Are Backlinks Important For SEO in 2024?
With so many changes going on in the SEO world and so much information, it can be difficult to know what is important to focus on. Do links really matter? Is link quality a thing? Does how you get links really matter? Link building has been a contentious topic for a while, but for those of us doing SEO right, we know that the answer is yes.
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One of the many, many things revealed in Google’s Content API documentation, was the importance of backlinks and quality referring domains, which didn’t come as a surprise to most. However, for those who need more time to read all 14,000 attributes, let’s explore what we know about backlinks and why they make such a difference in online performance.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links from another site to your site. The sites that link to you are called “referring domains”, so you might see these two terms used interchangeably. These incoming links are used for various reasons, such as citing a trusted source or promoting a product or service, so they are important to the network of information in an industry.
Why are backlinks important for performance?
Google might say they look at referring domains as a ranking factor, but what do backlinks actually do for you? Well, a strong backlink profile often correlates with improved rankings and increased traffic; take a look at one of our clients:
Image source: Ahrefs – fabbfurniture.com over 5Y)
This graph might be a textbook case, but generally, as referring domains grow, so does organic traffic. Why? Backlinks, especially links from high authority domains, tell search engines that your site is something users will want to see.
Let’s break down how backlinks impact SEO performance:
1. Shows authority and trustworthiness
In the game of SEO, referring domains validate your site within the online network – someone else is vouching for your site. The leaked API documents show that Google does use authority and trustworthiness as part of the ranking algorithm, so it’s more important than ever to ensure your site feels genuine. Therefore, backlinks from relevant, trustworthy sites can improve your online standing by sharing authority.
2. Demonstrates relevancy
Alongside trustworthiness is topical relevancy, which refers to how closely your site aligns with the main keywords it targets. For example, if you’re a footwear brand, you want the content on your site, from categories, headings, and product titles to supporting content, to be related to that topic. Also known as “semantic SEO”, it’s about collecting all the relevant keywords around your target term. If you’re getting backlinks from brands and publications in your industry, that shows you’re part of the network and relevant to users.
3. Gain referring traffic
An obvious benefit of having someone else link to your site is gaining more traffic. Users are much more likely to check out your brand if it’s endorsed by a trustworthy source. For ex-ample, Good Housekeeping ranks position 1 for “best sofas” with reviews of different brands.
The Good Housekeeping site has a domain rating of 90/100 and receives nearly 14,000,000 monthly visits from organic traffic, making it a precious referring domain. If a large brand like this links to your site, it opens you up to a vast audience interested in your products.
4. Speeds Up Indexing
Search engine crawlers are constantly working their way through the internet to get an up-to-date picture of sites, but it does take some time. Depending on your site’s size, structure, domain rating, and how often content is updated, it can take weeks to months to index everything. However, crawlers will follow backlinks, meaning that your site may get a fast pass if a quality domain shares its juice with you.
5. Gives A Competitive Edge
Search engines consider thousands of ranking factors, and even then, some sites may ap-pear on fairly equal footing. If you have a close competitor with a similar product offering, technical set-up, and content backlog, you need to focus on how to stand out. Backlinks can tip you into a position above someone else because search engines can see other relevant do-mains have validated your site.
How to check your backlinks
Not sure what your backlink profile looks like? No worries, it’s pretty easy to check. You can use many tools, like Google Search Console, SEM Rush, and Ahrefs, which will break down how many backlinks your site has, where they are coming from, and the quality of the referring do-mains.
Follow Vs. No-follow links
Not all links are created equal. You may see that some links are marked as “NoFollow”, which is exactly as it sounds. This means that the referring domain has chosen to tell crawlers not to follow this link away from their site, so you’re not getting a rankings boost from it.
The “no-follow” tag was created to help sites combat comment spam so shady businesses could no longer benefit from spamming their links all over well-established sites. It tells search engines that, yes, the link is here, but we do not endorse where it goes.
What do you do if someone tags your link as “no-follow”? Well, you can reach out and try to get them to change their minds, especially if it’s a domain with a high rating, but ultimately, it’s up to them.
How to gain backlinks
In the wake of Google’s clamp down on spam (the latest update announced June 2024), it’s getting harder and harder to abuse the link system. The algorithm has become too sophisticated to allow for meaningful performance using shady tactics. So here are our tips for gaining quality backlinks that aren’t spammy:
1. Focus on quality
Regarding building backlinks, quantity is no longer the way forward. The best thing to do is focus on links from relevant, high-authority sites that will provide a helpful bridge for users in your industry.
2. Content marketing strategy
The key to creating a successful content strategy is following Google’s helpful content guidelines. Algorithms are looking for user-first, relevant, and valuable content that people actually want to read. If you’re looking for help designing a content strategy, here are some of the essential components:
- Keyword research
- Market research
- Competitor analysis
- User generated content
- Internal linking review
Remember, search volume is only one of the important factors when considering what topics you want to write about. Ensure you have strong relevancy to your industry topic and find a unique angle to fill a user gap. Need some guidance? Check out our content marketing service.
3. Guest authorship
A classic way to get backlinks is to collaborate with other brands through guest posts, appearing on podcasts, or providing expert quotes. If you can provide a unique perspective, there are many ways to use this to build connections in your industry and secure a backlink. This is also a great way to diversify your backlink profile by gaining links from news sites, social media, blogs, and industry-relevant sites, which makes your site look more legitimate.
4. Broken link opportunities
If you look through a link monitoring tool like Ahrefs, you’ll notice that links often become lost or broken. This can be because the referring domain has chosen to remove the link, or it can be because the target URL is no longer accessible; either way, it means there is an opportunity for someone else to take over that link. Reach out to the host site and make your case – you never know what you’ll get from it!
5. Use Digital PR
If you’ve tried to build your backlinks, you’ll have quickly realised it’s much harder to pick up links from big hitters organically. Therefore, a digital PR strategy can be invaluable for improving your site’s authority. A digital PR specialist can fulfil journalist requests, put together press releases, and identify campaigns with the most potential.
Google’s documents suggest that links from high-quality news sources are even more influential as they have their own tag:
(image sourced: https://kaizen.co.uk/blog/seo/google-leak-on-link-building – can be changed?)
So, creating a digital PR strategy that focuses on outreach to news outlets can greatly impact your digital standing.
“Backlinks are crucial from a PR perspective. What don’t they do?! They drive traffic, increase brand authority, improve keyword rankings, build trust with customers, showcase brands as experts, and ultimately make it easier for customers to find brands online.
“Gone are the days when success was measured by the sheer volume of low-quality links. Now it’s apparent that the quality and relevance of backlinks are far more important.
“Brands need to consider the relevance of where they get backlinks. Is the publication relevant to the brand’s consumers and products or services? Will this backlink build trust with their audience? Does it prove the brand is trustworthy in it’s sector? Brands need backlinks from media placements that are relevant to them, and the first step to achieving this is by creating relevant news stories to target those high authority and highly relevant sites through digital PR.
“Digital PR is a fantastic way to secure these relevant backlinks. When done right, digital PR outreach and backlinks can drive traffic directly to your site, reaching your target consumers and introducing your brand to people who may never have heard of it before.”
1. Paying for bad links
Paying for links isn’t “illegal” or necessarily detrimental – there are lots of valid ways to pay for links through advertorials, exchanges, and guest posts that are fair game. However, the problem is paying for loads of links from shady sites that have nothing to do with yours. Stay away if someone tells you they can buy you a backlink profile. It might help for a few months, but search engines are smart enough to catch on, and when they do, all your rankings will disappear.
2. Targeting irrelevant sites or link farms
A link farm is a series of websites created solely to provide links and manipulate rankings. They usually have a pointless website that doesn’t have a purpose and isn’t usable for anyone, yet will have tens of thousands of links to other sites. Often, link farms are where the bad link-buying opportunities come from, so they’re not worth the money.
When looking for places to get backlinks from, you always want to assess relevancy to your site, the site’s quality, and if there is no other value than an impact on rankings. While it can be tempting, success in the long run relies on doing things that are meaningful to your business, not just SEO.
3. Automated link building tools
Although they might hook you easily and quickly, automated link-building tools can’t get the quality links you want. Without a strategic hand guiding them, automated tools will go for low-hanging fruit, regardless of the relevancy or authority of the referring domain, which can lead to your site getting penalised.
4. Anything in excess
Unsurprisingly, any link-building technique can be flagged as spam if you overuse it. Whether it’s press releases, guest posts, links in forum comments, or link exchanges, search engines will likely flag you as spam if your backlinks suddenly shoot up.
Are all spammy backlinks a problem?
You can’t stop all low-quality links, but thankfully, you don’t need to worry too much. Unless your backlink profile shows a high proportion of toxic links, you can usually ignore the noise and focus on gaining quality links. If you do have issues, there are ways to clean up your backlink profile, such as a disavow, where you manually deactivate links from questionable domains that may hurt your authority.
Ultimately, you want to build genuinely helpful links to your site. Producing valuable content, offering a quality experience for your users, and showing authority in your industry will help you increase your domain rating and get backlinks from valuable brands around you.