What Are Backlinks, And Why Are They Important?

Hi there! My name is Renata Hammer and I’m a Social Media Specialist at Tier Level Digital Media. I know that the world of SEO can be both intimidating and overwhelming, whether you’re just starting out on trying to build your business's online presence or you feel like you have a firm grasp on how it works. One area in specific I’d like to talk about is an incredibly easy and important step in building your SEO, backlinks.

In the simplest definition, a backlink is one website “talking” to another website. You’ve surely been reading an article, blog etc. and seen a click thru to another website that correlates with similar information - that is a backlink. The main reason they are so important in regards to your SEO presence is that search engines recognize these backlinks as deeming the information as relevant or significant. This can in turn help your website's ranking and visibility!

One important thing to remember and note about backlinks is that it is always quality over quantity. Finding out which websites to use as your backlinks can take some time and effort, but will absolutely be worth it in the end. The best way to start is to choose the keywords you are wanting to build upon. After that, you can utilize search engines to find highly ranking or reputable websites (think Chamber of Commerces or Government pages) to backlink. A backlink to a college student's personal blog is not going to be in your best interest, however entertaining.

Cultivating relationships with other website creators or managers, businesses or even influencers in your area is a great way to begin having your website back-linked. Creating content that you share with others in your industry can lead to them utilizing that as a backlink on their site - which is a win win for you both! There are also some options easily available out there that include tools to find your competitors backlinks, but I’ll leave you to your own devices to find these.

Ensuring that your backlinks are helping rather than hurting your SEO rankings is also an important step. Having backlinks to websites that no longer exist or 404 not found pages are just a few things that may happen over time that can hurt your ranking. Depending on the scope of your website(s), this may be easily done manually or if you have a larger site there are many resources available online you can utilize.  

I hope this brief overview of backlinks has helped! Backlinks are truly one of the simplest and most effective ways to positively influence your SEO. Happy linking!