So, you’ve designed a show-stopping website. Check.

You have a mouth-watering service menu prepared for clients to peruse. Check.

You’ve even invested in some punchy, personality-packed advertising. Check.

Yet every window in your online calendar remains frustratingly open…

“Where are all the clients?”, you wonder.

They should be clamoring to book you by now. After all, you’ve done everything you possibly could to attract them, right?

Not quite. There is another technique you could use to grab attention.

Warning: it’s a slow builder, taking time and effort (although not necessarily yours). However, the results are definitely worth the work.

The name of this technique is backlinking.

Maybe you’ve never used it before, but you need to know that backlinking can boost your business in 3 crucial ways. Trust us, these are ways you don’t want to ignore.

Digital agency owners, read on to find out exactly what backlinking can do for you.

What is Backlinking?

Remember writing essays at school? When you referred to another person’s piece, you had to cite their work in yours. Think of this as a primitive form of backlinking.

A backlink links from one site to another, connecting the two. It can be used to direct a site’s viewers to sources of information or to other relevant pages they might like to see.

(Note: This is different from an internal backlink, where a site links to another one of its pages. For example, here you can see this GoWP blog linking to another one.)

That means if you want to use backlinking to boost your business, you need to find websites that are willing to link to yours. When they agree to do this, it brings you significant benefits.

But you wouldn’t link to just any page simply because you were asked, and neither would anyone else. That’s why you need to give other people good reasons to refer their readers to you. 

Wondering how to achieve this? Don’t worry. You’re in the right place to learn.

3 Positive Effects of Backlinking

Before you start investing time and energy in building backlinks, make sure that they’ll deliver what your business needs.

Here are just 3 of the positive outcomes you can expect when deploying effective and strategic backlinks.

Improved rankings

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for any digital business. When potential clients search for your services, it makes a huge difference whether your name appears before or after your competitors.

You may wonder why it’s so important. Well, think about when you search online. Do you scroll through endless pages of results to find an answer?

Most of us don’t. In fact, an incredible 75% of Google users reportedly go no further than the very first page. This shows that they trust the search engine to present the most compatible results.

Google maintains this trust by spotlighting only the most reputable and relevant websites. Its algorithm is designed to detect which pages best answer search queries and provide the highest quality information in response. 

Those go straight to the top of the list, saving searchers a lot of time and effort.

Backlinking is important for SEO because it represents a shortcut to obtaining algorithm approval. If other sites have linked to you, these backlinks serve as an external recommendation recognized by Google. Learn how to grow your agency by offering SEO services.

These backlinks enhance your reliability and boost your ranking in the ratings. When potential clients search for your services, they will begin to see your business first.

A stronger reputation

Backlinking is also a great tool for publicity purposes. When potential clients see that other sites link to your work, it raises your visibility and confirms your credibility.

Getting your name out there and standing out from the crowd in the busy online marketplace is a significant challenge. Backlinking is one way to get your brand on the radar of the right people. It can increase your company’s status in your industry.

When we need to hire a new provider, many of us seek recommendations from trusted sources. Once you become known as the “go-to” person for specific information, then you’re much more likely to become the “go-to” person for related services too.

Chances are that if your company’s name recurs on a potential client’s favorite blog, then you’ll be the one they opt for over others!

We may be living in the digital age of information, but we should never underestimate the value of good old reputation. When other people refer their readers to you, it shows that they acknowledge your expertise.

In this way, backlinking can generate an image of professionalism that’s impressive to potential clients.

Increased discoverability

Although prominent search engine placements and industry prestige are valuable assets, your overriding objective remains the same: to get more clients.

Securing sales is always the number one goal, so of course, you want your online calendar to be positively heaving with prospects!

Fortunately, backlinking is an excellent method for attracting interest. It increases your discoverability since potential clients don’t need to specifically search for you to come across your page.

If you lock down a quality backlink, it could be even more effective than paid advertising. Why? Because it feels more organic to your audience, and that itself can be impactful.

Think about it: savvy internet users often take extreme measures to avoid online advertising. If they’re sent to your page by a blog they have sought out themselves, it gives their first contact with your company a very different flavor.

You’ve already designed an amazing site for your business. Now it’s time to use backlinking and bring potential clients to it.

What Makes a Quality Backlink?

You’ll notice when we discuss the benefits of backlinks, we emphasize the importance of their quality. This is another factor that you need to consider: backlinks vary in effectiveness. Not every backlink will serve your business to the same degree.

To create a high-quality backlink, one that increases your discoverability and improves both your ranking and reputation, the following elements should be addressed:

Relevance

You may be tempted to contact your close friends and ask them to link to your site across their personal pages. Be warned! A scattergun approach to backlinking could harm rather than help your business.

How? Because the Google algorithm is smarter than you think. It recognizes spammy backlinks that don’t serve a true purpose. This reduces their credibility and eliminates the associated benefits.

Instead, look for blogs relevant to your business, and ask them to link to you in ways that make sense. You’re also far more likely to generate traffic from sites that are sincerely connected to what your company has to offer.

Authority

You may be asking sites to link to you to improve your SEO, but believe it or not, the SEO of those sites matters too!

Backlinks featured on high-domain authority websites are far more effective than those placed on less established pages. Domain authority is a score that reflects how highly a website is ranked, so you should pursue links from pages that already feature highly on Google.

Domain authority is rated out of 100, and when you start your business’ website, you’ll start from scratch with a domain authority of 1. Don’t be disheartened, though! Obtaining backlinks from more prominent sites is one surefire way to increase your score.

Placement

Where and how a backlink is placed is incredibly important. The aim is to make the link as natural as possible. Otherwise, you’ll arouse the suspicion of the algorithm.

Your backlink shouldn’t look like it has been forced into the article, then; instead, it should flow with its style, content, and format. Yes, backlinking serves a promotional purpose, but it shouldn’t have a promotional tone. Go for an informative approach over a salesy one.

Bear in mind that the more backlinks a page features, the less each link is individually worth. The first link in an article is recognized by Google’s algorithm as the most valuable one, so if you can secure this prestigious position, it’s an added bonus.

Anchor text and link type

You can maximize the impact of your backlinks by selecting your anchor text (the clickable words that link to your site) carefully. It’s understandable to assume that this text should reflect your SEO keywords, but copying them exactly would be a grave error.

In fact, if your anchor text obviously includes keywords that you’ve optimized for, then Google may begin to see the link as questionable. A slight variation will help your backlink avoid this negative attention.

Have you asked a few people to backlink you, but they’ve politely declined? Don’t be offended. Their domain authority can be detrimentally impacted when they link to sites with a lower score, so they have good reason to be choosy about what they include.

As you grow your domain authority, you might ask them to provide a “nofollow” link instead. This type of link protects their score. Although it reduces the SEO benefits for you, a “nofollow” link still has the potential to generate referral traffic and build your reputation.

A “follow” link is always a better quality backlink, though, so aim for that whenever possible. It will help you improve your rankings as well as increase your visibility.

How GoWP Can Help You Get More Backlinks 

As a small business owner, you’re probably wondering how you’ll ever find the time to create enough quality content to generate effective backlinks. This is where GoWP’s outsourcing services come in handy.

We offer a dedicated copywriting service so you can add a professional writer to your team on your terms. They’ll write the quality content you need to earn the interest and attention of your industry peers.

Once you have a body of informative, engaging blogs on your site, you may find that backlinks begin to appear of their own accord! That’s what happens when you publish pieces with inherent value.

Another way to generate backlinks is to write guest posts for partner sites. If you have people to publish them but need someone to write them first, contact us. 

What if you don’t have the network you need to even start sourcing backlinks? GoWP can help with that too. Simply join our Digital Agency Owners community, where like-minded entrepreneurs are happy to provide support, advice, and insight.

Ready to build your reputation, generate more traffic to your site, and boost its SEO rankings? GoWP’s copywriters are currently on standby, and they know exactly how to make backlinking work for your business!