Backlinks to the future: a great way to boost your rankings

As an SME, writing great content is important for your SEO rankings, but great backlinks are crucial if you are going to get high up.

The goal of every firm seeking a high ranking in SEO is to hit the first page. While some people may click on the second page, the reality is most will not. The competition for this prime land is therefore fierce and only the best SEO strategies will succeed. For small firms without a high profile, wide geographical reach or famous brand name, this is no easy task.

Backlinks, also sometimes known as ‘external links’ or ‘inbound links’, can make a huge contribution to rankings because this creates more opportunities for people reading other web pages to be directed to yours. Not only does this boost your overall traffic, but it also bolsters your trustworthiness and reliability in the estimation of the search engine crawlers.

For this reason, it is vital to have a good backlinks strategy. This has several component parts, of which link-building is only one.

Firstly, make sure your own content is relevant and of good quality. High levels of authority will push your site up the rankings anyway, meaning you don’t actually need quite so many backlinks. It’s not just that it means less hard work: a few very good backlinks is better than a dozen poor ones.

The sort of qualities you should look for in a good backlink are:

• Relevance
• High levels of authority
• From sites with a lot of traffic
• Phrases or synonyms match your anchor text

However, there are some backlinks you should avoid. Public networks with lots of outbound links are bad news, because Google penalises their use. Irrelevant backlinks will also damage rankings, as will links to very short content of less than 300 words.

  Other backlinks to avoid include:

• Broken links
• Paid for links
• Spammy links
• Reciprocal links (these used to work but are now penalised by search engines)

There are several elements of your page that can boost your chances of getting good backlinks. Providing infographics and good images makes your site very attractive, as do offers like a free online tool, which will no doubt have plenty of takers.

Local media coverage can also be very useful. Produce something for the local press with links to your site and it will produce a number of site visits, with those who find your content relevant, interesting and attractive back-linking to it.

Of course, to make sure your site works well with backlinks, check it does not have any technical issues. For example, make sure you are free of 301 and 302 redirects and any other SEO problems. Without doing this, all your other work will be squandered. 

What BeUniqueness can do to boost your backlinks  

At BeUniqueness, we know every aspect of SEO matters. Whether it is backlinks, keywords or technical SEO, we can help ensure your content is given the best optimisation possible.