12 Feb Why is PR essential for backlinks?
Why are backlinks so important?
Simply put, Backlinks are a vital part of any SEO strategy as they show ‘third party endorsement’ or PR from one website to another. In other words, quality backlinks to your website show search engines, like Google that you have the credible endorsement and this is vital in raising your profile as an expert, who should be taken seriously.
To the vast majority of businesses getting found on Google remains one of the core ambitions of most companies.
After all, in a world where’s there are countless different ways of marketing yourself, to be found on the web by customers looking for what you are offering is marketing heaven.
However, this art of the right content from your website Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a complex subject, and trying to get a strong handle on it is testing to virtually all of us.
Firstly, everyone must understand that the world wide web is a league table of billions of web pages, millions of websites, etc., where the search engines, dominated by Google (93% of the market), work out how trustworthy that site is.
It’s about trust
This trustworthiness, is ranked on domain authority, which is the league table of websites.
For instance, the BBC is highly rated, whilst a blogging site just started last week by a member of the Flat Earth Society is not.
Therefore, if the BBC write a story and put a link in the copy (backlink) then it can help your business an awful lot, as opposed to the flat earther site, which is of no use at all.
Fundamentally, in its most simplistic terms, knowing this can help many businesses is where PR and search engine optimisation marry up to provide a powerful combination.
As an example, if you are a business making giant strides in health and have invented a cure for a disease, the chances are, once you get a back-link (PR/ third party endorsement) from the BBC, it will mean that search engines will promote you up their league table.
It could mean instead of being behind a 1,000 competitors, you are now in the top flight results when people come to search for you.
These backlinks (links from other websites) to your site – is the most effective way to improve your rankings, but as we say, not all these links are created equally.
Some backlinks are of no use, such as the flat earth guy’s, and some might even have a negative effect, so your focus should always be on getting high quality, relevant backlinks.
High quality is open to debate
The term high quality is subjective though, and every SEO consultant will have their own view on the topic, yet the majority will agree that quality backlinks mean being mentioned in the type of websites/news sources that have credibility on the web and are relevant to what you do.
Search engines take into view the overall relevance of the linking site, the relevance of the specific page with the link on it, and the credibility of the content directly surrounding the link.
It’s a combination of many complex factors, but it is logical that a top-notch backlinks come from very trustworthy sites.
To benchmark, if a website is trustworthy, the likes of Google use a set of trusted seed sites (for example, Wikipedia and the BBC, CNN, etc.), which they know for sure are difficult to get links from.
Backlinks investment needs time
It is worth knowing, that the fewer the number of links away a site is from one of the seed sites, the higher its ranking is.
So in essence, as an entry-level way of understanding the importance of backlinks, we really hope this has helped give some clarity.
Backlinks are easy to ignore, but if you actually take time to work on this aspect of your marketing it will unquestionably reap dividends, but it does require patience.
For those who wish to know more, please get in touch with us or alternatively if you would like to carry on reading more on this topic, then here’s a very useful blog, in the form of a backlink from Moz, one of the world’s leaders in SEO software.
Why Nolan PR?
We are a full-service PR agency working with a wide range of clients in different sectors, the length and breadth of the country.
We work with growing, progressive companies and take the time to ensure that our clients aren’t just happy but delighted with what we do and the results. This isn’t some kind of hackneyed flannel either. Much of our new business comes from recommendation and why our clients stick with us. It’s also why we continue to grow year on year.
