When it comes to the world of search engine optimization (SEO), there are few components that are quite as vital as backlinks.
These handy little tools are one of the most useful objects in any website’s SEO toolbox. Knowing what backlinks are and how they can benefit you can help launch you to the first page of Googe’s results in no time.
What Are Backlinks – And How Are They Used?
Backlinks are exactly what they sound like, links that direct a viewer back to your site. They are different from internal links, which are found on your own site and bring the viewer from one page to another on your domain.
Backlinks are instead found on other websites to direct viewers that were not originally on your site to a specific page on your domain. An example of a backlink is exactly what has just been done in this sentence, which is the link at the beginning of the sentence that directs you to a page on a site that isn’t Danger Dynamite.
Why Are Backlinks So Important?
When it comes to the importance of backlinks there are essentially two different areas where they are vital in the online world. The first of these is with the viewer experience because backlinks can actually be incredibly helpful in getting the reader the information that they are after.
Maybe you happened to click on an article that talks about the best ways to save money for your first home. Somewhere in that article, there is a section about budgeting which includes a hyperlinked section of text which reads “buy food on a budget”. This link might be something that you never would have thought to search for on your own, but now that it has come up, and the website made it easy for you to find this information, it suddenly becomes a valuable bit of knowledge that you have gathered.
The second, and most significant, reason why backlinks are important, is because they help search engines like Google better place your site within the search engine’s results page.
The more external websites that contain links back to yours indicates to the search engines that your website is valuable and must be an authoritative figure on the topic that the specific pages are linked to. And, the more high-quality backlinks that direct to a specific page on your site, the higher up on the search engine’s results pages it will land, which helps you to garner more clicks and visitors to your site.
If you want to learn more about how you can use backlinks, and other great SEO strategies, to improve your website’s performance then contact our team of professionals today.