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What Are Backlinks and How Do You Use Them?

In the modern world, SEO marketing is king. If your company doesn’t rank well on search engines, you could be at a significant disadvantage to your competitors. That might be why the SEO market is set to be worth nearly 100 billion dollars by 2027.

Backlinks form an integral part of any SEO strategy. But how much do you know about backlinks in SEO and the ways they work? Even many people in the SEO industry don’t know everything about the concept. 

If you’re asking, “what are backlinks?” don’t worry! Help is at hand. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about backlinking.

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links on other websites that lead to your website. Sometimes, these are known as incoming or one-way links. 

These links are extremely important. Google rankings consider pages more popular if lots of other pages link to them. That means pages with lots of backlinks rank higher in Google search results. 

Remember, when you make a search online, the search engine needs to sift through thousands or even millions of results. A lot of backlinks will help you to get ahead of your competitors. 

Backlinks have been an important part of SEO strategy since the dawn of search engines. Even Google’s original algorithm for ranking search results, created way back in 1998, featured backlinking as an important process.

Great Ways to Boost Backlink Numbers

Now you understand how important backlinks are to the SEO process; it’s time to learn how to backlink. There is a wide range of ways you can do this, and it’s best to use a few different methods to diversify your campaign.

Running a varied campaign will help you to maintain a high position in search engine rankings over a longer period of time. 

Generate Linkable Content

Before you can get lots of great backlinks, it’s important to create plenty of linkable content on your website. This means filling your site with entertaining and interesting articles. 

Before you launch your website, make sure it has a variety of different pages. This should include a range of blog posts and some pages with regularly updated content. This will help your backlinks to function well and keep you high on those ranking lists.  

Guest Posts

One of the most common and effective ways of boosting the number of backlinks is through the use of guest posts. Guest posts are blog posts or articles that feature a relevant link to your product or service.

Some businesses choose not to put much effort into their guest posts, reasoning that the link is the most important part of the post and the content can just be fluff. But quality guest posts work better than junk and can draw in more visitors to your site, boosting your SEO further. 

Many sites are dedicated to hosting guest posts. These sites are happy to take guest posts from all comers, enjoying a steady stream of free content while boosting SEO for a wide range of companies. That way, everyone wins. 

Take a look around, and you’ll doubtless be able to find a wide range of these guest post host sites. We can work with you to find them and use reputable sites that will boost your brand and SEO long-term.  

Organic Backlinks

If your product or service is popular enough, you may be able to generate backlinks organically. When a topic is widely discussed, sites are bound to publish posts about it or include links to your service. 

Consider promoting your product in relevant communities and trying to create a buzz. This can result in bloggers and other content creators covering your business. When they write about what you’re doing, the chances are that they will link to your website. 

Not only will you get more backlinks and thus a higher SEO ranking, you’ll also get free advertising. Everyone’s a winner!

Checking Backlinks

To build a good backlink strategy, you need to know how many backlinks you already have out on the web. You aren’t automatically notified every time a new backlink is created. 

Luckily, there are some simple ways you can find out about existing backlinks. There are lots of tools available online to check this for you. But when you work with us, we can audit previous backlinks and help to ensure any new links you create work seamlessly with existing links. 

We can also check if any of these links are deadlinks, leading to now removed parts of your website. If this is the case, we can get in touch with the host site to update the links. 

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Google provides a set of Webmaster Guidelines. These are important for those looking to build a strong SEO campaign that can stand the test of time.

The guidelines help to prevent links just for the sake of links. Quality backlinks should be embedded in content that has value outside of hosting a link. This could be an informative article or a relevant news piece.

These guidelines may seem daunting at first glance, but don’t worry. Google understands the need for sites to create backlinks and knows that trading links is a normal part of the web economy. Besides, Google only takes action against sites persistently going against several of its rules.

Machine Generated Content

In recent times, the use of AI to create SEO content has become ever more popular. Programs like ChatGPT can be used to create SEO content in the blink of an eye. 

This program has the potential to create more guest posts and speed up your campaign. But if you choose to make use of one of these programs, proceed with caution. This is a new technology that is still prone to errors, so be sure to have an experienced SEO professional look over anything it outputs.

Other automated services can be highly damaging to your business. Some companies use programs that spam links over the internet or create poorly-written articles filled with links on every line. Google and other search engines can easily identify these programs and may penalize the user.

The Dangers of Black Hats

If you’re looking around for a service to produce backlinks for your business, you may have come across certain agencies that just don’t feel right. They might be offering services at extremely low prices or promise amazing results in a short space of time,

These companies may be black hat SEO companies. Black hat SEO companies use underhand tactics to improve SEO, and this includes spamming links across various sites and using poor-quality guest posts. 

When you’re browsing the web, you may have noticed these black hat companies at work. Check the comments of any blog, or go read a forum thread, and you’ll notice a lot of irrelevant, poorly-written comments peppered with links. 

If you’re looking to build a strong set of backlinks, it’s a good idea to avoid these companies like the plague. Although spamming links in this way is quick and easy, it won’t help you in the long run. Google and other search engines look down on these kinds of tactics and they may penalize you for using them. 

Using these strategies or working with a black hat company can also make your business look bad. If customers see links to your pages spammed all over, they might lose trust in your services and be less likely to work with you in the future. 

Black hat companies violate practically all of Google’s spam policies. By using these techniques, you’ll be caught sooner or later, and then you’re bound to pay the penalty.

Be sure to choose a reputable, white-hat company to manage your SEO company and create backlinks. This will ensure you aren’t penalized for underhand tactics, and your marketing campaign will be far more robust too. 

Quality SEO Services

We hope our article gave you the answer to the question, “what are backlinks?”. It can be a tricky topic to understand, but knowing the importance of backlinks and the ways you can use them is vital to a business and SEO strategy in the modern age. It can help you to underpin a strong and adaptable SEO strategy.

If you want to gain an edge over your competitors and improve your marketing overall, we can help. From SEO and content creation to Facebook ads and web design, we can help. Book a call today, and let’s start designing a strategy to take your SEO to the next level.

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Antonio Calabrese GHAX

Hey, I’m Antonio Calabrese, Founder at GHAX. We love working with businesses who are serious about growth.

If that’s you, get in touch and be 1 of 20 this month to claim a free marketing strategy session.

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