Backlinks play a critical role in search engine optimization. Google looks not only at the number of backlinks you have but also at the sites they’re from. If the website of a thought leader includes a link to your site, then it will have a positive impact on your SEO.
Backlinks from non-credible sites aren’t worth anything and usually involve black-hat tactics, so we’ll skip over them. Instead, we’ll explain why you need backlinks and how you can get them.
Why you need backlinks
Believe it or not, there’s a great degree of control businesses have in regard to SEO. No, they can’t change Google’s algorithm directly, but they can optimize several elements on their sites to get a better ranking.
There’s just one problem — everyone can do it. You’re not going to run a revolutionary campaign by making sure your pages have a title and description.
Instead, you need something to stand out, and that’s what backlinks provide. Acquiring them is a way to differentiate yourself from competitors once and for all.
Great content gets backlinks from great sites
The thing is, getting backlinks from high-quality sites is hard. They’re careful about who they link to, so you have to really do your homework to make a good impression.
This Forbes article explains that it all comes down to creating high-quality content. According to the article, there are some minor technical tips that can help you achieve this:
“The final piece of SEO comes down to creating high quality content. Technically, this means keeping your keyword density between 2% and 4% in each post, and include images and videos whenever possible. The last “big” technical tip is to encourage other sites to link back to your posts, which helps build domain authority.”
If your keyword density is out of whack, it sends a negative indicator out to Google and other sites. Likewise, adding images and videos to your site can help create a better content mix.
But in the end, you really just need amazing content. Any business can adjust its keyword density and add visual content, but only one company can be considered the thought leader of the industry.
Who should be writing this great content, anyway?
All this talk of great content begs the question: who should be creating it, anyway? The obvious answer is to let the owner write it since they know the most about the industry. But they often don’t have enough time for writing blogs.
The next option is to hire a copywriter, but they don’t know the first thing about SEO. Those minor details like keyword density and page descriptions can all come back to haunt you if your copywriter completely ignores them.
We’ll just come out and say that the solution definitely isn’t to hire an SEO to write for you. That’s just … bad. Remember, high-quality content wins.
This Search Engine Land article offers the best compromise. According to the article, you need a writer to write your content and an SEO to optimize it:
“When it comes to the content portion of the optimization process, the SEO should be in charge of keyword research and selection. It is not the copywriter’s job to go out and do hours worth of in-depth keyword research, or to necessarily be responsible for selecting which keywords should be targeted for any given page. The job of the copywriter is to integrate the keywords provided by the SEO into the content. The SEO hands the list of keywords to the copywriter, and the copywriter edits, tweaks, rewrites, and adjusts the content accordingly.”
Sounds simple, but most businesses haven’t gotten this far yet.
Yes, you need to cover both sides of the equation to have high-quality content that’s optimized for Google. That alone should be enough to get some backlinks, which will then increase your site ranking. The trouble for most small business owners is that they don’t have the time to invest in not only understanding search engine optimization but then also reaching out to hundreds of bloggers in order to get a small handful to say YES to creating that digital backlink connection.
To talk more about search engine optimization, or anything else, contact us today.
The post How to Get Backlinks from Great Webites appeared first on Bash Foo.