anchor text), that may have simply read “Book a holiday to Greece”.

Therefore, you will have followed a link, you will have clicked a link that will takes you to a website that allows you book a holiday in Greece. And you will have followed the link by clicking on the anchor text that was written on a travel blog.

So, backlinks are useful to people as they allow them to quickly jump to another website that will help them.

Yet, backlinks also have a different purpose when it comes to SEO, and that is the links that lead to your website can be assessed by Google’s algorithm.

The algorithm can therefore work out how important your website is, for example if you have hundreds or thousands of good quality links, which are coming from good quality websites, then Google’s algorithm will know your website is important.

It’s kind of like a vote of confidence in your business

Let’s think for a second like Google’s algorithm would, and let’s say you are looking to purchase a new swanky kitchen for your home.

Now which website do you think would rank the best? Website one, which has no backlinks at all and is a start-up business.

Or, website two, now website two has hundreds of backlinks, these originate from interior design websites and also from blogs which talk about home improvements?

Well of course its most likely to be website two that’s going to rank higher. Yet, with that said you have to also remember this, and that is Google’s algorithm is thought to take account over 200 pieces of information when working out how important your website is.

These pieces of information us seo consultants refer to as “ranking signals”. So do keep in mind that backlinks are important, yet it’s also worth knowing that there are many other signals that your seo agency should be optimising as well.

So, backlinks are one ranking signal, yet there are meta titles, alt tags and over 200 other ranking signals that Google’s algorithm also takes into account when working out how important your website is.

Yet, back to backlinks, if your business has loads of good quality backlinks, well this is like a vote of confidence in your business.

In a nutshell, if loads of quality websites link to your business, well this can often help to improve where your business ranks.

Also, most digital marketing agencies believe that out of all the ranking signals, backlinks are one of the most important, if not the most important.

Yet, for the backlinks to help your businesses seo they must be quality backlinks.

Quality backlinks

So, what are good quality backlinks? Well that’s a really good question, as loads of businesses simply get their link building strategies totally wrong.

And when we say wrong, well, we mean that this can result in a link penalty, which can mean that the business drops where it ranks, or no longer shows up in a search engine like Google.

So, quality is important, and here’s what we mean by quality:

 

Must originate from a quality source

So, let’s say you are an online retailer of wedding rings, and you want your business to rank at the very top for the term “diamond wedding rings”.

Now, if you want to correctly optimise your website, the backlinks that lead to your website must be from a respected source that’s also relevant to your business.

So, for example, a website that offers advice when planning for a wedding, and that’s widely regarded as a leading publication, this is the sort of website that you want linking to your wedding ring website. As this adheres to white hat seo.

What you don’t want to do is appoint a digital marketing agency, and they say you need more backlinks, so they are going to buy backlinks regardless of quality. As what will happen is soon enough is the website will incur a link penalty.

A link penalty, such as the Google Penguin, can place a penalty on your website if you have poor quality backlinks. This can result in your businesses rankings dropping.

So, in a nutshell, its really important that you only have good quality and relevant backlinks leading to your website. If you’re in any doubt about this, call a respected white hat marketing agency for help.

Anchor text

The section of text that you click on to follow a link, well that’s called the “anchor text”. Now, if you don’t work in seo, well you would be forgiven for thinking that this small line of anchor text, or sometimes just a few words of anchor text isn’t really that important- but it is.

The reason being is countless businesses have incurred a link penalty simply because they over optimised their anchor text.

So, for example, let’s say you run a solicitor’s practice, and you specialise in Family Law. Now, if you operate in this area of law your going to want to attract business from clients that are currently  going through or thinking of going through a divorce.

Now a really rubbish seo agency may therefore build each link with the anchor text “divorce solicitors + the city in which you are based”.

The wording of the anchor text is not natural, and because of this Google’s algorithm will pick up on this, and your business may incur a link penalty.  

So, how should our business be building backlinks?

So, you’ve heard about Google Penguin update, so now you know why its super important that you build backlinks correctly.

Our seo company always recommends that you build backlinks organically. What we mean by organically is to make your website the best source of information that you can, that’s so other businesses will want to link to your website.

For instance, say you are a retailer of bathroom suites, we would always recommend writing guides and articles that are likely to interest people who want to buy your products.

So, for instance, you may retail claw-legged baths, why not provide interior design recommendations on how to design a Victorian bathroom?

This way interior design websites may link to your article, therefore you have built backlinks organically.

Alternatively, you may retail shower trays and shower enclosures, so why not offer free DIY advice on how to install these items? This way DIY websites may link to your website?

 

Audit

Whichever SEO business you choose one thing is for sure, that is the marketing agency should be checking your websites backlinks on a regular basis.

A good quality agency should therefore be reporting back to you the health of your websites backlinks.

If there are any problems, you should be advised about this.

How we can help

If your business requires more help to build backlinks, or your business requires more white hat seo advice, then why not give us a ring?