What Are Backlinks? Why Are They Important for SEO?

Key Takeaways

1. Backlinks are “votes of confidence” from other sites that boost credibility, crawl frequency, and rankings via referral and algorithmic signals.
2. Quality beats quantity: links from authoritative, topically relevant pages with natural anchor text and prominent placement carry the most SEO value.
3. A healthy profile mixes follow and nofollow links and favors new referring domains to expand reach and consolidate ranking signals.
4. Effective acquisition tactics include exceptional content, competitor backlink analysis, guest posting, HARO, unlinked-mention outreach, skyscraper, broken-link building, and reputable directories.
5. Avoid shortcuts—paid links, link schemes, spammy sources, and over-optimized anchors risk penalties and can erode long-term performance.

How would you like your blog posts or website to show up on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd page of Google whenever someone searches for information related to your niche? Backlinks can help you achieve that. But what are backlinks and how do they contribute to a website’s visibility to both search engines and potential visitors? Understanding how they work and implementing strategies to obtain high-quality backlinks can greatly increase your ranking on Google, Bing, and other search engines. In this guide, we’ll shed light on everything you need to know about backlinks: why they’re important, how they affect search engine rankings, and how to get high-quality types.

What Are Backlinks?

Many newcomers to the world of digital marketing often inquire about backlinks and their importance. Well, they are links placed by external website owners within their articles, serving as pathways to your site. Backlinks are a fundamental component of Google’s ranking algorithm, acting as votes of confidence from other sites to yours.

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, function akin to references in an academic paper. Just as citations from reputable sources enhance the credibility of a research paper, backlinks from websites with high authority enhance the credibility of a webpage in the assessment of search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and Google. When a website inserts a link to your site, it tells the search engines that the article, blog post, or infographic is of high value, and thus, worthy to be shown to viewers.

Inbound links are not just random connections; they are powerful metrics that web crawlers use to determine the quality and relevance of a webpage. The greater the number of good links directing back to a post, the higher its likelihood of ranking high in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Why Are Backlinks Important?

Backlinks hold significant importance for 2 primary reasons: search engine rankings and discoverability. However, their benefits transcend these reasons, contributing to several other aspects that enhance a website’s success. Let's explore the entire advantages in detail:

• improved search engine rankings: Backlinks are a critical ranking factor utilized by web crawlers to evaluate the relevance and authority of a webpage. Platforms that have a good profile of backlinks tend to appear on the front page of search engine results when people search with the relevant keywords;
• expanded reach: Inbound links from a variety of trusted sources broaden a website’s online presence and expose it to a larger audience. As your content gets shared and linked across various platforms, it increases your brand’s visibility and attracts potential customers;
• increased website traffic: Apart from drawing organic traffic, inbound links also attract users directly via referral traffic. Upon clicking a backlink, users are redirected to the linked page, potentially increasing engagement and conversion;
• faster indexing and crawling: Backlinks can facilitate faster indexing and crawling of your site by web bots. When web crawlers find that new inbound links are directed toward your platform, they typically crawl and index your pages more frequently. This may greatly reduce the time it takes for your content to pop up on the front page;
• enhanced credibility and authority: Search engine algorithms view backlinks that originate from credible websites as strong indicators of your website’s credibility and authority. Consequently, your site may receive greater exposure to viewers within your niche, positively influencing its reputation.

In summary, backlinks have the potential to propel your posts to the coveted first page of users’ search query results, establish credibility, drive organic traffic, and broaden your online presence.

What Backlinks Are Good for SEO?

In digital marketing, quality outweighs quantity when it comes to backlinks. Not all inbound links are equal, so understanding the meaning of what makes a backlink for SEO good is crucial to maximizing the benefits of your link-building strategy. Here are key factors that can help you verify the quality of varying backlinks.

How to Get Quality Backlinks

As earlier explained, the quality of inbound links varies, with some providing much better benefits than others, resulting in faster indexing of webpages and increased visibility, ultimately improving organic reach. If you’re wondering how to get backlinks from reputable sources, here is a step-by-step guide to follow.

Create Useful Content

Creating valuable and informative content tailored to the needs and interests of your target audience is one of the proven ways of attracting backlinks. When you create and publish content that is genuinely useful, unique, and relevant to your niche, other sites are more likely to link to it as a valuable resource for their readers. Comprehensive guides, engaging infographics, insightful articles, and data-driven studies are examples of content types that can enhance the likelihood of acquiring backlinks from websites with high reputability scores.

Analyze Your Competitors’ Backlinks

Studying your competitors’ backlinks can help you find new opportunities to build links for your website. By identifying the platforms that are linking to your competitors, you can uncover valuable sources that may also be willing to link to your content. If a piece of content created by your competitor has garnered numerous backlinks, creating similar content on related topics within your niche may increase the chances of attracting links from similar websites. Ahrefs and Serpstat are some great tools you can use to explore the inbound links of your competitors, identify their most valuable backlinks, and uncover potential opportunities for link building.

Guest Posting

Guest posting on relevant influencers’ blogs is another effective strategy for getting quality backlinks. Commonly referred to as guest blogging, it entails creating and publishing relevant content on external sites within your industry or niche. Beyond allowing you to showcase your expertise within a given topic or field, guest posts present an opportunity to reach a new audience and earn backlinks to your site from authoritative sources.

To get guest blogging opportunities, you need to build a list of relevant websites or blogs in your niche and reach out to them to inquire about their guest posting guidelines or submission process. Once you land an opportunity, focus on crafting engaging and actionable content that readers will find valuable. This increases the likelihood of earning follow backlinks that contribute to your website’s SEO efforts.

Use HARO to Communicate with Journalists

HARO, short for Help a Reporter Out, serves as a platform that connects journalists and bloggers with expert sources for their stories. If you sign up as a source on HARO, you can receive daily email alerts containing media opportunities related to your industry or expertise. Finding and responding to queries relevant to your niche can help you establish relationships with journalists and bloggers, potentially leading to media coverage and inbound links to your website.

Search Unlinked Mentions of Your Brand

Unlinked brand mentions occur when other sites mention your brand name but do not include a hyperlink back to your website. When you identify such mentions, you can contact the website’s owner and ask them to add an inbound link to your online platform. Tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Free Link Checker Tool by Scrapebox, Google Alerts, Buzzstream, and Content Explorer (within Ahrefs) can help identify these mentions. When searching for unlinked mentions opportunities, it’s advisable to only reach out to websites with high DA and PA to maximize the impact of the backlink.

Execute the Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique is one of the smartest link-building strategies developed by Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko. It involves searching for premium-quality content within your niche, creating even better content on the same topic, and persuading websites linked to the original content to link to yours instead. If you produce superior content and offer it as an alternative resource, many website owners will be inclined to update their links to point to your site.

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is a tactic that involves identifying broken links (404 errors) on other sites and offering your content as a replacement. Many website owners find this approach as a value proposition and often jump on the opportunity, offering backlinks in exchange for providing a solution to their broken link issue. Some tools you can use to identify broken links on sites within your niche include Ahrefs Broken Link Checker and Moz Link Explorer.

Adding Backlinks Manually

Another effective way of getting inbound links, especially for local businesses, is by manually adding your website to relevant local directories. Platforms like Google My Business, Yellow Pages, and Yelp provide valuable citations and backlinks that boost local search visibility. When filling out the necessary forms to add your inbound link, ensure that they are correct across all the directories you use. This will help maximize the impact of the backlinks on your website, boosting its visibility and credibility.

What Should You Avoid When Building Backlinks?

While building backlinks can significantly enhance your search engine ranking, it’s important to avoid bad approaches that could negatively affect your website’s reputation and visibility. Here are some key practices you should avoid when building your link profile:

• avoid black hat techniques: Black hat techniques involve attempting to trick search engine algorithms to rank a website highly through practices like buying inbound links, using link farms, or engaging in link schemes. Using these methods disregards the guidelines set forth by search engines and can damage your website’s backlink profile integrity;
• don’t over-optimize anchor texts: While using anchor texts in links is beneficial for SEO, excessive optimization can cause web crawlers to blacklist your site. Over-optimized anchor text involves stuffing links with keyword-rich phrases unnaturally. Instead, aim for a natural, diverse anchor text profile that includes variations of your brand name, generic terms, and partial match keywords. For example, if your brand is “ABC Furniture,” instead of repeatedly using the same anchor texts like “best furniture store,” consider using variations such as “ABC Furniture store,” “shop here for furniture,” and “quality furniture.” This approach is considered user-friendly and highly valued by search engines;
• avoid low-quality or irrelevant platforms: Getting inbound links from websites that engage in black hat practices or have low PA can harm your site’s credibility and search engine ranking. Platforms with spammy or suspicious content do not provide any meaningful SEO value.

If you want to reap all the benefits of building inbound links, be sure to avoid all the above-mentioned approaches. Instead, focus only on implementing the strategies we’ve shared earlier in this guide.

Bottom Line

Building backlinks is an excellent way to boost your website rank level, enhance visibility, and attract organic traffic. It can help improve your online presence and establish credibility within your niche. However, it’s crucial to execute it correctly to evade penalties and safeguard your website’s integrity. When building your link profile, steer clear of applying black hat techniques and instead focus on ethical inbound link practices such as creating high-value content and working with websites that have high credibility scores. By following the step-by-step approach outlined in this guide and adhering to blogging guidelines, you can achieve long-term success and get the best out of your digital marketing efforts.