What Is A Backlink?
What Is A Backlink?
A backlink (or inbound link) is simply a link from one website to a page on your website. Search engines, like Google, treat these links as "votes of confidence" or endorsements. For a small business, quality backlinks are crucial because they directly impact search engine rankings and online credibility.
For Example: Registering on Apple Maps, Google Maps, Google Business Profile, Bing Webmaster, Yelp, Google Merchant, Social Media, etc. Are safe reliable backlinks but require multiple verification.
Backlinks For Websites
Build your reputation one backlink at a time
01
What is a backlink?
A link from one website to a page on your website
02
Backlink Is A Vote Of Confidence
Relevant links matter
03
Backlink Is A Referral Visit
A backlink is not a Search Engine Result but a referral/ direct visit/ redirect.
04
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness
05
Verifying Your Information
Make sure your information is the same across the board.
Backlink Is A Vote Of Confidence
Google's original algorithm, A Vote of Confidence was built around the idea that a link to a page is a vote for that page. When an authoritative, relevant website links to your small business's site, it tells Google that your content is valuable, trustworthy, and worth ranking higher.
What Google does not like, is a spammy website with no worthy content. Lately, "AI Slop" has been seen as the new spam websites. You want your website to offer or say something that no other website has to offer.
Backlink Is A Referral Visit
Google Analytics does its best to show information and how certain visitors end up at your site. You may see the following "direct," "unassigned," or "referral" traffic for sources. Direct can be counted as someone copying and pasting your URL into the search bar, typing your URL directly into the search bar (example: typing "www.catsarethebest123.com"), have your website bookmarked, Email without proper UTM parameters, or a redirect.
What Is E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. You may have read that EEAT is important and it is. Let us take for example, a website talking about the common cold from a random person or a website talking about the common cold from a medical doctor. Google will hold the opinion of a licensed medical doctor over an individual with no medical degree. You can increase your authority on a subject by bringing new information on the given subject. If you are a realtor who truly understands your cities real estate scene, you can publish information on your site or have enough Google reviews that people trust you, then Google can trust you. In return if Google trust you, then Google can confidently rank you higher when looking to buy a home or sell your property.
Verifying Information
We commonly call this NAP (Name, Address, Phone) and one of the most important backlinks for a company is NAP. You want your information across the internet to be exact with name. I.E. can make it difficult (benally marketing, marketing benally, marketing consulting benally) because your want your name to easily be Google'd once you have brand recognition. Backlinks help show search engines information related to your name like website, phone number and address.
Why Backlinks Are Important
Backlinks are important because Google wants to crawl information from the entire internet. The only way Google can gain information is when search engines can crawl the website for information.
If you are launching a new website, you may only be able to submit one URL to Google Search Console, then that will let you know that Google does not trust you yet and does not know your IP address/ email account. Google Search Console does this because it does not want a random gmail account from the rain forest spamming an AI crypto coin website that will wasting its crawl budget.
How Many Backlinks Is Too Many Backlinks Per Month
After 2 or 3 months, you will notice that you can go from one URL submission per 23 hours to 5 URLs a day. This will let you know that you should start creating 10 backlinks per month. If you can, write blogs, not for the purpose of traffic but to answer AI questions, especially if you sell products.
If your website is only informative and not commercial or transactional then AI will pick up on your website if it does not seem spammy. But will also mean that you will lose out on organic traffic if you need Adsense.
Business Citation is a backlink
Business citations are backlinks because business citations show your business information like Business name, Address, Phone number and services/ products. This is important because business listings (such as Manta Business Listings) repeat your information. If you claim your business does art paintings but 5 business citations list you as custom art commission paintings then Google will take the 5 other sources over your own one source. In doing so this will cause a derank because your data is not matching up online and is unverified and/or untrustworthy. Google takes trustworthy as a positive signal for ranking.
Free Backlinks For Your Website
Use business citations like manta.com to put your business information like name, address, phone number, contact information, services offered, products, business hours and logo. I have been building backlinks for years and have an extensive spreadsheet of backlinks. Websites rise and fall over the years, and keeping the list up to date is not fun. If you are a blog or informative website then guest blogging and blogging websites will be vital for you.
