Having a fast and appealing business website is crucial for businesses trying to attract a larger online audience. Once you have a professional-looking website in place, you need to focus on how to drive traffic to it. Getting your business website on the first page of Google is the best way to expose your brand to interested consumers.
Over 65% of all online experiences start with a search engine. There are a number of different things you need to focus on when trying to land at the top of search engine results related to your industry. Using popular keywords in your content and speeding up your website are both important when trying to establish search engine dominance.
When Google crawls your website, they will look for a number of different elements to assess how reputable and trustworthy your domain is. Backlinks are one of the first things Google bots will check about your website. Below is information about backlinks and what you can do to build them.
What Are Backlinks?
Before you start building backlinks for your website, you need to understand what this commonly used term means. Backlink is a term used to describe links on one website that point to another website. Backlinks are also commonly referred to as external or inbound links.
Popular search engines like Google look at backlinks as an indicator of quality content on a particular website. Generally, pages on websites that have tons of backlinks will rank much higher. The higher the pages on your website rank, the easier it will be to showcase your products/services to new online consumers.
Backlinks Come in a Variety of Different Forms
Now that you know more about what backlinks are, we will discuss the different types of backlinks you may encounter online. Knowing more about these different types of backlinks can help you optimize your marketing strategy for maximum impact.
Follow and Nofollow Links
Backlinks are basically votes from website to another that show Google the domain in question is a trusted resource. However, there are times when a website will want to link to another domain without vouching for it. When this occurs, the owner of a website will embed a nofollow link in their content. A nofollow tag in a link tells the search engine crawling the page to ignore it when assigning rank to their domain.
While the Google PageRank algorithm will ignore nofollow links, they do provide the reader of the content with more context. This can help to enhance the readability factor associated with a piece of content, which can help with search engine rank.
Follow links are used by websites that do want to give an upvote to another domain to show how trustworthy it is. Having lots of follow links to your website can boost your search engine rank.
UGC Links
Countless brands incorporate user-generated content (UGC). This content usually comes in the form of positive online reviews, blog comments and posts in popular online forums. When developing this content, some users of a particular product/service will embed links to the company’s website. While search engines will crawl these links, they will not have a drastic impact on your search engine rank.
Paid or Sponsored Links
Many brands pay influencers to promote a piece of their blog content. The backlinks in these promotions are generally labeled as sponsored. When the link is labeled as sponsored, it prevents your website from being negatively impacted.
Why Are Backlinks Important?
As a business owner, your main goal should be growing your online following. The more people you have paying attention to your brand, the easier it will be to grow your bottom line. When trying to improve your online marketing approach, backlinks are a crucial factor you need to consider. Having lots of backlinks to your website can be beneficial for a number of reasons that we will cover below.
Generate More Website Traffic
One of the main benefits of building the number of backlinks you have is the higher level of website traffic they can help generate. When Google sees a website with a large number of backlinks, they will rank them much higher than domains without them. If your website shows up higher on search engine results pages, it will receive more attention from interested consumers. This can help you grow your customer base and improve profit margins over time.
A Great Way To Build Brand Authority
A high number of backlinks gives search engines and potential customers the feeling that a website is credible. Only websites that feature useful and authoritative content receive backlinks. If you want to edge out the competition, then building your brand authority is important.
If your website is receiving more backlinks, it is probably because you are developing content that people interested in your industry find helpful. The more useful content you produce, the easier it will be to become a thought-leader in your chosen industry.
Engage With Interested Consumers
There are a number of ways to find new customers without the help of search engines. One of the best ways to accomplish this goal is by building the number of backlinks your website has. If a person is reading a blog on another website that has a link to your website embedded in it, they will likely click it. When these interested consumers visit your website, you want them to find a lot of useful content. Optimizing your website with contact forms, well-written blogs and informative landing pages can help you turn these visitors into paying customers.
Backlinks Help You Create a Competitive Edge
The average small business has a lot of online competition. If you want to show search engines and potential consumers why your business is better than a competitor, then growing the number of backlinks to your website is imperative.
Not only will these links give your website an authoritative presence, they can also help you rank near the top on search engine results pages. If your website is the first one a consumer sees after performing an online search, there is a good chance they will click on it.
How To Grow The Number of Backlinks Your Website Has
There is no denying just how important backlinks are when trying to grow your online presence. If the number of backlinks your website has is extremely low, it is time to devise a strategy to fix this common problem. You need to realize that over 55% of the websites on the Internet don’t have a single backlink. Growing the number of backlinks your website has will be easy if you follow these tips.
Guest Blogging is a Must
If you want to build a larger online audience and increase the number of backlinks your website has, then guest blogging is a no-brainer. There are several popular and authoritative websites that allow other content creators to publish blogs on their domain. By creating high-quality guest blogs with backlinks embedded in them, you can drive more traffic to your website in no time.
Use the Power of Expert Roundups
Expert roundups are blogs that feature quotes from some of the most respected individuals in a particular industry. In most cases, content creators will use certain quotes from these industry leaders to reinforce their positions or lend validity to what they are saying. If you compile a blog that features quotes from these experts, the chances of it getting linked to by other websites are pretty good.
Create In-Depth Guides
Showcasing your industry knowledge and landing quality backlinks is achievable if you take the time to create in-depth guides. These guides should take fairly complicated industry-related topics and break them down in an easy-to-understand way. If you are successful in your attempt to create these in-depth guides, you should see a drastic increase in the number of backlinks your website receives.
Take Time to Conduct Interviews With Industry Leaders
Most websites look for the most interesting and well-written content to link to in their articles. If you want to keep the content on your website engaging and interesting, then covering current topics is important. One of the best ways to find out more about the trends in your industry is by interviewing industry leaders. With these interviews, you can inform your audience and attract attention from websites looking for quality articles to link to.
Update Your Old Content
Another great way to build the number of backlinks your website has is by updating older content. Some of the older content on your website may have stats or facts that aren’t correct. By going through and updating these stats or facts, you can make it more appealing to websites looking for articles to link to.
It’s Time To Optimize Your Backlink Strategy
With a higher number of backlinks to your website, you can attract attention from consumers all over the world. If you are struggling to create a comprehensive backlink strategy, the professionals at Small Business SEO are here to help you out.
