The Importance of Backlinks For SEO

Have you ever wondered why websites scatter links within the text? You click on the link and find yourself on another area of the website or a completely different one altogether? 

Why Are Backlinks and Internal Links Important?

Put simply, link building is a way of directing users to other areas of your website and getting other websites to link to your website. While it is often really handy that the website is showing you further reading, this is also a clever SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy. 

Getting links from other websites can bring people looking for the information you have to a page which serves that need. Each backlink from an external website is also is a vote of confidence in the content of your website in the eye's of Google.

Each link internally around your website helps your users find other, relevant content to what they were reading. It also helps search engines to crawl the content and supports a hub of information, if executed correctly. 

Links, both internal and external, are helpful to users, so they have been incorporated by search engines into the algorithm and help better websites rank higher.

How Do You Build More Links?

It does take effort but the results will be worth it and should form part of any SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy. We'll tackle the more tricky first, external links are not directly in your control, here are some top tips to obtain them:

• Research relevant websites you want your website to link to, that have relevant content. 
• You could also ask friends, family and people you work with, who have websites, to link to your site.
• When you're networking, mention any content you have on your site that would be relevant for others to link to.

For instance, you meet a wedding catering company and you own a website which sells engraved gifts - which may at first appear irrelevant to each other, but there will usually be a way to link. If the wedding catering company has a wedding gift idea section or blog, ask if they would like some content about engraved gifts and link to your website. This adds a great SEO link for you, but will also add value to the wedding catering company as you can write more detailed information about engraved gifts and provide professional images for them to use on their website. 

Writing blogs on your website gives you a great opportunity to add content which people will find worthwhile to link to. By making sure it's compelling, unique and high-quality content, people will want to reference and link to it. Make sure you've got keywords set up in Google Alerts and use your Google Analytics to keep track of where links are coming from too. 

Further reading: What Are Backlinks and How to Get Them

A Word Of Warning

Be careful about engaging with bloggers and influencers who offer links to your website, in exchange for goods.
Check out the Google Webmaster Guidelines for disclosures and no follow links. 
You want links to your website, without linking back to the source, if you want SEO benefits.

What About Internal Links?

Your strategy should be a mixture of internal and external links.  Internal links help the user to navigate your website and connect your content, it's also giving Google an idea of the structure of your website.

Don't underestimate the value of internal links!

There are two types of internal links: navigational and contextual. Navigational links include links in your header, footer, and navigation bars to help users find other pages on your websites and help search engines crawl your website. These links are important for user experience, but do not carry as much weight in connecting your content as contextual links, in terms of SEO. 

Contextual links appear in your pages’ text content and are less obvious. They have higher SEO value because they are not an addition to the navigation that appears on every page, they are a more considered edition of one link to a specific sentence to another page on your website, because the content on the next page is relevant for the reader. 

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