As if there wasn’t enough to add to SEO best practices, we want to touch on backlinks.
Okay, no- we really want to dive into backlinks, because they are just that important.
As Kelowna’s leading premier WordPress marketing agency, we work around the clock to boost our clients search engine ranking. Our toolbox is full – website development, content creation, keyword research, social stacking- but backlink building is always directly on our radar.
We’re not going to lie to you; even as SEO professionals, backlink building is hard. Backlinks are a huge part of SEO best practices, but take time and knowledge to build.

What are backlinks?

Referred to as “online citations”, backlinks are simply links to your website, or web resource, from an external website, or web source. Web sources can mean articles, directories, online archives etc. They act as a vouch of confidence for your website and content, both to users and search engines.
Backlinks are typically the hyperlinks you see in articles (you know, the clickable text underlined in blue) but can also be image tags, social stacking or listings.
Rad- we’ve got the textbook definitions out the way.
Now let’s talk about how backlinks are super essential for your website- and why.

Do Backlinks Improve SEO?

Yes. 100% they do.
Good quality, reputable backlinks boost your SERP pretty aggressively and actively contribute to your overall online marketing.
That’s why prior to Google’s Penguin algorithm update, SEO professionals around the globe were doing anything they could to gain backlinks.
Take a wild guess how Google felt about that. Let’s back up a little.
The obsession with backlinks began in response to Larry Page’s algorithm contribution- PageRank. This particular algorithm basically determined the order of search results- so who would show up or not. PageRank was the first algorithm ever used by Google to index sites and use this index to determine websites rankings.
Guess what PageRank focused super, super heavily on?
Backlinks. Once the cat was out of the bag, the frenzy of every SEO professional around to get as many backlinks as possible to boost their SERP ranking began.
It was seriously like wildfire. Experts starting bypassing the natural requirements of the algorithm- clean, quality backlinks, and creating backlink farms (as we cover later.)

So, how do backlinks help your SEO?

They are a prime example of speaking both to the user and search engines.

Backlinks and Linkjuice

Backlinks indicate trust, relevancy and authority to search engine crawlers. By another reputable site linking to yours, they are vouching for your site and letting Google know that “hey, they’re great.” It accelerates your exposure to Google bots and get your site indexed faster. Good quality backlinks produce “linkjuice” which is credible equity from one site to another. The more juice you have given to you, the stronger your site will perform in search results.
Kind of like, Redbull giving you wings. Popeye and spinach. You get the idea.

Boost Referral Traffic with Backlinks

Backlinks provide you with referral traffic. And who doesn’t want extra traffic to their website? Better yet, the traffic coming from these high quality backlinks is going to be pretty targeted and relevant to you. Free traffic is pretty rad. Search engines think so too- the more quality traffic you drive to your site, the more they notice you and the more likely they are to index you with a little love.

Rank Higher for Keywords with Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks, our little blue text links (or anchor links) even help with your specific keyword ranking. Google crawlers go as far as to see how much “support’ you have for any given keyword on your website’s pages. If they find your keyword relevant to the rest of you, it will boost your exposure on that single key term as well.
Backlinks aren’t all for the search engine though. Remember- there’s a user on the other end of the computer.

Backlinks Help You Get Seen

Backlinks give you great brand recognition and exposure. They act as somewhat of a review- a link to your site from a credible site will not only promote your brand but also – again- vouch to the user that your website is A-Okay. Repeated mention of your website throughout credible sources just adds to brand recognition; people see your brand and begin to recognize it within their online experiences.

Don’t Resort to Backlink Farming

Backlink farming is the very reason Google’s Penguin update ever came into effect.
Like we mentioned earlier, SEO experts were desperate to get hundreds of backlinks for their site once the ball dropped on PageRank- Google’s first algorithm for ranking that focused lots on backlinks.
Of course, deceptions of this algorithm were pretty easy to brew up (likely why Google stays so hush-hush about their algorithms nowadays.) By creating networks of spam websites and directories with the sole purpose of all linking to each other, paying your way into hundreds of unearned backlinks became a widely used tactic in every level of SEO out there.
That’s where the ability for site crawlers to determine the quality of the links, not just the number of them, was born.
And it’s fair. Reputable backlinks are built on trust, relationship building and genuine online presence.
Backlink farming is still a grey area. While giant networks and rings are easy to define as backlink farms, there are operating businesses out there that offer backlinks in return for pay. Crowned “black hat SEO”, buying backlinks poses as “backlink strategy growth” and still remains…..questionable.
Buying backlinks might grab you some short term SERP rankings. You might even get away with it for a while and see a huge change in your website analytics and rankings. But once Google figures you out, you can kiss goodbye to your growth – buying backlinks is a direct violation of Google’s advertising code.
Listen, don’t shoot the messenger, ok? Buying backlinks is so much easier than organically building them and can seem like a great option for those wanting to really boost their site.
We get it, honestly we do. But it’s really not worth it.
Organically growing backlinks takes time and effort, but it will pay off.

How to Build Backlinks- Naturally

Now, we can’t let our own cat out of the bag and give away all the secrets.
But, here’s some practices you can undertake to start building an army of reputable backlinks:
Add links on all your social media profiles – (hey, social stacking!)
Monitor your best performing posts and pages, and expand them routinely.
Create content that is useful and exciting to a reader- content that helps them solve a problem and share it among their networks for the same reason
Off page, build relationships with influencers, industry leaders and bloggers to trade valuable backlinks. Believe it or not, you can also strategically work with your competitors to do the same thing!
Monitor your competitors backlinks, and look to see if you can also be placed within those sources as well.

The post 2020 SEO Trends – Why Backlinks Need To Comeback appeared first on Rad Websites.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly changing and improving. Gone are the days where you could rank a website in a couple of weeks just by stuffing your content full of keywords and using spamy backlink practices. Google’s algorithm has gotten smarter and the nature of Google searches have begun to change, resulting in the need for SEO technicians to change with it. So we decided to highlight the top 5 Biggest SEO Changes in 2019 so far

Why SEO is constantly changing?

We need to think about SEO from Google’s perspective – not from business owners who want to rank on page one. At the end of the day, Google is a business and it’s in the business of connecting its users to information and products. Right now Google is dominating the market with more than 90% of all search engine traffic. The remaining ten percent is reserved for Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
Google has been able to dominate because it has been relentless in innovating to give the best possible search results for any given query. In laymen’s terms, they give the people what they want. In order to sustain Google’s dominance, it needs to continue to innovate. If it doesn’t, users will look to alternative search engines. While this may seem crazy – think about how Google seamlessly integrates with our lives – Google can lose market share.

Here are some of the important SEO areas to consider:

1. Voice search

This trend is going to be far the most disruptive. As more and more users switch from desktop to mobile, and the use of smart home devices such as Google Home, Alexa, and Apple Home Pod are increasing, more people are turning to voice search because it’s quicker and easier, especially for multitaskers.
Back in 2016, Google said about 20% of searches on mobile were carried out by voice. By 2020, Google forecasts around 50% of all over searches will be voice-based. This will give rise to a higher number of long-tail keywords and hyperlocal searches.
Typed searches and voice searches are different – you speak differently than you type – and so optimization strategies will also differ. for Voice search, you need to think about more conversational natural language and local searches as well as ensuring that websites are mobile-friendly.

2. User experience

Google’s algorithm has become more sophisticated in order to provide better, more relevant results to its users. Google now counts user experience and user engagement among its key metrics for SEO rankings. This is because user experience is a great indicator of the quality of a website or a piece of content.
While we don’t know exactly how Google measures user experience, one of the key metrics is a high bounce rate which indicates to Google that the result was not useful, or what the user was looking for. There are many other user experience metrics that signal poor or low quality such as dwell time, average session duration, page views, etc. All of these combined communicate to Google a picture of the quality of your website as a whole. Google’s aim is to provide better and quick, and more relevant results to users. As you build your website, keep this in mind. How can you provide serve your audience? It is a question you should be asking anyway, but I suggest putting it on a sticky note on your computer to always keep it top of mind.

3. Quality content

“Content is king” is a much-used phrase and nothing new, it is still relevant today as it ever was. You simply cannot let your content fall by the wayside. You need to create your content in line with how it will affect your user metrics, in other words, providing useful content that people will want to read. Moreover, you don’t need everybody to read it – just your ideal target market.
Ask yourself questions such as:

• Does it add something useful and new to other content on this topic?
• Does it answer important questions in your industry?
• Can you link this article to other pages or other websites to increase overall pageviews?
• Answering questions or adding incites in a way that provides most value to your readers?

If you can answer most or all of these questions, Google is happy because their users are happy.

4. Local SEO Content

If you’ve followed SEO practices, you know the importance of local SEO will increase in importance over the next few years. The importance of local search will continue to grow with 46% of searches on Google already having local intent – searches like restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores will become more competitive as more local businesses become SEO-savvy. Moreover, almost every local search converts into a sale, making it extremely important for small businesses.

Here are some things to consider:

Basic factors like the ‘RDP’ will remain the same.
(R) Relevance means how well your business listing matches with the user’s intent
(D) Distance measures how far the searcher is from the business when the search is made. Businesses nearest to the searcher will be ranked higher.
(P) Prominence measures the popularity of the business both in the offline and online world

5) Artificial intelligence (AI)

AI will give Google the power to improve their algorithms exponentially, customizing searches for the individual. The need to collect and analyze user data in order to obtain intelligent proposals for searches is and will remain extremely important for Google.
Since 2015, Google has been working on a self-learning algorithm called “Rankbrain”. Which takes care of search queries that have never been made before. Which allegedly accounts for 15 percent of all queries. In addition, Google also has come out with a feature called “Google Duplex” which actually makes calls for you and sets up appointments. This feature is not only great for consumers, but likely collects data on the user which will then customize searches for them.
It is important to familiarize yourself with AI as soon as possible. And to experiment with it in terms of SEO. In the near future, AI will help Google get even better at reading text, understanding testimonials and taking them into account when evaluating websites. So, AI is also included in the list of Biggest SEO Changes of 2019.

Takeaways

The nature of SEO is that it is constantly evolving. In order to stay on top of your search engine rankings and ensure you are driving as much traffic to your website as possible, you need to be aware of the trends. The key takeaway should always keep serving your customers or audience better than your competition. And you’ll always increase your ranking since Google will take notice. So, these are the Biggest SEO Changes of 2019, If you want our SEO expert services, feel free to Contact us.

The post Biggest SEO Changes in 2019 appeared first on Rad Websites.