Backlinks, Good vs. Evil - The True Breakdown

What is the importance of backlinks for your business website?

Backlinks are an effective subsidiary of search engine optimisation techniques which should be integrated into your complete SEO plan. It is a means of increasing the traffic to your site through an increase in your search engine results. It is true that ninety nine percent of internet users will only scroll through the first page of search engine results which means that only the top ten sites will benefit from SEO. There are now many popular SEO techniques used to increase a company’s rank and better reach customers. One of those is backlinks. 

Backlinks are considered incoming links to your website. When an online viewer clicks on a link which takes them back to your website that is considered a backlink. These can be very useful because they primarily provide easy access to your site. If a backlink is located on a non-competitive website such as a directory site, then it can easily increase your web traffic. Search engine algorithms utilise the number of backlinks to your website as part of your website’s relevancy. Backlinks are like a vote of approval from other sites. The more backlinks you have the more relevant your site and the content therein. The higher your relevance the better your search engine rank. If the link is placed with content it is better. If the link is placed on its own without other links present, it is better for search engine ranks.

Because backlinks provide an easy and effective manner for directing traffic to a site, people have discovered ways to cheat the system and get higher ranks for their pages. These algorithms can be distinguished and when caught, the webpage employers punished. This can mean your site is removed from the search engines entirely, thus limiting your revenue. 

Distinguishing between good and bad backlinks

The key to benefiting from backlinks is to differentiate between the good and bad kinds. You always want to incorporate good backlinks. There are times when having bad reviews still help because at least they are reviews, but that rule does not apply to bad backlinks. Bad backlinks can result in your site being removed from search engines. Bad backlinks are the result of cheating the SEO system to increase your rank faster. This can be done by buying mass backlinks or by posting too many links which are not relevant, or using linking software which then marks your website as spam. 

Good backlinks will provide links on other websites which point to yours.  In order to utilise good backlinks you should link on a site which already has a high page rank. You should also link on a page which lacks other links. If there are too many other links it can be marked as spam and will not catch the attention of internet users. You also want to link within the content of the page instead of on the sidebars or on the footer. If you can integrate the website into the content on the other website it is best. You also want to link from a relevant website. 

How to Manage Inbound Link Quantity and Quality

As a business owner it is important that you manage your inbound link quality and quantity. The problem lies in determining how much time to spend on inbound links. These links come from other sites back to your page. They are referred to as incoming links, back links, in links, and inward links. Caring about the quality and quantity of inbound links is important because it is an imperative manner in which your website is found online. In order to have your website found, you must rank high on search engines. In order to do this you must utilise SEO which includes inbound links. Inbound links have quickly become one of the biggest indicators of the quality of your website content. As such, inbound links are an important facet of keeping a high rank among search engine results. 

This begins with getting links posted on relevant directories. But be cautious of using back-link repositories. Search engines are improving to notice when people are using link brokerage services or spamming their links all over the internet and website owners are being penalised. Those sites which are found to have these spam links receive a low quality rank. The more low-quality ranks you have the lower your site will rate overall.

In order to improve your rank and manage your inbound links you want to make sure that they are relevant links and are engaging. They should be integrated into keywords inside of high quality content rather than merely posted at the end of an article en masse with many other links. The quality of the link should come naturally to your site through compelling service, thus offering a unique service to customers.

You can better manage your inbound links by posting them into quality blogs or presentations upon which people can share or comment. Building high quality inbound links includes links from search engines, links from referring sites, and links from direct traffic. Prior to searching for inbound links you want to determine where your site stands with tools like Open Site Explorer or Site Explorer. You can also utilise Google Analytics to produce a comprehensive view of your inbound link quality over the past six months. You can verify “nofollow” links which are active inbound links which are not noticed by search engines. “nofollow” links will bring traffic to your site when people click on the links but they will not help your search engine rank. These are generally links included in blog comments where the owner of the site has not allowed you to include a link with your comment. This essentially means the owner of the website is not vouching for your link.

You can monitor good inbound links by posting only through good sources. These include things such as writing guest articles for other publications, or writing blog posts. These will both have a brief bio and link to your website. Other good inbound link sources include directories, online news release and article sites, vendors, suppliers, business allies, and sponsorships, charities, and associations. Another great location for inbound links includes social networks.