A Basic Guide to Backlinks for SEO
What is a backlink?
Backlinks, sometimes called inbound links or incoming links, are links that are created when one website links to another website.
How important are backlinks?
Backlinks are especially important to companies that utilise SEO to its fullest extent. Backlinks are seen as a sign that other companies and business’ trust and recommend your service by search engines. If you accrue many backlinks from other companies on your website it tells the relevant search engine that the content on your website is worth linking to and so it will be shown higher in the search engine rankings. Overall, backlinks are very important to any company that wants to maintain a good online presence.
Do outbound links help build trust?
Outbound links are links on your site that point to another domain. When you link to other domains it can help a search engine to understand what kind of products and services you offer as it will see that you are linking to similar products/services as you should be. This also helps to increase the trust and quality of your site as it shows that you link to other reputable sites which are most likely also linking to you.
Does Linking to other websites help or hurt SEO?
To have a website that ranks consistently high in the organic search results, you must establish and promote your site as THE authority for what you do in the markets you do it. If linking to another website provides support for the argument or point you’re trying to make, provides genuine value for your readers, and makes you look good, you should link out to the website in question. If the website you’re linking to has the potential to make you look worse or to call into question your intellect, don’t create a link as this could be a negative impact on your site and thus your company.
Can paid links harm my ranking?
This depends on the content that the links to your website. If your website is linked to from a blog that is in a completely different industry then this may cause issues. Having this done from multiple blogs consistently shows you are paying for links just to increase your ranking. Having too many paid links compared to non-paid links can also have a bad impact on your ranking as this can be seen as an artificial way of boosting your Google search results which is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Are reciprocal links bad for SEO?
Depending on the source of information, reciprocal links can be a good and a bad thing for SEO. The obvious advantage of using reciprocal links on any of your websites is that you get backlinks from companies as long as you provide backlinks to them. The more backlinks from other companies the better right? Well, this might not be the case with reciprocal links as technically they are against Google’s rules as stated in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. If Google sees that you have exchanged backlinks between another company and comes to the conclusion that you have both added backlinks to one another they can stop the relevant traffic from being sent your way. If you are going to use reciprocal links then you need to be smart about it. Make sure you think about your audience and how these reciprocal links will affect your content.
