Why Link Building Is Important for SEO | Importance of Backlinks in SEO 2024

To put it simply, link building is important for SEO. There are no doubts about this, but why is it important?

Beginners in the industry of SEO need to learn about link building (especially high-quality backlinks) because of the significant impact it has on a website’s performance and the correlation that links have with rankings on Google SERPs.

In this article we will be talking about everything to do with link building and how to create a great link building strategy.

What is Link Building?

Link building is the procedure of building hyperlinks (also known as backlinks) from other websites to your own. Hyperlinks between pages and websites are crawled by search engines to help them determine what is a good link and whether the linked page can be deemed as good quality.

Backlinks help with the crawlability of your website as Google crawls these links. The more links your website has, the more crawl requests are sent to Google as when they crawl a website with a link to your site on it, they will naturally follow this link back to you.

A backlink is not only good for crawlability purposes, however, as they also help with the power of your website, also known as link juice. Links are seen by Google as a trust factor as relevant backlinks show that your site is deemed a trustful resource for the industry you are in.

No links hold the same value as another to your website. For example, if you are in the pets industry, a backlink from Pets at Home would be much more valuable than a link from the standard ‘down the road’ pet store.

Internal Link Building

Links don’t always need to be received from external sources. Your website should follow a great silo structure through a thorough internal linking strategy. An internal link is a link from one of your pages to another of your pages.

Why Is Internal Linking Important for Link Building?

Internal link building is really important for link building because it creates a silo for your website that can evenly spread link juice from incoming links across your pages. Internal links are really important for the foundations of any link building plan.

So what makes a good link? Let’s take a look at all of the factors that gauge just how good a link is.

Authority

Arguably the most important factor of what makes a good link is how authoritative the website that you are receiving the backlink from is. Authority includes how powerful a website is in terms of both SEO ranking metrics and brand exposure.

A backlink from a website such as Forbes is much more valuable than a link from your standard run of the mill blogger due to the positive impact it will have on your website.

Why Is Authority Important for Link Building?

Authority is important for link building because an authoritative link shows Google that you are a reputable source. For an authoritative website to link to you, Google reads this as a good link because that website has put enough faith in your website to link to it.

Relevance

The relevancy of a link is crucial to what makes a good backlink. A super relevant backlink tells Google that you are a reputable source in the industry as other competitors and experts in your niche are showing that they are happy to link out to you.

There are many mixed feelings on irrelevant links. Some believe that regardless of how authoritative a link is, if it isn’t relevant then it won’t help your website in the slightest. It’s better to be safe and choose a backlink vendor such as Searcharoo who can guarantee both relevance and authority.

Why Is Relevance Important for Link Building?

Relevance is important for link building because of the importance of a relevant link profile. It’s very natural to receive backlinks from other relevant websites which is a good sign for Google. By having a relevant link profile, you will also build trust for your keywords as the links will be more beneficial to your website.

Trustworthiness

The website that you are receiving a backlink from should definitely be trustworthy. A site that you can’t trust might include spammy backlinks and you should definitely not be paying for this.

There are many different ways to check how trustworthy a website is including;

Website traffic
Biased content
Social media activity
Website lifespan
SSL security

Why Is Trustworthiness Important for Link Building?

Getting a trustworthy link is important for SEO and link building because Google loves a reliable link and will therefore power your site. A link that is getting traffic and isn’t from a spammy domain is immediately 10 times better than a link from a dodgy site and you’ll definitely see a difference between these two links.

Link Position

Link position refers to whereabouts on a page your link is present. Placement is commonly overlooked but is a really important factor to what makes a backlink good.

The best link placements you can get are in the upper body of the content, above the fold. This is because your link is more likely to be seen when users land on a page compared to somewhere such as the footer that may not be reached or seen by the user.

Why Is Link Position Important for Link Building?

The importance of link position is essential because it can be the difference between a good link and a bad link. By having your link above the fold in the main body of content, you are greatly improving your chances of someone clicking the link through to your website.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text used for the backlink to link to another page. You are able to choose your anchor text when acquiring a backlink and there are many different types of anchor text available;

Exact-match
Partial-match
Branded
Naked URL
Generic
Images

Your link profile should contain a healthy, natural mix of all of the above. Ensure that there are no spikes in the link using optimised anchor text and you will be all good.

Why Is Anchor Text Important for Link Building?

Anchor text is really important for link building because you are effectively telling Google what your website is about. Your anchor text is read by Google when they crawl a hyperlink and it educates them on the targeted page before they reach it.

Higher SERP Rankings

Link building massively helps your site achieve higher rankings on the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

You should be undertaking competitor backlink profile analysis to see what links your competition are buying. If they rank on the first page and you have better content than them, there is no reason why you can’t rank higher than them with a better backlink profile.

Show For More Keywords

As a result of receiving powerful backlinks, your website should start to show for more keywords that are included in your content on your page. Not only will you begin to show for these keywords, but you will also improve the rankings to appear higher in the search engine results pages.

Higher Referral and Organic Traffic

As you naturally rank higher on the SERPs as a result of backlinks, you should start to earn more traffic to your site. Traffic is the primary focus for many websites but to earn traffic, you’ll need to rank your website using a powerful backlink strategy.

Higher Site Metrics and SEO Scores

As a beginner, you may not understand much about SEO scores, site metrics and ranking metrics. A site metric refers to a third party metric created by different SEO companies to determine how good a website is. There are many different ranking metrics created by SEO companies;

Domain Rating – Ahrefs
Page Rating – Ahrefs
Domain Authority – Moz
Page Authority – Moz
PageRank – Google

Final Thoughts About The Importance of Link Building in SEO

Links are undeniably an important part of SEO and website optimisation. Without links, you are massively limiting the progression and success of your website. If you want to rank on the first page of your SERP, it’s time to start building some links.

If you look at any of the top websites, they have a great number of backlinks. For new sites, links are essential. You need some power to your website to start powering it up and achieve the rankings you are looking for.

All Link Building Agencies

Here is the full list of the link building companies we have reviewed:

The top-rated link building company reviews were updated in April 2024.

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