Whether you’re old hat to SEO or have a passing familiarity with it, you may have heard of the term “backlinking.”

Backlinking is a cornerstone of SEO marketing and improving your site’s content for Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs.)

Let’s explain backlinking, how it works, and how it helps your site rank higher for chosen keywords.

What are Backlinks?

The humble hyperlink – arguably the invention that makes the World Wide Web what it is – is essentially currency in the SEO world. The more URLs that point to your site, especially when that URL comes from a high-traffic or popular site, the higher your SERPs tend to be.

These are like a “vote of confidence” in the relevance, expertise, and trustworthiness of the information presented.

The more backlinks your site receives – especially if the link uses your keywords (known as anchor text) – it signals that your page is more credible and useful than pages with fewer backlinks.

In fact, Google’s early iteration of the PageRank algorithm relied heavily on backlinks as a ranking signal.

Off-Page or Technical SEO practitioners offer a service known as Link Building, while SEO copywriters use their expertise in SEO marketing to create pages with high E-E-A-T so other sites will find the content useful and relevant.

What Is Link Building?

Link building is the proactive method of gaining more links toward your chosen page or site. SEO marketing firms or practitioners will try to build links in four distinct ways.

• Manual list addition – adding links to online directories such as Google MyBusiness or TripAdvisor, et. al.
• Paid links – buying links at other websites with high domain authority by supplying content and having it hosted with a link that directs back to your site.
• Link exchange – trading links between sites; “If you add a link to my site, I’ll add a link to yours.” This may also come in the form of guest blog posting.
• Organic link building – natural link building from other sites because your content is relevant, timely, and interesting

Link building can comprise “white hat” techniques and “black hat” techniques. “White hat” techniques include providing content to professional news organisations, broken link building, guest posting, or links on social profiles, etc. “Black hat” techniques are spammy in nature, such as adding your URL to spam comments on high ranking sites (though comment moderation has made this practice harder), forum posts, and known spam or fraud sites.

In most cases, Google’s algorithm will detect this and penalise your site with lower search results.

A note on No Follow links

The “nofollow” HTML attribute tells search engines to ignore the link in their ranking algorithm.

When you are trading or buying links, you need to ensure the provider is supplying you with “follow” links.

Anatomy of SEO Marketing with Backlinking

When you establish an SEO keyword and content strategy, backlinks should also be top of mind.

The authority of a website linking to you is a major factor in how PageRank will rate the E-E-A-T of your page. If it has a high Domain Authority score and URL score, it significantly tilts the SERPs in your favour. You also want other relevant sites (as many as possible) to link to your site as well.

Anchor text is also important in establishing a high relevance backlink. Let’s say a website links to your dating site with the anchor text “fish burgers.” It diminishes that link’s authority and relevance. Ideally, the anchor text should closely and substantially connect with the incoming search term or keyword you want to rank for.

Placement of the link has weight too. Being part of the main body of content is best, with sidebar and footer content carrying less relevance respectively.

Finally, where does your link point to? Usually, direct sales pages contain more Calls to Action than useful information. That means fewer links on average. However, incoming links to information pages that sit adjacent to what Google calls “money pages” does influence the overall SERPs of all your linked pages.

Backlinking As SEO Marketing

Backlinking is a powerful tool in your SEO marketing efforts. Coupled with great SEO content, it can help your site stand out in search results.

If you want to make real headway with SEO marketing using backlinks in Melbourne, contact the Melbourne Copywriter for all your copywriting, SEO, and marketing needs.