Backlinks are, in essence, referrals from other websites to yours. This can be of significant benefit to your SEO strategy, as it boosts your site’s trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines. The effectiveness of backlinks banks on quality first and quantity second: focus on getting backlinks from reputable websites, and then increase that number as you go along. Directing your efforts on only one or the other will yield less impressive results. Having a small number of good quality backlinks has a proportional effect of how much your site will get noticed. On the other hand, having hundreds of poor backlinks will likely lower your ranking altogether, as this could be perceived as a black hat technique.
Maximize the effectiveness of your backlinks with the following tips:
- Target the sites from which you want backlinks. Look for quality, high-ranked pages and examine ways in which you can get them to link to your content.
- Ensure that these sites share similar topics as yours; the more related the two sites are, the greater the value of the backlink. Keep in mind that your content must be distinguishable from the other site’s, as duplicate content can get your site penalized by search engines.
- Be forward about approaching websites for backlinks – many sites accept voluntary content from which you can link back to your page. You can also inquire about other methods of getting your link into their sites.
- Quality remains king; offering excellent content on your website not only encourages other sites to accept your backlink requests, it also increases the likelihood of other individuals voluntarily linking back to your site.
