What do Backlinks Do for Your Website?
A backlink is a link from one website to another website, with search engines using them as a signal for ranking, as it indicates that the content is likely to be noteworthy. When they are high-quality links, it can help raise the site’s ranking position. In fact, Google says that backlinks are one of its top three ranking factors. That generally means that the more backlinks page has, the more organic traffic it will get from Google.
When your content gets links from other sites, it naturally starts to rank higher in search results. If it’s not, you’ll need to start building them, with the goal to create links to individual pages/posts, as well as those that lead to your homepage. This is when link-building services can be very helpful, as the experts understand how to do this while allowing you to do what you do best, like growing your business.
Increase Referral Traffic
Backlinks are a great way to increase referral traffic, as someone reading your post is likely to click on links in the posts to learn more about the topic at hand, such as a study or other research. As they are clicking the links voluntarily, they tend to be more targeted and spend more time on your page, otherwise known as a “low bounce rate.”
Helps to Build Brand Authority
While getting links on popular websites is great for SEO efforts, it goes beyond that by helping to build brand authority. Just like Google sees the links as an indication your site is providing quality content, consumers consider it an indication that your brand is one they should have an interest in. When someone reads content online, they can easily identify visible links within it and begin to associate your company with the topic they see your brand linked to. That helps present your business as a trustworthy source of information within your industry and can result in natural backlinks, meaning other websites linking to your content which is a big plus to Google.
Quicker Indexing
The search engine bots look for new webpages by following the backlinks from pages that already exist. They can only crawl your site effectively if they’ve been able to discover it – if you don’t have any backlinks, it’s more difficult for the bots to find it. It’s even more important when you’ve developed a new website to get backlinks so that it will be indexed quicker.
Establishing New Relationships
When a reader of your content perceives it as high quality and sees a backlink that points to the source, there’s a good chance that they’ll click on that link to find out more about who is responsible for what they just read. That can lead to the individual signing up for your email newsletter, liking/following your social media profiles, reading your blog posts, or performing other measurable actions on your site. It might surprise you to find just how much a simple link can do for bringing consumers and companies together, establishing new relationships that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.