Eight SEO essentials for beginners: Backlinks

SEO covers so many activities that it can be difficult to know where to begin. I have organized eight essentials to help beginners build a solid foundation. This article covers one of the most discussed, and most difficult, parts of SEO: backlinks.

If I had to choose the hardest part of SEO, backlinks would be a strong contender. They are difficult to control, and a great deal of effort does not always produce useful results. Many beginners spend most of their time here. But backlinks are only one part of SEO: you may be able to improve your rankings without actively building them. Do not neglect everything else. Improving your website content is often a better place to start. Once your other work is well developed, backlinks may become the next hurdle.

What are backlinks, and why do they matter?

In this context, backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Think of a link as a vote: when another website chooses to link to your content, it can signal that the content is worth recommending. However, not every link is equally useful. I look for two characteristics:^[1]

1. The referring website has quality. A vote from a spam website carries little credibility. A source that performs well in search can be a more promising place to earn a link.
2. The referring page covers a related topic. A plumbing website linking to a restaurant may have little relevance, while the same website linking to a hardware supplier makes more sense as a recommendation. Topic relevance matters alongside the quality of the source.

There are many more details, but beginners do not need to tackle all of them at once. Start with this principle: seek links from relevant, worthwhile websites.

How can you earn backlinks? Should you buy them?

How do you improve something you cannot fully control? I find it challenging too. Broadly, there are three approaches:

1. Pay for genuine marketing activities. Cross-industry partnerships, news coverage and collaborations with creators or opinion leaders can bring links as a side benefit. The purpose is the marketing activity and its audience, rather than simply buying a higher link count. This is different from purchasing batches of links from websites that exist mainly to sell them. I do not recommend that approach.
2. Build your own presence. Although you cannot control every outside website, social platforms, forums, business directories and relevant community boards often let you publish useful information yourself. Where their rules allow it, include a link to your website. This is a practical place to begin.
3. Give others a reason to cite you. Voluntary references are harder to earn, but they remain a worthwhile goal. Useful tools, well-organized reports and clear guides are examples of content that people may want to reference.

If you are just starting out, my recommendation is to begin with the second approach. Establish a useful presence on relevant platforms, then consider the other methods as your work develops.

Sources and references

1. A guide to Google Search ranking systems — Google Search Central

   Google uses link relationships to help understand pages and their usefulness to a query. This does not promise ranking value from every link.