What are Backlinks?
Backlinks are links from one website to another that point to a page on your website. Owing to their nature, backlinks are also called inbound or incoming links. Backlinks are highly valuable in SEO as they have the ability to help your website rank higher on search engine results. The more high-quality backlinks you can create, the better your website’s ranking becomes.
Backlinks work as a vote of confidence for Google. When one site links with another, it suggests to search engines that the linked content is valuable, trustworthy, and relevant.
Backlinks and Google’s Evolving Algorithms
Google continues to upgrade its algorithms for delivering high-quality and relevant content to users. In earlier days, Google’s algorithm primarily relied upon the quantity of backlinks. However, this factor encouraged marketers to indulge in manipulative practices such as link farming or buying backlinks, compromising the integrity of search results.
To eliminate such a situation, Google introduced many updates, focusing on quality, rather than quantity. These updates were conducted to emphasize the significance of backlink profiles, prioritizing those with natural authoritative links and penalizing spammy practices. At current times, the value of backlinks are intact, only the focus has shifted from quantity to quality in Google’s analysis system.
The Emphasis on Content Quality and Positive User Experience
In recent years, Google has started to demonstrate increased emphasis on quality content and user experience. By introducing updates such as BERT and putting extended focus on E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) Google is prioritizing content that actually caters to the users’ needs. As per Google’s new algorithm, high-quality, relevant content can be more valuable in the ranking of a website than a superior backlink profile, if it proves to be more useful to users.
This shift from backlinks to quality content has made some experts argue that Google has decreased the significance of backlinks. However, the truth is that backlinks are still relevant and continue to be a vital factor in the ranking of a website.
Backlinks Continue to Remain a Key SEO Factor
Despite the ever-changing Google metrics and algorithms, it is important for digital marketers to be aware of the fact that backlinks are still relevant and significant. They continue to be a vital factor in establishing authority and trustworthiness in Google’s eyes. If you can get quality backlinks from reputable sites, they will surely help your website rank higher on search engine results.
Nevertheless, at current times, the focus is not only to create backlinks, but also to make sure that they connect high-quality and relevant content pages.
Conclusion
It can be said that Google has stopped considering only backlinks as a deciding factor in the process of a website’s ranking. There are several other factors that are taken into consideration, when it comes to the ranking of a website. And yet, the significance of backlinks is still intact in an effective SEO strategy.
What you need to keep in mind is that SEO in current times asks for a balanced approach in which you have to create high-quality, engaging content, improve user-experience, and build a powerful backlink profile through genuine connections and outreach. The best thing to do would be get your SEO and backlinking tasks conducted by a reputed SEO company such as Originate Soft and expect the best results.