Backlinks are essential to SEO. They are like a trust signal to a website telling search engines about the relevancy of a page. As Google explains ,“one of the several factors that we use to help determine this [page rankings] is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content.”
However, with continued exploitation and spammy practices, Google has learnt to ignore poor quality links that do not generate value. In fact, many webmasters now think that backlinks do not matter as much as they once did. This understanding is not completely wrong. With Google search algorithms getting smarter continuously, one cannot ever be sure if more backlinks are the only way to rank their websites on the top of SERPs.
Why are backlinks important for SEO?
Backlinks are important for several reasons. Relevant backlinks can:
- Boost ranks on SERPs: Quality backlinks act as a trust signal, telling search engines like Google your site contains quality information that others cite. This is one of the many factors that can help you rank higher. However, it’s important to remember that search engines like Google prioritize naturally-occuring backlinks over those that seem overtly spammy or traded.
Your best bet to acquire backlinks naturally is creating quality content and reaching out to the right people with a compelling request.
- Boost domain authority: More backlinks from reputed sites means your website is a powerhouse of quality content. This boosts your overall domain authority, and consequently, your chances of ranking up higer on Google. However, it takes time and effort to create a difference in your domain rating. One backlink won’t make a difference just as tons of backlinks from low-quality websites.
- Drive more traffic to your website: When people click on a backlink to your site, it helps increase web traffic. If you include internal links to your website, people mighy also visit other pages to read up more on a topic. However, the real benefit of backlinks comes when you begin ranking higher.
- Improve your brand awareness: When you have more backlinks, more people will know you and your brand exists, building awareness about your brand.
- Build Better Connections: Building quality backlinks also allows you to build great connections with various related businesses. This allows you to stay more relevant and build an overall better business.
Do Backlinks matter in 2023?
Some think that backlinks don’t matter as much now. The answer is both a “yes” and “no”. Let’s dig into the no first. As a company looking to organize the world’s information, Google cannot let the bad actors take the upper hand. That’s why when it comes to ranking pages, Google prefers a clean, user relevant approach; one that offers experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). What this means essentially is that Google prefers high-quality, original pages that offer real user value over anything else. This reflects in its search results. You may have a hard time seeing your page rank if your website has little value to offer. Backlinks, keywords, and other SEO tools come secondary.
But think about this: If your website doesn’t have high-quality content, something that fails to solve user problems, something spammy or poorly written, would you ever get backlinks from credible sources? Without good content in place, you could spend much of your budget on link building campaigns or buying backlinks which offer no guarantee of your site’s success unless quality is in place.
Let’s move toward the silver lining. Quality backlinks still matter as they have always done. The keyword is quality; backlinks from sources with high domain authority, and reputable, relevant sites still matter and can make a difference to your search rankings. John Mueller, a Google Search official says the total number of links doesn’t matter at all.” But he adds, “there could be [that] one really good link from one website” which can make a difference.
Backlink Research
According to data, the first result on Google gets 34 % of organic traffic and moving simply from the second to the first place in Google rankings can double your organic traffic. No wonder, the number one (for that matter, even the top 10) spot on Google is something to fight for.
A research by Ahrefs brings clearer insights into whether backlinks can land you that sweet spot. In the research, the Ahrefs team disavowed backlinks for three pages for a month, observed changes in webpage traffic, before ultimately removing them from the disavow file.
The results clearly indicated a drop in traffic in web pages that disavowed all external backlinks which returned to normal once they restored the backlinks pointing to these pages.
We did another simple experiment where we looked up “How to make a cake” on Google, and then analyzed the backlinks for the top few results, and for one after the tenth position. Here’s what we found:
With the exception of the result at third place from allrecipes.com (which had nearly 4.7k backlinks), nearly all other web pages had a decreasing number of backlinks as we moved down the search results.
- The first page had 375 backlinks from 117 sites
- The second had 273 backlinks from 129 sites
- And one random result toward the bottom had only 68 backlinks from 29 sites
The simple experiment goes on to indicate backlinks still hold relevance. However, backlinks are not the only factor Google uses to rank pages. The other factors such as relevancy, content, page layout, originality, locale and date of publishing matter too.
How do you build the right backlink profile?
In a Google Search Central podcast from November 2022, Duy Nguyen from Google asks site owners to prioritize their website user experience over buying links. This is important as having great, well-researched content on your site naturally makes you open to receiving quality backlinks. However, natural backlinks may not always come their way.
That’s why link building is never a bad idea. However, you must jump into link building only when you have a great website in place. Also, make sure you adopt only natural, well-intentioned methods of link building, such as HARO, the skyscraper, relevant collaborations with other sites in your niches or guest posts. Linkly is one of the great, new places for link building opportunities that can open your doors to meaningful collaborations.
Remember, your link building effort must be user-focussed and all links you wish to build must add on to your website’s value.
Which backlinks matter?
Let’s reiterate only quality and relevant backlinks matter the most. These come from:
- Sites with high domain rating: As these sites are niche-relevant and high on organic traffic, backlinks from them are mostly a win-win.
- Sites with relevant niches: Natural backlinks with the apt anchor texts coming from sites related to you matter much more than those from distant, unrelated websites.
- With a “do-follow” tag: Most backlinks have a do-follow tag, meaning they actually send a signal of authority that can help your page rank higher. However, some backlinks also come with a no-follow tag. Such backlinks don’t make a difference to SEO.
Conclusion
Backlinks still matter if you know how to use them right. The best bet for any website owner is to prioritize content development over link building efforts. While earning backlinks sounds exciting, it is also important you provide external links to other websites. This also adds to your credibility and can help make your site more authoritative.