Welcome back to Tuesday Tips! Let’s define backlinks again: any link to your website that is found online is a backlink. Last week’s blog on backlinks can get you up to speed.

Now that you know what backlinks are, you might be wondering what the SEO value of backlinks is.

Google wants you to have authentic backlinks

Whenever companies think they’ve found a way to cheat Google’s search ranking system, Google takes another leap ahead of the game. Once backlinks began gaining SEO value, companies started buying backlinks in order to drive more traffic to their websites. These links were from smaller websites that were irrelevant to their services, but the sheer number boosted their SEO…for a while.

The Google Penguin Algorithm was released in 2012 to screen out websites that cheated their way to high rankings with fake backlinks. Many companies were penalized and dropped in searches, costing them millions in sales! The moral of the story? Don’t buy backlinks. The other moral? Backlinks to smaller websites are not as valuable as they used to be.

Will backlinks have more SEO value in the future?

Backlinks will always have SEO value, because they are integral to the search process. The main difference after the Penguin Update is that having a lot of backlinks is not the answer. Having high quality backlinks matters.

What makes a high quality backlink?

  1. The website containing the backlink must be be relevant to your company or services in some way.
  2. The website must be reliable and high quality (mobile-responsive, containing current information).
  3. It must be trusted (established and not spammy. Think Wikipedia).
  4. The anchor text, or the phrase that is linked, should match the wording on the site it is linked to (Instead of, “Click here to learn more about blogging,” it should say, “blogs create valuable, searchable content for your website.”
  5. The backlink is more valuable if it’s included on the same page as other higher ranking backlinks.
  6. The diversity of websites containing backlinks to your site is important.

It’s important that backlinks are acquired honestly and organically, and the best way to do this is to produce quality written content on your website as often as possible. Blogging is one of the best ways to do this. The more reliable and knowledgeable you are as an industry resource, the greater your chances are of being backlinked by other companies.

Tune in next Tuesday for more great information on backlinks, outbound links, and how to improve your website’s SEO. Call Sprout for Business at 603-227-5240 to learn more, or contact us online today.