What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important?

When you start an SEO campaign, you will hear about the importance of linking between your website and other websites. As SEOs, we spend a lot of our time trying to build up a network of internal and external links between our web pages. 

Linking between your own web pages is great for helping users move between your pages. This in turn generates more sales for your e-commerce pages, bookings for our service-based clients and views across our informational blogs. However, backlinks are essentially a link away from your website, so surely this doesn’t present much of a commercial advantage to you and your business. 

So do backlinks add value to your website?

Yes, backlinks add value by driving users to your site and sharing ‘domain authority’ between sites. Domain authority, a metric from 1 to 100, measures trust and affects ranking. More high-quality backlinks mean a higher ranking, which is a key goal of our SEO campaigns.

Clearly, a lot needs to be unpacked here. So let’s get into it. 

What Are Backlinks, Exactly?

A backlink is a simple link from one site to another. You may have heard of them as ‘hyperlinks’, and you will almost certainly have used one whilst scrolling through a website or even social media. Backlinks are a link which links to another website entirely.

When we speak about backlinks, we are viewing it from our own perspective. We might say that ‘someone has provided us a backlink’, meaning that they are linking to our website. Linking to yourself may just be called ‘internal linking’. 

It must be understood that a link always serves a purpose, and that purpose is to get users to act a certain way, go down a certain path of a website, or view a certain page or command from the website itself. Links are important, without them, websites wouldn’t work. So why would a website instruct their hard-fought users to leave their site, by sending them to a different domain? 

This is where domain authority comes in. 

Domain Authority, an Overview

‘Domain authority’ is a metric by which search engines such as Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo measure your entire domain’s trustworthiness online. It takes into consideration your relevance within your marketing niche, your trustability, and your experience. 

We cover this topic further in our blogs,  What is Domain Authority? and How Do You Write E-E-A-T Content?

To build up an idea for your business, search engines take into account a combination of the following: 

1. Backlinks,
2. Crawlability,
3. User Experience,
4. Content.

If your site has good, useful, relevant, and up-to-date content, is crawlable with lots of internal linking, offers a great user experience, and is fast, it will likely have a good domain authority score.

Whilst Google and other search engines keep their ranking factors close to their chests, it is believed that good inbound links to your website account for approximately 40% of the weight of your rankability. 

Having backlinks from a website which ticks all these boxes to your site will provide you with increased domain authority. This means that a backlink from a powerful domain is more valuable than a backlink from a lower authority domain.

Domain authority is therefore something that is shared but hard-fought over between businesses within a certain niche.

Think of a backlink as a commendation for a job or even a reference in a scholarly article. If you can reference an important figure within your chosen field, it backs up your claim. Similarly, if you can get a commendation from an authority within a field, you must be worthy of this commendation from that authority. This gives you a provenance, which some businesses are actively seeking online for their websites. 

Read more about domain authority with our blog: What is Domain Authority and How can I Increase it?

So, Why Are Backlinks Important?

Backlinks provide a share of domain authority between two websites. They help weaker websites climb up search engine rankings, and they help provide provenance for making claims that ought to be backed up with a resource or reference. 

Backlinks also provide a clear marketing avenue for customers to move from one site to another.

How Can I Check Backlinks For My Website?

Finding backlinks that point towards your site can be done easily through SEMrush, Ahrefs and even Google Search Console. 

As discussed, good backlinks provide value to your site. However, annoyingly, poor backlinks negatively affect your website too. 

You may wish to disavow bogus, poor and harmful backlinks via Google Search Console, however, as poor backlinks typically will outnumber good backlinks as much as 100 to 1 across a regular website, there typically is little need. 

How to Build a Backlink Profile

Finding valuable backlinks for your website can be as simple as reaching out to someone within your industry, engaging in content exchange, and possibly even paying a small fee. You can compare domain authority from other websites via SEMrush and Ahrefs, and there is a free tool through Moz.

From here, you can build a list of websites which may offer you a backlink, based on their content and domain authority. 

You may want to review their recent blogs and see if they are regularly engaging in backlink building. Also, are the websites that are providing your industry niche cohorts likely going to give you a backlink? You can often spot an attempt to force backlink building, but you can spot an organic building of backlinks, too. 

Learn more about this in our blog, What is Link Building?

Outreaching for Backlinks: an Overview

Outreaching for backlinks is a great way to build a backlink profile. 

From an SEO’s perspective, the best ways to secure backlinks are:

• Creating good quality content which others will naturally link to, and;
• Offering to write good quality content for others which includes a link to your website. This is often called guest posting or guest blogging.

You might offer £100 (or a service of equivalent value) for a mention and a link from a website that holds a significant amount of authority in your field. This is frowned upon in some circles, however, it can be an effective way to build a backlink profile. 

You can also consider: 

• Qwoted,
• Unlinked mentions,
• Testimonials,
• Providing original research,
• Partnering with others,
• linking to others and hoping for a return,
• Giving interviews,
• Using social media.

Let’s review each method to see how it can be effectively used to help you build the domain authority of your site. 

Creating Valuable Content

At the core of any successful backlink strategy is the creation of valuable content. High-quality, informative, and engaging content naturally attracts backlinks from others who see it as a resource. The more useful your content is, the more likely people are to link to it, which is crucial for organic backlink building. This method is evergreen, however, if you don’t have the high domain authority to begin with, it can be laborious and speculative to a degree. 

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging involves writing an article for another website or blog in exchange for a backlink to your site. This approach helps you tap into a new audience, establish authority in your field, and build relationships with other key industry leaders.

Be sure to target blogs that are relevant to your niche and have high domain authority to maximise the impact of your backlinks.

Learn more about this in our blog, How To Find Guest Blogging Opportunities

Qwoted

Qwoted is a platform where journalists seek expert sources to provide quotes or insights for their articles. By signing up, you can respond to relevant queries in your industry and, if your quote is used, you’ll often receive a backlink from reputable news sites. It’s a great way to gain media exposure while earning high-quality backlinks.

Unlinked Mentions

Unlinked mentions are instances where your brand is mentioned online without a backlink. Tools like Google Alerts or Ahrefs can help you identify these mentions. 

Try to make it as easy as possible for them by giving them any specific link to your content that they may need. Then suggest that both of you could work together in the future on a project that would be beneficial to both of you.

Testimonials

Writing testimonials for brands or products you genuinely like is an easy and effective way to get backlinks. Companies often feature customer testimonials on their websites, typically including a backlink to your site in return. This approach is mutually beneficial, as it provides social proof for the brand while giving you a valuable link.

Original Research

Conducting and publishing original research or data analysis relevant to your industry is a strong way to attract backlinks. People naturally link to credible data sources to support their content, and if your research is valuable and insightful, other websites will refer to it. You can present this data in blog posts, case studies, or even infographics to make it more shareable.

Partnering with Others

Collaborating with other businesses, influencers, or brands can result in natural backlinking. This could take the form of co-authored blog posts, joint ventures, or partnerships that lead to mutual promotion. By working together, you benefit from shared audiences and backlinks, making the partnership a win-win.

Linking to Others

When you link to other reputable websites within your own content, it can encourage them to return the favour. You’re also providing value to your readers by directing them to credible sources. This method helps build relationships within your industry and can result in organic backlinks over time. 

Giving Interviews

Giving interviews, whether for blogs, podcasts, or webinars, is a powerful way to build backlinks. During the interview process, your name and business are often linked back to your website, providing both exposure and a valuable backlink from a reputable source.

Using Social Media Organically

Social media is a great tool for promoting yourself, your website and content, which can help attract backlinks. When people see your valuable content on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, they may share or link to it. While social shares themselves aren’t direct backlinks, they increase the visibility of your content, leading to potential links.

Securing Backlinks with Wildcat Digital

Finding backlinks and reaching out to authoritative sources to help build a website’s authority can be difficult. 

With a dedicated content team, we spend much of our time building and maintaining relationships with many different businesses, helping them build their online presence, authority and search engine result page rankings. 

Contact our team today to help build your online presence and get your business punching above its weight online.