Your website has many uses for you and your business. Whether your website goals are to increase traffic, make conversions, rank highly on google, or just have a platform for creating content, building backlinks to your website is crucial for optimizing all aspects of your website goals. Without backlinks, the analytical side of your website will suffer greatly, and Google’s algorithm will never notice your content.
While backlinks may seem like an easy addition to your website, there is a right and wrong way to acquire backlinks. The number one mistake people make purchasing backlinks for their website. This is frowned upon by Google and will NOT provide long-term success and longevity for your website and content. It is always in your best interest to build organic backlinks.
An organic backlink, sometimes referred to as a natural backlink, is a link that is naturally inserted into one’s website that redirects the user to your website. This is usually because the content on your website is of high quality and provides value to the reader for a related topic.
An example of this is within the ‘Additional Reading’ section of this blog, where we link you to a related blog that helps you identify between quality and toxic backlinks. We are acting as the backlink for the website we have linked you to.
Now that you know what an organic backlink is, you need to know to what an organic backlink is NOT. This is referred to as an inorganic backlink. Inorganic backlinks have no impact or value for your website and negatively affect SEO.
Additionally, one way to determine whether you have an organic or inorganic backlink is to conduct the RAID test. The concepts of the raid test are:
On top of conducting the RAID test, additional characteristics of an inorganic backlink include:
Now that you have a clear understanding of what organic backlinks are and how to identify them, it’s now time to explain why you want organic backlinks. There are three main reasons why you want high-quality backlinks to your website.
The first reason is for SEO success. High-quality backlinks demonstrate that your website has authority to search engines such as Google. When other highly authoritative domains provide backlinks to your website, this increases the authority of your website even more. Authority refers to how well your website ranks on a search engine. In addition, backlinks for SEO promote website growth for short- and long-term efforts. If your goal is to rank on the first page of search engine results page (SERP), ensuring your organic backlinks strategy has led to high-quality backlinks will significantly improve your chances.
“Websites that rank #1 on Google have 3.8x more backlinks than the rest of the top 10 sites”
Thrive My Way
The second reason you want organic backlinks for your website is that it builds relationships. You may be asking, how does backlinking build relationships? Backlinking can build relationships fairly simple. The first way you can begin this relationship-building process is by using external links in your content. In this case, you are the backlink, as you are leading your readers to another source that has relevant and quality content. This process is beneficial for both parties as it improves the SEO of your content and improves the SEO of the website you have linked to. This a mutual and beneficial relationship. Being backlinked to is the ultimate display of appreciation.
The other way to build relationships is for you to create quality content. While this may take time, if you are consistent in always outputting valuable content that offers a solution to the reader, you will eventually start being linked to by other websites, building backlinks.
The final reason is that Google loves organic backlinks. Touching on to the first reason, Google’s algorithm for determining where your website ranks in a search result has a high influence on the quality and quantity of backlinks to your website. If you were to ask an SEO expert what the best way to rank on Google is, most of them would likely tell you “High-quality backlinks”. However, there are always people trying to break Google’s algorithm and find a way to surge their website up the Google ranking. Many have tried doing this by purchasing backlinks. While this may have given them short-term results, Google is always updating and cracking down on these loopholes. If you want long-term success and longevity on Google, it is always best to apply what works to the algorithm and build a successful, organic backlink strategy.
It is now time for the hard part. Building a strategy for the content on your website that will be optimized to gain organic backlinks over time. There are no shortcuts to the process, so do not get frustrated if you do not see immediate results. These things take time.
The most important concept in your strategy to build organic backlinks is to create quality content that provides value and a solution for your readers. Without any value in your content, you are not giving other websites a reason to link to your website. To ensure you are creating valuable content, make sure you are not recycling old content that is not relevant anymore. The world is always changing and so is technology. Keeping up-to-date and relevant content is always a great starting point when creating valuable content.
Additionally, make sure you are authentic and consistent. People don’t want to read content that has no voice to it, so be sure when writing your content, you stay true to your brand voice. On top of that, consistency keeps your website fresh and top of mind for google and provides more opportunities for your website to be linked to. Here is a guide to help you with creating valuable content:
Your content topic and audience is also important. Identifying and targeting the audience for your content will help lead to more backlinks. If your content is valuable and you have correctly targeted your audience with topics that provide interest for your readers, this improves the likelihood of relevant content being linked to yours. Without a clear audience, your content will perform poorly and receive less interest from relevant websites and Google.
Ensuring your content is visually appealing is crucial when creating your content. Visually appealing content improves readability and reduces the percentage of readers bouncing off your website. To create visually appealing content, you must ensure that flows well on the page. If it flows well, including pictures, videos, and infographics are excellent ways to enhance the visual aspect of your content.
Visual content is one of the most effective and useful strategies a content marketer can capitalize on.
Optimizing your content on multiple channels may be a challenge. The most common channel is through organic search. Other channels you can target depending on the type of content you are producing, and your budget include paid search, diving into industry research, targeting News websites, and social media. The more channels you optimize for your content, the larger reach you will have. With a larger reach, this increases visibility and backlink potential, considering you have mastered the first three steps.
The last strategy to help build organic links is by encouraging your readers to share your content. Having your readers share content on social media drastically improves the reach and traffic to your content. The more your content is shared across social media, the more Google and other search engines will recognize your content and rank it higher in the SERP.
You can encourage your reader to share content in two ways:
Organic backlinks are extremely for your website, content, and SEO. Ensuring you have a created strategy that is optimized for building organic backlinks is the main priority before venturing off into your journey. Building organic backlinks for your website the right way is the key to long term-longevity and success for Google and other search engines’ performance.
If you are searching for industry experts and professional services when it comes to your digital marketing needs, Innovative Global Vision is the right fit for you. Contact us to get started.
AUTHOR: Stuart Silcox
