As we move through 2024, many new businesses wonder whether backlinks still matter for SEO.
If you have a business that you are trying to rank organically on SERPs, you should know several link-building techniques that are working right now.
Read on to learn more.
Proven Link-Building Techniques You Should Know
Formula for better SEO performance
If you want to rank higher on SERPs, you should know the following formula: A powerful website always equals better SEO performance.
According to Semrush, the overall strength of a website and the number of referring domains correlate with better SEO performance. Also, it is estimated that the overall link authority of a website, also known as DR according to Ahrefs metric, is strongly linked with higher rankings on search engines.
Back in the day, businesses could use Page Rank to measure the strength of a website – but – those days are long gone. Now, you need to assess third-party tools, such as Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs – all of which have their own version of measuring domain strength.
Your goal is to rank in search engines
You should know that the metrics, such as the Authority score from Semrush or DR (Domain Rating) from Ahrefs, are estimates, and Google does not use these metrics for ranking.
The point is that as a business owner or as an SEO agency that provides Premium backlinks service, the goal is to grow these metrics because the stronger a website is, the better it will likely rank in search engines.
Understandably, you will need to acquire backlinks to the actual pages that you want to rank. This aspect brings us to the next point, which is that power pages equal better SEO performance. Now, it is quite possible for a web page to rank without backlinks hitting it directly.
For instance, whenever Forbes publishes a new article, the article often ranks on the first page without any direct links. What this means is that Forbes is an “exception,” not a rule, which is why most websites do require direct links to their SEO-driven pages.
Speaking of exceptions, only one in every twenty pages or so has traffic without backlinks – most of which get at least three hundred organic visits every month.
More backlinks equals more organic traffic
According to Ahrefs, the more backlinks a website has, the more organic traffic it gets from search engines, such as Google. Semrush also found that higher-ranking pages have a higher PA (Page Authority) score. Simply put, top-ranking pages typically have more backlinks.
The next point that you should be focusing on regarding backlinks is that better SEO performance is linked to the number of backlinks that a website has. Now, this aspect can explain why the right gets richer in SEO, which also means that the better the SEO performance of your website, the more links you will require.
You might want to look at this aspect in terms of a snowball effect. According to Backlinko, the top results in Google searches have an average of nearly four times more backlinks than the results that land in the second to tenth positions.
On that note, we can establish with certainty that if you want your business page to rank at the top, you will need to acquire more backlinks at a faster pace than other pages. The higher the position of a domain on the SERP, the more referring domains it has.
What does a good backlink look like?
Once you achieve high rankings, you will start to get organic links. Consequently, your web page strengthens, which will, more often than not, solidify your position. The main question that you might be asking yourself at this point is: how do I get to this position?
Firstly, you will need to understand what a good backlink looks like. To answer this question, you should know that this is where the relevancy pyramid comes into play. You might want to think about the relevancy pyramid as a safeguard against bad link-building decisions.
Most link-builders are obsessed with metrics, such as DA, DR, or organic traffic, for the sake of prioritizing link opportunities. Now, the thing is, all of these metrics do matter – but – they are secondary to relevance.
Relevance is king in the realm of backlinks
According to John Muller, who coordinates the efforts of Google Search Relations, the number of backlinks on a website doesn’t really matter. So, you should always choose quality over quantity when it comes to effective link-building.
Why, you might ask? Well, the answer is as simple as this: one link from a relevant website can be so much more impactful than millions of low-quality links. In many cases, you won’t have 100% matches for your backlinks. But – that is the point where you should start.
Using the right tools, such as Ahrefs’ keyword explorer, you enter a keyword that is relevant to your industry, and then go to the section of “Traffic,” “Share,” and click “Buy Domains.” Within a few seconds, you can see what types of websites are ranking for the keyword or topic.
Investigate keywords and topics
Once you know the websites, you can then investigate them to find additional topics. For instance, you can do a “site colon” search to see what topics they write about. This way, you can get a better idea about the blog posts and niches that are relevant to your keyword. You can even check out Reddit to get more broad topics.
You can then prioritize the topics based on relevance. Subsequently, you will know what order to find the link prospects and work your way down as you tap each category. Nonetheless, if you don’t have the time, you can always rely on a link-building agency that can do all the outreach for you and get you good-quality backlinks to boost the ranking of your website.
Conclusion
The truth about backlinks is that these are still important in 2024 for SEO performance. The underlying reason is that backlinks are the foundation of Google’s original page rank algorithm. Countless studies in the SEO industry have proven the incredible effect of backlinks on organic search performance.
