10 Reasons Why Links Are So Important To Your Website Success

Building links is an essential part of putting up and growing a business website. Link building, simply, is the method of getting other websites to link back to your website. A link is a means for users to connect to other sites on the internet. Search engines like Google use links to crawl across each webpage and links between websites. Links also are a great way to increase your site’s authority. Not only that, but they can also attract referral traffic, thus increasing your website’s visibility.

You can build links by using social media like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, or websites like Reddit, as well as user-generated publishing sites like HubPages and others.  A link between websites, also called ‘backlink,’ is crucial because it is one of the factors that search engines analyze when deciding how a particular website should rank in their listings. To find out more about backlinks, here is an excellent discussion on what are backlinks.     

Is Your Page Worth Linking? 

If you have to have a shot at link-building and reap its benefits, first you must have valuable information that others will deem relevant enough to link. You could start on your homepage. Be sure to build links that connect to information pertinent to your industry and other specialized resources. You could also create contents that have related information that you can link to as well. Keep in mind that the contents should be valuable enough with which to build links.  

Below are ten reasons why links are essential to the success of your website.

1. Boost Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Ranking

Links can give your SEO ranking a boost. Search engines like Bing, Google, and others count how many backlinks point to your site. The search engines then use them to ascertain your website’s ranking.   

The more backlinks your website has, the more chances your website has to rank higher. However, the mere presence of backlinks does not guarantee the quality of the sites. You have to make sure that the sites linking to you are not spam or link farm sites.

2. Attract Traffic   

Just one link to your site from a high-traffic site can attract a significant number of instant traffic. Take proper steps to ensure that your content is SEO-friendly. This way, you can be sure that most of your traffic will be relevant. This will mean you’d have to install a system to process leads. The main thing is to attract targeted traffic through link building. 

Processing your lead could slow down traffic to your site in the next few days. Your business, however, would have a chance to get new visitors and customers. 

3. Get More Readers 

The presence of links in your website exposes your business to more platforms. Getting links from popular blogging platforms like WordPress or Blogger, for instance, would expose your site to more readers. Exposure to such popular platforms would give your site increased visibility, and your chance of getting more readers is multiplied. 

You can attract more visitors to your blog if you have more readers. And you‘ll get them to visit again and again by posting quality content to your site. Quality sites usually have a community of their own that reads and shares content to their websites. Being published in such a blog will allow you to introduce your brand to a new audience and get more visibility. This way, you will increase your organic exposure. 

4. Quality Link Building Is Effective 

Building links will depend on how effective your efforts will be. It will take some time to attract relevant natural links, so your actions would have to be consistent in getting quality backlinks from related sources. 

Getting a higher rank from search engines would mean that you would have to be effective in securing high-authority links. At the very least, it would take about three months. It would be tempting to take shortcuts that could help you build a number of links in the quickest possible time, especially if you’ve just started. 

However, it’s best if you don’t give in to such temptation; some link-building schemes, such as link farms that are basically meaningless zombie sites, would just boost your ranking artificially. Your site’s links should be from a high-quality, relevant, and well-ranked site to be of any use at all. 

Pursue and identify possible linking opportunities only after you’ve determined them to be legitimate so as not to waste your efforts.

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5. It’s Free 

Well, most of the time. You can shell out a few bucks for links, though. But if you are creative enough, you can get links for free. But buying links is a totally legitimate way of increasing your SEO rank; that is, if you don’t have enough time for link-building.  

6. Continuous ROI

The links you built will always be there and will continue to benefit your site for months or years. As long as the sites are still up and the links remain intact, those links are a great boon to your business. They will continue to give you exposure.

7. Your Website Will Gain Credibility

Since links act as third-party indicators of authority, they can lend credibility to your site. With relevant links on your site, Google and other search engines will eventually recognize your authority. Since Google provides users with the most relevant results, the search engine’s algorithm includes ‘authority.’ More quality links in your site means your credibility is high.

Search engines like Google will base your rankings on the number of links to your content from legitimate publishers. Google and company assume that the presence of quality links on your site improve their users’ experience. So always try to build links from authoritative sites. Remember that five useful links always trump 50 bad ones. 

The number of domains from which you’ve linked is also essential. Ten links from ten different legitimate sites are better than ten links from just one.

8. Brand Recognition

Good link building helps establish your business brand. Link-building techniques like content creation can help establish your brand as an authority in your niche. For instance, it would help you be recognized as an authority if you publish content you created based on industry data. Churning out contents that showcase your expertise will eventually be acknowledged. Others will then help spread the word, which will further boost your brand recognition.

New additional links will get people to identify your brand and would make your site easily recognizable.   

9. Build Relationships

Often, link-building means reaching out to other relevant sites and blogs in your industry. This is usually in the course of promoting something you have created, like a piece of content or infographic, when you’re in the process of link-building. 

But getting links can mean something more. You should grab the opportunity to build lasting relationships with the leading players in your industry. Being able to keep up with the trusted brands could mean that your brand, too, is among the trusted and well-regarded brands. Link-building aside, being with this circle would mean you’ll have allies with whom you could on rely for support.    

Websites generally look favorably on other websites that link to them. When you build links, it is a clear indication to other sites that you are a willing contributor to the web community’s natural-linking ecosystem. It’s a sign that you are not in an exclusive, closed-off community; instead, you show that you are a team player who knows how to play. 

A lot of talented and smart people on the web can either aid you in your efforts to make your business a success or hamper you and make your efforts less effective. Linking out, especially when done consistently and in an opportunity-driven manner, means you can provide incentives for bloggers, online journalists, website builders, and other netizens to notice your site. Although when you’re just starting, the incentive can be insubstantial; later on, however, the goodwill you have built will pay off.    

10. Getting Ahead Of The Competition

With links, you will gain an edge over your competition who ignores link-building. And if your competition also engages in link-building, you certainly would not want to get left behind. Find out which sites link to your rival sites and try to get links from them, too. 

Conclusion: Why You Should Care About Link Building 

The presence of links shows a site’s popularity, especially from a search engine’s point of view. Each time a website links back to you, it’s equivalent to saying that they recognize your content’s quality and is worthy of being shared with their readers. Moreover, every time a search engine finds a website with many other websites linking to it, they assume that the site has quality data and should be placed in a higher ranking. 

A search engine’s algorithm takes into account specific backlink characteristics. For instance, backlinks pointing to a high-ranked website will be given more importance than the links from a low-ranked website. Also, links from a relevant website within your niche are given more importance.

Search engines can’t manually calculate each website’s quality; they instead rely on the number of backlinks directed at another website and the comparative value of links to establish a website’s overall quality. 

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Lahaul Seth

Lahaul Seth

Software Engineer, Open Source Enthusiast & Blogger - I also own Lion Blogger Tech which focuses on Open Source, UI, UX, Technology.

I also own Open Source Software News which is a curation site for Open Source Technology News & Updates.

Also check out my personal site.