If you want to make sure your target audience finds your website online, it’s important that they can find you in the search engines.

Many people will immediately go to Google or another search engine these days to begin their research and find what they are looking for—and you want them to find your website.

The way to do this is through good search engine optimization (SEO). This is one of the most important online marketing strategies, and it focuses on making your website more visible in the search engines.

A crucial element of SEO is backlinks, but many businesses are unsure exactly what these are and how they work. Here’s everything you need to know to get your SEO campaign off to a strong start.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are simply, links that point from another website to your own. If a website wants to link to a blog post that you have written, this is called a backlink.

However, there are different types of links.

When it comes to SEO, you’ll hear a lot about no-follow links. These are links that have a no-follow tag, and these are less important for SEO purposes. However, many natural links will be no-follow links, so they are still important for your link profile.

The opposite is a do-follow link. This passes on some of its authority from the page linking to your website, which is sometimes referred to as passing on “link juice.”

So if you have a do-follow link from a high-authority website, this will be excellent for your SEO.

Why Are They Important?

Backlinks are important for SEO because they play a large role in how web pages are ranked by the search engines.

As far as Google is concerned, a link is similar to a vote of confidence. If lots of high-authority websites are linking to your site, this suggests that your website has high-value information and that it will be more useful for people searching for your products and services.

It essentially makes it more likely that you are a trusted resource, which is exactly the type of website that the search engines want to return to their users.

However, backlinks go beyond good SEO. They also help to direct traffic to your site from other websites. If a popular blog links to your site, some of the blog’s readers may click the link and visit your site without ever using the search engines.

How to Build the Best Backlinks

A lot of SEO strategy is dedicated to building high-quality links to your website because it plays such an important role in boosting your rankings.

So how should you go about getting more links?

The first and most important tactic is to create content worth linking to. That means high-quality blog posts, authority pieces, videos, infographics, and more. The more quality content you create, the more chance you have of attracting links.

But creating the content is rarely enough on its own, and you also need to promote your content. This often means using social media to spread the word about your content.

If it’s good, more people will share the content and link back to it. And as you grow your network, you will get your content before more people, generating more links.

You could also use dedicated tools for building backlinks, like a link automation platform that simplifies the process of buying and selling links.

You should also spend time making contact with influencers by sharing their blog posts, commenting on their pieces, and reaching out to them on social media.

They usually have a lot of followers, and what they say gets noticed. If you can get them to share your content with their networks, this could lead to a surge in backlinks and traffic.

And don’t forget about the simple backlink options like adding your company to directories, which is especially important for local SEO.

If you find a suitable directory to add your business, you can often get a backlink, and you may also get found directly within the directory, leading to more traffic.

Build Backlinks, Boost Your SEO

Backlinks are still one of the most important factors involved in a good SEO strategy. If you have not yet started thinking about your backlinks, now is the time to do so. Use this information to start researching possible options for building links, and then slowly increase your links over the coming months and years to give your SEO a boost.

Freya Brennan is a marketer who is always on the lookout for new methods and trends. She likes to help businesses grow and her posts can be found on marketing and SEO sites.