A fundamental element of boosting your website’s SEO is backlinking – whether this is reputable websites linking to you, or vice versa. Here are some strategies to get you started with backlink building, inbound links and diversifying your content to make links more relevant to your messaging.
What do backlinks and link building mean?
Link building is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of inbound links to your website to gain referral traffic, boost domain authority, and increase search engine rankings.
Backlinks, or inbound links, are a method of search engine optimisation where you earn links from other websites that direct readers to your own site. This method proves very popular with SEO experts – mostly it produces tangible results. According to an SEO study by Backlinko, the number of domains linking to a page is the factor that has the highest correlation to rankings in Google.
What are the different types of web link?
The difference between links are as follows:
- An outbound link is a link from your website to another site.
- An inbound link, or a backlink, is a link coming from another site to your own.
- An internal link is a link to another page on your own website.
What can backlinks do for my website?
High-quality backlinks can improve your SEO ranking in two key ways:
- Backlinks drive traffic to your website. When someone posts a backlink to your website on their website, their readers will click on it, providing your site with referral traffic.
- These links can also help you rank higher in search by telling search engines that your website has good authority on a certain subject. The more backlinks you earn from high-quality, high-authority sites, the higher your website can rank in search engine results pages.
How can I build these links within my website?
There is an array of opportunities for you to build up links within your website, and you can enlist the help of fellow businesses to help you with this.
One of the most reliable ways to begin your link building is generating consistent content posted at regular intervals. By setting yourself the target of posting more frequent content, you’ll have a constant stream of posts which you can pepper with useful outbound links. A study by Hubspot found that brands that published 16 times a month saw 3.5 times more traffic than brands that published just once a week.
Blogs also open avenues for other methods of link building, like internally linking to your own blogs, and externally linking to other business’s blogs. Other businesses might be happy to link to your content if you do the same for them, building up backlinks for both of your websites. Another option in this area is guest blogging on another website, prompting backlinks to your website in exchange for some of your expertise.
This strategy may seem time consuming, and it’s common for businesses to refrain from putting in the effort. More than 55% of pages on Google have no backlinks pointing to them. Don’t be part of this percentage! If you’re reluctant to invest the time in consistent expert content, there are a number of other methods to try, including:
- Creating case studies of some of your best work with clients
- Posting free tools and resources
- Asking for reviews from your clients
- Monitoring mentions of your brand by other businesses
- Using a site crawling tool like SEMrush to identify broken links in your site so you can fix them
For some more easy wins that can help you boost your website SEO, see this guide from our SEO expert, Dov Skipper.
It’s common to take a one size fits all approach to SEO, trying to hit all bases at once. However, by taking a more in depth look at specific elements like backlinking, you can ensure you’re investing your time wisely, and see tangible results.
For more information on SEO strategies for your online business, contact Eonic today.