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We had a call earlier this month with a client. At one point he simply said “I need to ask you about backlinks.” He’d heard the word, and he’d gathered they’re important, but he had no idea what they were, or if they were good or bad. So what are they? Are there good backlinks and bad backlinks? Do they still work? Should you buy backlinks?

Backlinks 101

Most basic answer first: a backlink is a link that takes people to your site from somewhere else on the internet. If someone writes a blog and links to your business, that’s a backlink. So is the link to your site in a newspaper article about your recent charity activity. So is a link on Facebook, Reddit, or anywhere else online.

Obviously, this is one way people can find your site. But it can also affect where you rank on search engines.

What Makes a Backlink Good?

When Google was getting started, search engines used links to your site as a trust signal. The theory goes that someone linking to your site as a resource must have found value there.

You’ll sometimes still encounter people who think it still works like it did then; that the more links to your site, the better. That hasn’t been true for more than a decade. Search engines very quickly realised that people were creating hundreds or thousands of low-quality, low-value backlinks, and they developed ways to tell a backlink’s quality.

The first big breakthrough was authority.

Authority and Backlinks

Google keeps its algorithms secret, giving us only general advice, not wanting people to game their systems. When you hear people talk about authority, or domain authority, or DA, they’re using a term invented by SEOs who’d made a breakthrough studying the data for hundreds of sites.

Simply put, a site that’s been around for a long time has good authority. A site that ranks well for a lot of keywords has good authority. A new site that doesn’t rank well has very little authority. And links from high authority sites seemed to perform better than links from low authority sites. We didn’t have access to Google’s algorithm, but we’d reverse-engineered a metric that seemed to match it.

The race was on to land links from high authority sites. Even today, this isn’t always a bad form of digital marketing. The problem you can face is that people who owned sites with high authority started selling links.

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Should You Buy Backlinks?

When you hear people talking about buying backlinks, this tends to be what they mean; a few links from high-authority sites or dozens of links from low-authority sites. At this point, it’s not really a good idea to buy backlinks, even from high authority sites; search engines are always looking for ways to identify paid backlinks so they can ignore them.

At best you see a short-term jump in the rankings, followed by a drop. At worst, sites can end up hit by penalties, which can take years to recover from. Reputable SEO agencies like First Digital Media can work with you to help undo those penalties, but we can’t make the process much faster; we can just help you to fix the things that need to be fixed first.

We can’t recommend buying backlinks.

What is Digital PR?

One other way to get high-value backlinks is through giving that site value in return. Digital PR consists of offering publishers content or information that will be useful for them and which naturally creates a link back.

For example, if you run a roofing company, you probably know more than most people about how to prevent storm damage to roofs. If you can provide a newspaper with some tips on avoiding storm damage when upcoming stormy weather is making the news, you could well get a link back to your site.

This link isn’t just high authority – it’s topical, and topicality is even more effective nowadays.

After all, you’d trust a recommendation on running gear from Nike, but you probably wouldn’t be interested in their article about how to choose your dentist.

So links on pages that are relevant to what you do, on sites that fit that topic, will be more effective, even if they’re on sites that have slightly lower authority.

The Best Way to Earn Backlinks

As obvious as it may sound, the best way to earn backlinks hasn’t changed since the early days of search engines. If a page on your site can tell the reader something useful, and can offer them something they can’t find anywhere else, then people will link to it without you having to tell them to. You’ll see links from forums, social media, people’s personal websites, even business sites offering how-to advice.

That content will also help you to earn higher organic ranks, make visitors happier on your site, and build brand awareness for you.

In many ways, digital PR does the same thing – you’re just placing the content elsewhere to earn the link. Just as PPC and SEO support each other, digital PR and strong content on your site can produce better results than either one on their own.

To develop a stronger digital marketing strategy – and to put one into place – reach out to First Digital Media and let’s discuss your requirements.

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