Defining Backlinks
The term “backlink” refers to the hyperlinks that someone else will use on their website to direct a user from their website to yours. Backlinks act as bridges between different parts of the internet, creating and connecting the aptly named web.
They are often attached to anchor text, which are the visible words displayed for a link in place of the actual URL. This allows users to know what they are clicking on and have a better user experience (UX).
Why Do Backlinks Matter?
Aside from quality content on your site, backlinks are arguably the most important factor in determining your ranking (how highly Google and other search engines place your site in comparison to others). Why is this?
A relevant analogy would be to imagine your website as an island that has been placed into the middle of the ocean (which would be the internet in this instance). The website exists, and people can find it if they venture out and stumble upon it, but that is a major “if”.
The best way to drive more traffic to your site quickly, without it being a shot in the dark, is to set up backlinks, which are bridges in this metaphor, between your website and others in similar spaces on the internet.
Naturally, the more abundant these bridges are, the more traffic you will accrue. In the same regard, if the bridges coming to your island are being set up from a diverse array of sources, this will also increase your traffic volume and often the quality of your traffic as well.
It is important to understand that to get that traffic to stay on your island and to get those searchers to return, you need to have something to entice them to do so. This is why having high quality content for internet users to consume is so important. You can get the best Content Writing Services from Sinopia.
Backlinks get users to come to your site, but good content and relevant information gets those users to stay and keep coming back for more.
An Example of A Backlink
Let’s solidify this concept with a quick example. A friend of mine, Todd, owns and operates a bee-keeping and organic honey production business, known as Todd’s Honey in Irvine, CA. Todd recently reached out to our team at Sinopia to set up his website to increase his customers and so that he could get more connected with others in the bee-keeping community.
After setting up his website, full of beautiful images of his bees, a description of his honey production process, and a full line of his products available for purchase, we now need to help Todd get pertinent visitors to his site so that he can start selling more honey and meet other bee-keepers with similar interests.
Our team sets up a few backlinks on similar websites that will direct users to Todd’s Honey. One of them is on a blog about the importance of supporting local businesses in Irvine, and they give a list of local businesses in Irvine, including Todd’s Honey. Readers of this article see Todd’s company linked. They click on it, bringing Todd some of his very first visitors and potential customers.
One of the people who clicks on this link is a man who runs a website that lists the best organic food options in Irvine, and after reviewing Todd’s product, he decides to include it in his annual list of organic producers in Irvine, again linked to Todd’s site. This brings Todd more visitors and opportunities for growth.
There are different types of links that you can accrue, here’s a list with relevant examples:
Inbound links
- A link from an article about supporting local businesses in Irvine which directed users to the Todd’s Honey home page, is an inbound link for Todd.
Outbound links
- A link from an article about supporting local businesses in Irvine which directed users to the Todd’s Honey home page, is an inbound link for Todd.
Internal Links
- Todd adds a link to the home page of the delivery service he uses to fulfill orders for honey. This is an outbound link for Todd, but an inbound link for the delivery company he uses.
How Google Uses Backlinks
To understand your website, and others on the web, Google and other search engines employ the use of crawlers, which are bots that examine or crawl pages on the internet. These crawlers use backlinks to go from page to page, helping them understand the web in a more comprehensive and objective way.
Backlinks are endorsements for websites, and as such, each additional link that these crawlers find is an indication to Google that people value your website. However, these crawlers are not just looking for the number of links. Instead, they use a combination of the quality, relevancy, and quantity of the aforementioned links to compare your site to other ones in your respective space. This is because backlinks are an objective and technologically digestible metric for Google to use.
Three Key Components of Backlinks
Because links are measures of popularity, a link for a very popular and credible website, like the New York Times, will hold more weight in a search engine’s eyes than a backlink from a site with one or two thousand monthly visitors. This is what we are referring to with backlink quality.
Relevancy refers to whether the backlinks you accrue are in related industries to your own. If I manufacture bikes for mountain bikers, an inbound backlink from REI’s website will have much more impact for me than a link from the New York Times, even if the New York Times is more popular for internet users.
Finally, the quantity of links is also critical. The more inbound backlinks you can accrue, the better, generally speaking. When you start racking up backlinks, it is important to monitor them and make sure they are not spammy links or from sources that are not credible. If you are not cognizant of this you can severely hurt your ranking and organic traffic as Google’s crawlers will see that sites that are of low quality link to your site, and they will view your site as lower quality by default, even if that is not the case.
Final Thoughts
No matter where you are in your SEO and digital marketing journey, familiarity with backlinks will be critical to your success. You Can Contact Sinopia for SEO Services. As such, we hope this run down on the basics of backlinks was beneficial. It is an important concept to get down when starting and out and as you plan to grow so be sure to check out our other articles on the subject and similar topics at sinopia.ai.
