Backlinks are a critical aspect of modern SEO. They help boost page authority and drive relevant traffic. They also let Google know your content is good enough and relevant enough to be referenced on someone else’s website. Read on to learn how and why you should invest in building your backlinks.

Getting Those Votes

Many marketers think of Google as a sort of popularity contest, where countless websites battle for lucrative page one positions. In this contest, a variety of factors work together to determine a winner. One of these factors centers on backlinking, which represent a vote of confidence from one website to another.

If a site links to your site, Google views this as a positive vote. The more positive votes you have, the higher your ranking. But a high quantity of backlinks isn’t enough; it also matters where these backlinks are coming from.

Not All Votes Count the Same

Search engines like Google use complex algorithms to gather key information and use it to rank pages. To gather this all-important information, they use spiders and bots to crawl your site for its content and any backlinks. When determining how to rank your site for any given keyword, Google aggregates not just the volume but the relevance of all the pages linking to your site.

Relevance and page authority play big roles in determining the value of a backlink. One link from a high-authority page with relevant content is going to be worth more than a hundred links from lower-authority sites that showcase unrelated content. In essence, backlinks from high-authority, popular, trustworthy sites are regarded as the most desirable backlinks, while backlinks from less popular, low-authority, potentially spammy sites are regarded as less influential.

Do Backlinks Still Hold the Same Weight?

There was a time when backlinks could make or break a website’s ranking. As Google’s ever-evolving algorithms have changed, however, backlinks have become another ingredient in a complex soup of ranking factors. Still, backlinks remain a critical factor for organic search ranking because, at bare minimum, they boost the authority of your website.

In the vast majority of cases, the more backlinks a domain has, the higher its position on the SERPs. But how does a business get meaningful backlinks for its website? Unfortunately, there is a little bit of a chicken and egg scenario that comes with building backlinks.

For a site to get backlinks, people have to know it exists. How do they find it? Quite often, they search Google. Any site that ranks on the first page of a SERP is likely to see a steady organic increase in backlinks, further cementing its standing in the search results. But if you need backlinks to have a high ranking and having a high ranking naturally gets you more backlinks, how do competing websites break through?

Ideally, they create lots of compelling, informative content people want to link to. This is by far the most effective way to slowly but surely boost page authority and improve search engine rankings.

This means:

• Publishing articles, case studies, infographics, press releases, and other shareable content.
• Regularly posting fresh, informative blog content and guest posting on other blogs.
• Remaining active on social media platforms and always linking to relevant content on your blog or site.
• Taking advantage of reputable directory sites and search directories.
• Making it easy for people to share your content using social share tools and links.

While these tactics sound simple enough, they are part of a comprehensive SEO strategy requiring a consistent, long-term investment of money and time. It also helps to work with an experienced digital marketing agency that knows how to build high-impact backlinks in a relatively short amount of time.

Sympler helps its clients build quality backlinks quickly so their pages can rank higher in search engine results pages while staying compliant with Google’s link standards. This means building quality backlinks without resorting to black hat tactics that can get your website penalized or outright banned.

Our experts run an analysis of all the sites that list your website in their directories. We are able to determine the number of directories that currently list you correctly, incorrectly or not at all. We then work with those sites to make sure your company appears correctly. We also help your listing appear more authoritative by adding coupons, promotions or photos if available. Moreover, we work with you to cultivate a comprehensive strategy for generating informative, sharable content that attracts backlinks. We also help you promote this content, so it’s more discoverable and more likely to attract valuable, authoritative links.

Letting Sympler help you create quality backlinks will save you time, generate better rankings and drive more profitable leads to your site. Contact our team to learn more.