SEO Backlinks

What is an SEO Backlink?

A backlink is when another website links to your website. Backlinks are an important factor in SEO because they act like “votes” for your website. Think of each backlink as an endorsement. They tell search engines that you’re popular and other people find your site valuable, which boosts your search ranking.

But link-building isn’t merely a popularity contest to see who can get the most backlinks. Google put a stop to that years ago – ever since black-hat SEOs started buying links to improve rankings. Now it’s quality as well as quantity that matters. Links from authoritative websites pass more value, or “link juice,” onto your website than smaller, little-known sites. So it’s better to have one great link from Forbes than 100 links from an obscure local magazine.

Our SEO team can help you build a diverse portfolio of high-quality links that improve your search rankings. We research and form relationships with key websites and influencers who will be the strongest “votes” for your website. Using high-quality, optimized content (which is part of our SEO service packages), we’ll reach out to industry publishers, business resources listings, major and local news sources, and more.

Let’s Start Building Your Backlinks!

How to Get Backlinks

Create valuable content that your audience naturally wants to share
Review your competitor’s backlinks
Look for business resource pages
Submit your site to established industry directories
Conduct targeted outreach to industry influencers
Publish press releases
Talk to reporters
Sponsor an event
Guest post for other sites
Create internal links on your own site
Write testimonials with a link to your site

Why You Need to Monitor Backlinks

If you want to build SEO backlinks, the first step is knowing what links you already have. As you do outreach, you’ll want to be able to see your progress and identify new backlinks. We recommend a backlink tool like Ahrefs to monitor your link profile.

The second reason you need to monitor your link profile is to make sure you don’t have toxic backlinks. Even if you’re building high-quality links, disreputable, spammy websites may decide to link to you without your knowledge. These toxic backlinks can actually harm your search rankings. Some factors associated with toxic backlinks include:

Mirror pages
Low domain authority and Trust Score
Too much HTML vs. text
Bad reputation

When you work with us as your SEO agency, we’ll monitor all your backlinks to make sure your site stays healthy. We’ll also report back to you on your current links and identify opportunities for future link-building.

Getting Rid Toxic Backlinks

If you have bad links to your site, there are two main steps we take to get rid of them:

We contact the other site’s webmaster on your behalf and ask them to remove the link
If that doesn’t work, we use Google’s Disavow Tools to tell Google to ignore the toxic links so they don’t count them against you.

Tips for Healthy Link-Building

When it comes to SEO backlinks, there are a few main factors that affect your search rankings: link quality, link quantity, link diversity, and link relevance. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Link Quality – Seek backlinks from sites with high domain authority, ideally anywhere from 60-100. Most average sites have a domain authority between 40-50. Stay away from scores lower than 40.

Link Quantity – Don’t get caught up in the number of links; focus on quality first. But if you’re a small business just starting out, 50 backlinks is a good initial target.

Link Diversity – Try to get links from multiple different sources. It’s OK if the same website links to multiple pieces of your content, but subsequent links won’t carry as much weight.

Link Relevance – Reach out to websites in your industry or community that are relevant to your business. And whenever possible, make sure the backlink includes descriptive anchor text. (Ex. “best SEO company”, not “Click here”)

Want to Get Quality Links for Your Website? We're Here to Help!