The Role Links Play in SEO

There are a lot of key factors that play a role with SEO, which includes links. When we talk about links, there are backlinks and internal links. Backlinks, or "inbound links," are links from other websites that point to your website. Whereas internal links are links on your own site that point to your other pages on the website. Historically, links have played a big role in SEO. In the early days, search engines needed help figuring out which URLs were more trustworthy than others to help them determine how to rank search results. One way to determine this was by calculating the number of links pointing to any given site. It was a sign of authority and trust when one website pointed to another.

Importance of Backlinks

Having backlinks is very important to the health of any website. Backlinks work very similarly to real-life word-of-mouth referrals. Take these hypothetical scenarios with a restaurant:

• Referrals from others = good sign of authority: Many different people have all told you that this restaurant is the best in town.
• Referrals from yourself = biased, so not a good sign of authority: You claim your restaurant is the best in town.
• Referrals from irrelevant or low-quality sources = not a good sign of authority and could even get you flagged for spam: You paid to have people who have never visited your restaurant tell others how good it is.
• No referrals = unclear authority: Your restaurant might be good, but you have been unable to find anyone who has an opinion so you can’t be sure.

In a nutshell, this is why PageRank was created. PageRank, which is part of Google's core algorithm, is a link analysis algorithm. PageRank estimates the importance of a web page by measuring the quality and quantity of links pointing to it. The assumption with PageRank is that the more relevant, important, and trustworthy a web page is, the more links it will have earned. The more natural backlinks you have from high-authority and trusted websites, the better your odds are to rank higher within search results. Having backlinks enables you to have a flourishing website. When you turn to the SEO services at MSEDP, we can help you build backlinks that will improve your website and grow your business.

The Role Content Plays with Links

There would be no point to links if they did not direct searchers to something and that something is content! Content is more than just words. It is anything meant to be consumed by searchers. It can be video content, image content, and of course, text. If search engines are answering machines, then the content is the means by which the engines deliver those answers. So you want your website's content to be informative and useful. Google will recognize this and that will improve its ability to be found.

Any time someone searches for something, there are thousands of possible results. How do search engines decide which pages the searcher is going to find valuable and which they are not? A big part of determining where your page will rank for a given query is how well the content on your page matches the query’s intent. In other words, does this page match the words that were searched and help fulfill the task the searcher was trying to accomplish? Having a website with a breadth of useful content increases your chances of gaining organic traffic.

Due to this focus on user satisfaction and task accomplishment, there is no strict benchmark on how long your content should be, how many times it should contain a keyword, or what you put in your header tags. All of those factors can play a role in how well a page performs in a given search, but the focus should be on the users who will be reading the content. You want that content to be useful and engaging.

Contact MSEDP

The SEO writers at MSEDP can build organic content that is useful and engaging. There is a trick to writing good SEO content and it is a skill that our team has honed over the years. Adjusting to different algorithms when there are updates. So if you are in need of SEO assistance, then please reach out to MSEDP today. Check out what our SEO services can do for you.

Our SEO Services

When you reach out, we can provide you with a no-obligation consultation. Talk to an SEO expert today to learn about how our organic SEO services can help your business and your website. From helping with local searches to utilizing WooCommerce, our web team will find the right way to build your SEO campaign.