Over the last few years our world has seen a major acceleration into the digital and virtual era. This was a long-time coming, but a few historic events pushed this transition forward significantly. As a result, the online marketplace, and the value of digital-services have also seen a noteworthy increase. The online economy has already been competitive for years, though. Online traffic, i.e. users and consumers who frequent any specific web-page, is one of the most valuable currencies there is right now. However, increasing web-traffic in the supersaturated virtual marketplace can be a bit tricky.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a major industry right now. SEO is the umbrella term for improving the rank of a specific web page in the context of a search engine query. In other words, SEO strategies help brands grow their audience and consumer base through various tactics. One of these tactics is backlinking.
A backlink is a hyperlink strategically positioned in pieces of external content that drives online traffic to a specific URL. These are often landing pages, home pages, or sometimes sales and product pages.
Brand Exposure and Awareness
Backlinking is a specific SEO tactic that is designed to increase overall brand exposure and awareness. This whole strategy sounds easy enough, but there are some things to keep in mind when designing a backlink strategy.
The quality of the content is one of the first and most important factors to consider when thinking about powerful backlinks. If the content in which your brands backlinks is sub-par, unfocused, or irrelevant, those backlinks will be low-quality and won’t help with the web-page ranking, web-traffic, or in establishing a larger brand awareness.
As such, it’s important to understand where your backlinks are being positioned on the internet, and how effective your current backlinks are. If there’s room for improvement in the quality of content in which your brand backlinks, you can address this through finding more strategic and high-quality partnerships.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a big part of running a business in 2022. Even if your business still operates with an in-person or brick and mortar location, the value of a comprehensive virtual brand presence is vital to staying competitive in the modern market. This is because so many consumers live and shop online now. In turn, many consumers are utilizing and relying on search engines like Google to find them the best options in any given shopping-journey. Therefore, a dog-food brand with a high SEO score and highly ranking web pages, will be one of the first web pages presented to the consumer conducting the search. On the other hand, a start-up dog-food brand with low-scoring SEO may not even make it onto the first page of search results.
Backlinking is a proven tactic that can help SEO scores and search engine rankings. However, it’s important to keep in mind that SEO is a comprehensive list of strategies and tactics that work in concert, while backlinking is effective and important, it isn’t the only end-all-be-all or a comprehensive SEO solution.
Audience Growth
Audience growth is one of the main purposes of SEO and backlinking in general. Backlinking is a potent tool when it comes to building and growing a brand’s consumer base because it offers organization’s a chance to interact with audience members who they may not otherwise come across.
Backlinking is a really helpful SEO tactic, and can often be achieved in the context of cross-promotional partnerships.
How to Properly Build Backlinks
As mentioned before, the quality of content that contains a backlink is also important. Whitehat backlink strategies include strategies and tactics that encourage high-quality and value-driven content. These backlinks can be built through guest-blogging, feature author opportunities, and even through pitching PR stories.
There are also blackhat backlink strategies though, which are more focused on pumping out a high-volume of backlinks, regardless of content quality or value. Understanding the difference between whitehat and blackhat strategies can save you from major headaches down the road.
To ensure that the backlinks in your brand’s library are high-quality, you can even look to the experts at an agency. Agencies like GR0 offer brands an easy way to build a high-quality library of backlinks without constantly searching for guest bloggers to take on an article.
The Results
When executed properly, backlinking strategies are extremely effective in increasing web-traffic, growing an organization’s audience base, and even in establishing brand-authority in a specific industry.
Backlinking, like any SEO strategy though, isn’t a one-and-done type of deal. Building a library of backlinks requires on-going dedication, maintenance, and a commitment to finding additional backlink opportunities that will position the brand well.
Final Thoughts
SEO is a complicated industry that is full of intricacies. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all option when it comes to SEO, and there are a wide variety of different SEO tactics, strategies, and tools that organizations can utilize in establishing and expanding their virtual brand presence.
Backlinking is an important aspect of any comprehensive SEO strategy and can help immensely in improving search engine rankings.
