Why Backlinking Is Critical to SEO—And How to Do It

By Thomas Strider

Backlink building is a key method small businesses can use to increase a website’s ability to rank high in search engines. Backlinks help search engines like Google and Bing index content that is related to a search query, build trust with search engines, and improve your chances of being displayed on the first page of a search engine results page (SERP). All of these are critical goals of properly executed SEO strategies.

However, generating high-quality backlinks can be a difficult task. This article aims to help you understand in more detail what backlinking is, why backlinking is important, and how to improve your chances of getting high-quality backlinks.

Defining SEO backlinking and page authority

An SEO backlink can be defined as a link from one website to another website. Think of a backlink as a reference. Just like you want that former boss to say good things about you, you also want fellow websites to link from their webpage to yours.

An example: Someone writes an article for AllBusiness.com titled “The Top 3 Office Chairs to Buy This Year.” They include a hyperlink within their text that directs to one of the discussed products, a specialty chair from "XYZ Company." XYZ Company just scored a backlink, increasing their website’s domain and page authority. Backlinks play a key role in the aforementioned page authority portion of SEO.

Page authority was originally developed by a marketing company called Moz, and is a score for how well a page on a website will rank in search engines. While domain authority focuses on the ability of a website as a whole to score well in search engines, page authority focuses on an individual page on that website.

Importance of SEO backlinking

Small businesses want to increase sales while maintaining, or even decreasing, operating costs. Utilizing proper organic SEO methods will generate additional traffic to your website, and thus conversions to sales, while doing so at no cost. This is the basis of why backlinking to improve domain and page authority is beneficial.

Backlinking is one of the simplest ways to improve page authority, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Backlinks from reputable websites are what matter, not any website will do. If you’re getting backlinks from websites with no authority and no viewers, it doesn’t do much good.
• Focus on acquiring backlinks from others within your same industry or niche. This allows search engines to better understand what product it is you’re offering by noting the relationship your website has with others.
• Focus your backlinking efforts on the user’s intent. In the SEO space, this means try to craft content that can be backlinked to answer a user’s question or problem. This also improves other marketing metrics such as bounce rate, because searchers will be more likely to stay on your website once they have entered if your content answers a question they have.

In summary, you want hyperlinks to your website. These hyperlinks need to come from high-traffic, good quality, and reputable websites that are also within your product’s niche.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• 10 Powerful Ways to Boost Your Website Rankings in Google
• Public Relations and SEO: How to Use This Powerful Combination to Grow Your Business
• Strategies to Beat Today’s Growing Backlink Competition
• Boost Your Next PR Campaign With the Help of Digital Marketing
• 5 Proactive SEO Practices to Help Your Content Rank Now and in the Future

How to request links be added to your website

There are two primary ways of getting backlinks for your website: offering meaningful collaborations and locating existing places your content is shared. I’ve crafted marketing templates that can be copied to assist with both.

As noted above, we talked about how it is desirable to have backlinks from high-quality webpages within our industry or niche. You will need to research competitors, bloggers, or influencers within your field. Once you find a business or creator that operates within a similar scope, you can reach out to see if they’d be interested in adding some additional flavor to their work by linking to your content.

Email template#1

Let’s assume you’re a travel blogger from the U.S. and you just wrote an article detailing your trip to Barcelona, Spain. You located another travel blogger from the U.S., who just traveled to and wrote an article about their journey to Seville, Spain. Here’s an example outreach email to acquire a backlink.

“Hey ______,

I just read your article on your trip to Seville! I’m glad you had such a wonderful time; your pictures of the St. Mary of the See Cathedral are glorious! I bet all of the grilled seafood you tried was delicious as well.

I actually just returned from my own trip to Barcelona. Given I couldn’t make it to Seville I’d love to link your article for my audience as I think they’d enjoy your blog post. Since you couldn’t make it to Barcelona, perhaps your audience would be interested in reading about my trip as well. I think a collaboration could be beneficial, let me know what you think!

Either way, I can’t wait for your future posts. Thanks for the great content.”

The main components of any good marketing email are showing interest in the recipient, providing value of some sort, and kind professionalism. This email template covers all of these bases.

Email template#2

Now, what if someone is already discussing your product or content? We want to humbly request a hyperlink be added that benefits us. This time we’ll pretend to be a calendar app iPhone developer:

“Hey ______,

I came across your post reviewing my recently released calendar and productivity app, Never Miss Meetings. I wanted to thank you for taking the time to download, use, and review the app! I am really glad you enjoyed the creative alert system, and I’m already working on a fix for the meeting location issue which you brought to my attention!

I wanted to reach out and see if you would directly link to my application's website in your article. It would really help both me and your readers if they could easily access the webpage so they could view the product for themselves. Here is the link: LINK.

Either way, I’ll be staying up-to-date on your future writing and feedback as they’re really informative!”

Once again, we’ve expressed interest in their content and expressed kind professionalism which allows us to establish a solid relationship.

Methods for finding great backlink opportunities

There are quite a few ways to find great backlink opportunities. Here are a few to get you started:

1. Write guest posts

Reach out to bloggers within your niche and ask if they allow for guest posts. Prepare an informative blog post that also hyperlinks back to your webpage.

2. Look for broken links

Find broken links for other website owners, notify them of the broken link, and ask if they would link to your website instead. You can find broken links by adding the Google Chrome extension Check My Links. Website owners will appreciate that you helped them correct an error, and you might build your own SEO blueprint in the process.

3. Replace competitor links with your links

Find places your direct competitors are being linked from and attempt to get your own website linked there instead. This can be a little more difficult, as you need to be persuasive and explain why your information or product is superior. However, if you can take this SEO market share directly from a competitor, the benefits are endless.

The process of building backlinks just proves that SEO is an ongoing practice that has extraordinary benefits when executed well. The key, as with any ongoing process, is to be persistent and keep working at it.

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