What is a Backlink and how do they help?

There is always a lot of buzz out there in the SEO world about backlinks and what they are, where to get them, etc. So, I wanted to do a post about what a backlink is, and what it will do for your business or website to help or hurt with rankings. There are definitely good ones, and really  spammy backlinks that will do more harm than good so you need to be on the lookout if trying to get them yourself. Also, you can pop each website into an SEO tool to make certain you are getting a quality link back to your site before you go getting one.

For the search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, they look for a few things when considering where to rank a particular website for local or national searches. When someone is looking for a tow truck in their local area, they will type in something like "tow truck Atlanta" or something similar. The search engines have a series of algorithms (complex rules) that determine who they will show up at the top of these searches for "tow truck Atlanta". One of the determining factors is the quality and quantity of backlinks a website has to it. A backlink is simply a link to another website. In its most basic form, that is all it is. You can also link within a website, kind of like this link here to our SEO Page. When you are reading a website article anywhere on the web, you will typically see bolded letters within the body of the text, that once clicked on, will take you over to another website, or another page of the same website. That is a link back to another website or another page....

Website links drive the navigation of  web traffic and the more quality websites that link over to your website, the better. It builds trust that you have a good authoritative website in your local or national niche, and google and other search engines want to display those trustworthy sites to its user/searcher. If not one single website on the web links over to your website, then you don't have a lot of trust to your website. Make sense? No one is talking about your website, therefore it must not be that important, and search engines don't know it exists, or just won't show it.

How do you get backlinks to your website?

Well, it can be a tedious process to find relevant ones to your business niche. If you are a roofer, it is good to look online for blogs written about roofing, carpentry, and other home remodeling articles. You can ask the website admin if you can perhaps write up an article to have posted with a link back to your website. A lot of them will, and that could be your first link. 

Another way is to get local businesses to post a link on their website linking over to your website. For example, in a spot on your website you can have a quick mention of another website. For quality roofing in the New York area, visit our friends at www.justanexpampleroofer.com. Do you see how that turns into a link over to your website?

Now, you also want to make certain that you don't get bad spammy, non trustworthy links over to your website. This can cause very bad rankings and drops in your website rankings as well. There are a lot of older, trashy websites online that can really harm your local SEO efforts. So, just make sure that you are getting good quality backlinks, which is paramount in getting good rankings for your services online. IF you have any questions about link building or other SEO related questions, just contact us today!