Backlinks for SEO: Why Google Can’t Get Enough of Them

If you’re familiar with the SEO space, you know that your website’s search ranking is determined by a variety of things: relevance to the search terms, usability, and sometimes even the searcher’s location.

In particular, one of the strongest methods for increasing your website’s rankings is building backlinks.

Backlinks are just links from other sites and domains pointing to your site. When readers click that link, they move from that site to yours. These are not the same as internal links, which are links between posts and pages on your site.

But, like internal links, backlinks are used by search engines to figure out if your site is trustworthy and worth visiting. And with the Google Helpful Content update, the types of backlinks and where you get them from matter more than ever.

Dofollow links tell search engines to follow that link, crawl the page on the other side, and use that page when determining where the site should fall in the search rankings.

They pass link equity, aka authority and other factors, from the page linking to your site.

You want most of your backlinks to be dofollow links for obvious reasons.

Nofollow links, as you might guess, tell crawlers not to weigh the page in when evaluating where the site should rank. So yeah, these don’t get you SEO juice.

Sounds like they’re useless. But not entirely. Google has updated how it views nofollow links—it now crawls them for discovery purposes. So pages with nofollow links will get indexed as well.

Oh, and you still benefit from referral traffic that lands on your website. That indirectly helps your SEO once the page is indexed.

Some websites, such as news sites, government agencies, or academic institutions, may require nofollow links per their editorial guidelines. So a nofollow link is better than no link.

Many social media and user-generated content backlinks (such as in forums) are also nofollow to prevent spamminess.

You might get nofollow backlinks if sites point to yours and don’t want to pass link equity to you. For example, if someone’s criticizing you, they might use a nofollow to send their users your way to show why you’re “wrong” while avoiding helping you.

And lastly—you can buy and sell links without a Google penalty if the links are nofollow links and follow other guidelines. Normally, this is a big no-no.

Since the early days, Google has emphasized backlinks for SEO. But back then, sites could get away with buying low-quality, spammy backlinks en masse (among other black hat tactics).

So over the years, Google has honed in its algorithm to weed out bad actors and garbage backlinks. One of the more recent big updates is the Google Helpful Content Update.
The Google Helpful Content Update and Backlinks
The Google Helpful Content Update altered how Google decides search results so that content made for people takes precedence over content made for search traffic.

In other words, Google is trying to align search results with what people actually want.. Keywords are still weighed, but Google is upgrading the algorithm to evaluate those subjective “human” elements.

So when it comes to backlinks…

First and most obvious—it’s quality over quantity. Google’s algorithm is an expert at measuring the authority of domains that link to you.

Now, if your site is deemed to have a lot of unhelpful content overall, it could harm the rankings of your good content or at least reduce its likelihood of ranking high.

So you can’t just create one good content piece and get a backlink or have no good content but a guest post backlink from a big-name site. If your content isn’t actually helpful, links will only boost your rankings a little bit.

Fortunately, Google recently eased up on AI content guidelines. Content isn’t judged poorly if written by AI… as long as it’s helpful. Which means you’ll still have to do some editing to ensure the content is fun to read and not missing anything. AI isn’t human, so its content can lack the human touch.

Biggest thing to keep in mind:

If your content actually helps people, you’ll be fine from Google’s point of view. Write for the reader first, and many keywords will come naturally. You can sprinkle them in later if needed.

And hey, user-focused content earns backlinks without asking when people find it genuinely helpful.

There are lots of reasons why you should start building backlinks ASAP.

The big benefit of backlinking is higher search rankings. We already know why Google puts you at the top with lots of backlinks, but other search engines also do it—it’s common practice.

All those backlinks tell the search engines that other authorities and experts find your stuff credible and helpful. The search engines use that, alongside their own measurements of content relevance, to send your page up the rankings ladder.

So, if you secured links from, say, Harvard Medical School, Google would instantly see your stuff as much more credible and worth reading.

Backlinks don’t just tell search engines what to think about your content and put it in front of internet searchers—though even that would be plenty!

The beauty of it all is that the links themselves also actually send traffic to your site. This traffic is “warm,” meaning it comes in with a degree of trust that someone stumbling upon your site at random might not have.

Big names and a larger number of quality backlinks lead to more referral traffic. More referral traffic tells search engines that people like your site.—and so the search engines like you even more. It’s a “virtuous cycle,” as they say.

Oh, and the referring domain’s stature also impacts referral traffic quality. Again, if Harvard Medical School is the one linking to your site… readers will trust your site. They’ll stay on longer, reducing bounce rate and boosting dwell time.

SEO is a long-term strategy. It often takes a while before your higher rankings and increased traffic convert into more sales.

Not so for backlinks. Backlinks can actually shortcut this process to some degree—in the short term, the referral traffic hits your site. Since that traffic is “warm,” the users are more likely to convert. You could see a nice surge in sales.

Pro tip: You can reinvest that extra capital back into SEO to magnify your efforts and continue climbing in the search rankings.

Brand exposure and name recognition are key to moving from small-and-maybe-slightly-successful to gigantic-and-stupidly-profitable.

Any backlinks can work well for these, given the fact that referral traffic is what’s most important. People will see your site, remember it, and your brand will grow.

However, backlinks with branded anchor text—meaning your brand name is in the anchor text—speed this up heftily. People don’t even have to leave the referring site to see your brand name.

Your pages don’t rank until the search engine crawlers find and, well, crawl them. This is called indexing. And you want your pages to get indexed as fast as possible.

The sooner your pages are indexed, the faster you can start squeezing SEO juice out of them and ranking those specific pages. Indexing also helps your overall site rise in the rankings as well though—not just specific pages.

Backlinks can help get your pages indexed faster since crawlers can find their way to your site via those backlinks. This is especially important if you have a smaller site—a few good backlinks could get you ranking quickly and cause a surge in traffic.

As we’ve seen so far, most backlinking benefits come in the form of under-the-hood SEO bonuses. But your backlinking efforts can have a real-world impact through networking and relationship-building as well.

Effective backlinking generally involves a lot of outreach to other brands and creators to show why your site provides value. You get to help these brands and creators give more to their readers, which they should appreciate.

That starts the relationship.

Then, you can find ways to share knowledge. You can talk shop with them, learning lots of valuable stuff while giving a little value of your own. You could learn key growth tactics, product ideas, and more from the owners of the sites you want backlinks from.

Your backlinkers might pass your name to others in their network too. Who knows? You might wake up one day and see more backlinks you didn’t even make an effort to get.

Other opportunities could also arise. Maybe the backlinking site invites you to give a training to their audience. Boom—you instantly look like an expert to tons of potential readers and customers.

Or perhaps they want to collaborate on creating a product with you. You can create other income streams and traffic sources for your business.

The possibilities are as close to endless as they could be in a finite universe like our

Guest posting is when you write a blog post on someone else’s website to link back to yours. Getting guest posts on big industry websites can be a HUGE help for your brand.

For one, you’re showing up with helpful content on big sites. Crawlers will discover that, follow the link, land on your site, and see you as worth reading. Up you move in the search engine results.

But even better:

Real people see you and your expert content on big-name websites. They all click through, boosting your site traffic (good for SEO). Oh, and your brand name stays in their head when they see you in multiple places.

What’s nice about guest posting is that you have a decent amount of control over the content, provided you stay within the target site’s guidelines and stay on topic. Just remember that guest posting takes effort—the content has to be good or the target site won’t want it and the users wouldn’t want to click the link anyway.

Do it right, though, and the site might invite you back for more guest posts. Or the target site might pass your name to others in their network and lead you to more opportunities.

Sometimes, good content already exists on another site. You don’t have to write it. You can instead follow a niche edit strategy—inserting your links into the existing content.

You’ll want pages with strong SEO and lots of visitors. That way, the link gets crawled fast and users click through.

Link roundup posts and resource pages can be good targets when doing niche edits. Just show the website owner why your chosen resource is helpful to the site’s readers, and they should be happy to include.