The Importance Of Backlinks In SEO [& How To Build Them]

There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding Backlinks in recent years.

Proponents of backlink building swear that it’s the most critical strategy for ranking high on SERPs. On the other hand, critics of link-building claim that it will destroy your website.

So which is it? In this article, we will dispel any myths about backlinking and teach you how to use backlinking as a way to boost your SEO and SERP in 2024.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links between one website to another.

You receive backlinks when someone adds a link to your website onto their website.

Likewise, you can give backlinks by linking to other websites.

Backlinks are sometimes called “inbound links,” “inlinks,” “inward links,” or “incoming links.”

An essential distinction of backlinks is that they must come from another website.

Backlinks differ from internal links when a web page links to another page on the same website.

Why Are Backlinks So Important?

Quality backlinks are essential for search engine optimization, as they are one of the key indicators search engines use to determine the value of a webpage.

Search engines see backlinks as “votes of approval” from one website to another.

Additionally, backlinks help with discoverability.

Search engines crawl web pages they know to keep themselves up-to-date with the content on that page.

Popular websites are crawled more often.

As a result, you can get discovered by search engines faster when popular pages link to you.

Do Backlinks Help SEO?

Back in the day, Google’s PageRank system determined where a website would be placed on search engines.

The plan entirely rested on backlinks, seen as “votes of confidence” from one website to another.

However, “linkspam” became an issue, as companies would add as many inbound links as possible regardless of the context to increase their SEO.

As a result, Google changed its algorithm to devalue irrelevant linking strategies.

Even though Google has changed its original algorithm, backlinks continue to be one of the three most important factors for a ranking on google’s search engine.

Are Backlinks Still Important in 2024?

Absolutely! Backlinking is still essential in 2024.

However, implementing backlinking for search engine optimization has changed drastically.

Quality backlink building needs to pair with other SEO-building strategies.

Specifically, your web content quality needs to be worthy of receiving organic backlinks.

We still consider backlinks as “votes of confidence.”

They still signal to search engines that your website is trustworthy, authoritative, and helpful.

However, backlinks need to be high quality because google, and other search engines, can tell when your backlink is authentic or part of a link scheme.

What Do Backlinks Look Like?

To regular internet users, backlinks generally look the same.

They are hyperlinks from one webpage to another.

A backlink is clickable and might have a different color or style from the other text that surrounds it.

Sometimes, backlinks are displayed like buttons.

On the development side of a website, backlinks are hyperlinks defined by <a> tags.

These <a> tags contain attributes such as an href and rel.

The href attribute or the hyperlink reference informs the tag to link to a certain website destination.

On the other hand, the rel attribute describes the relationship between the current page and the linked page.

The information in rel attributes can tell search engines how to interact with the hyperlink.

For instance, is rel=” nofollow” indicates that the author does not endorse the link.

Google search spiders know not to follow links with “nofollow” relationships.

In recent years, Google has introduced new rel attributes to communicate the purpose of certain hyperlinks better.

Rel=” sponsored” indicates that the link was paid for or sponsored.

These can be used to identify affiliate links.

Links from user-generated content such as comments and forums can use implement rel=” UGC” to inform Google that the link was placed by a user and not the website’s author.