Considered by many to be the backbone of a solid SEO strategy, backlinks can significantly enhance a site’s visibility and search engine ranking. They drive additional organic traffic and boost your credibility.

But what are backlinks, exactly, and how do they do it?

The Backstory on Backlinks

Backlinks are incoming links from one website to another, acting as votes of confidence that boost your search engine rankings. When an authoritative website links to your site, it signals to search engines like Google that your content is trustworthy, beneficial, and worth sharing.

Why does this matter to you?

There’s a sea of information out there. A good percentage of it is garbage. Search engines need a way to determine which websites are authoritative and relevant for users. Links from reputable, high-traffic websites can cement your site’s reliability, more than numerous links from lesser-known sites. The more quality backlinks you collect, the better. They boost your reputation as an influential thought leader and pave the way to higher search engine rankings.

 Establishing Quality Backlinks

Now the big question: how do you establish quality backlinks?

Consulting a digital marketing partner like IMPACT is always a great first step, but there are a few tried and true strategies that can help you earn backlinks.

• Share-Worthy Content: Producing high-quality, informative, and engaging content naturally encourages other sites to endorse yours.
• Guest Blogging: Sharing content with other thought leaders in your industry via their websites can garner invaluable backlinks.
• Visual Assets: Infographics and other visually appealing content are highly sharable. Putting time, thought, and effort into creating something aesthetically dynamic for your site can be a great way to earn backlinks.
• Social Media Savviness: Promote awesome content on social media platforms to increase visibility and backlink potential.

Backlinks That Backfire

While building a strong backlink profile is key to enhancing your SEO, not all backlinks contribute positively. Some can even harm rather than help your efforts.

• Spammy Links: Links from low-quality (or spammy) websites can negatively impact your site’s SEO. Google aims to deliver the highest-quality search results to its users. Consequently, links from sites that are considered non-authoritative or are filled with spam can deep-six your site’s credibility and search rankings.
• Purchased Links: Buying links for SEO purposes is against Google guidelines. These links are also easy for search engines to spot and can lead to severe penalties, including removal from search results entirely. It’s also kind of classless. Search engines are becoming increasingly adept at identifying and penalizing sites that engage in such practices.
• Irrelevant Links: Backlinks should be relevant to your content and industry. Anything else can confuse search engines about the context and focus of your site, leading to decreased relevancy and authority in search engine algorithms. Aim for backlinks that are contextually related to your content to support your SEO goals effectively.
• Excessive Link Exchanges: Mutual linking is just what it sounds like: agreeing to link to a colleague’s site if they link to yours. While such reciprocation can occasionally be beneficial, going overboard may be viewed as manipulative by search engines. The entire “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” Quid pro quo approach may dilute the value of your backlinks and even lead to consequences.

Know Your Backlink Status

For businesses eager to understand their site’s backlink profile, checking backlinks is relatively straightforward:

Use Google Search Console: After selecting your website, navigate to the “Links” section to see the list of websites linking to your site.

• On the left sidebar, click on “Links.” This area provides detailed insights into external and internal links.
• In the “Top linking sites” section, you can view the domains that link most frequently to your site. This is crucial for understanding which websites consider your content valuable.
• Use this information to identify high-quality backlinks and potentially harmful ones, guiding your strategy for improving your site’s backlink profile.

Leverage SEO Tools: Tools like SEMrush or Moz can give you a snapshot of your status. Enter your website’s URL to get a comprehensive report detailing the domains linking to your site and their quality.

When checking for backlinks, it’s important to note the number, the diversity of linking domains, the quality of the backlinks, and any patterns that might indicate spammy or irrelevant links.

Giving Bad Backlinks the Boot

Once you’ve identified harmful backlinks, disavowing them can protect your site’s SEO health. This involves telling Google to ignore certain links, preventing them from negatively impacting your rankings. While it’s a multi-step process, you ultimately need to:

• Compile a list of the URLs you want to disavow.
• Use Google’s disavow tool to upload your list of disavowed pages and domains.

For detailed instructions, check out Google’s guide on disavowing links.

Make backlink analysis a regular part of your SEO strategy. This allows you to identify and disavow harmful backlinks and guides you in acquiring more beneficial ones.

IMPACT’s Approach to Backlinks

Here at IMPACT, our team emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity in building backlinks. Our approach focuses on earning backlinks naturally through high-quality content, reputable collaborations, and strategic outreach. We ensure that our clients’ backlink profiles enhance, rather than hinder, their SEO efforts and overall digital marketing strategy.

Understanding what backlinks are and their critical role in SEO is the first step toward building a strong online presence. With the right strategy and guidance, backlinks can significantly impact your brand’s visibility and authority online.