Are links still an essential aspect of SEO?

Written by: Ryan Walsh
Date: 27/11/2024

 

 

Table of contents:

• What’s the difference between internal and external backlinks?
• Are backlinks still an important part of search engine optimisation?
• Do Google’s algorithms still use backlinks as an essential ranking factor?
• Links can help to improve sales if they are built in the right way
• Why the anchor text must be written the right way
• How our agency can help

In short, backlinks are still one of the most important aspects of improving a business’s search engine optimisation. However, after numerous SEO articles stating that backlink building is dead, there’s a lot of confusion as to whether agencies and businesses should be putting time into building links. After all, didn’t Matt Cutts at Google actually say many years ago that we should be “sticking a fork in it”-meaning stopping building links?

Well, backlinks are a bit like the fuel you add to your car. So, you can get petrol, which is high in octane and will make your vehicle fly. On the other hand, there’s rubbish fuel that will provide sluggish performance and may even damage the engine.

Well, this is the same when building backlinks. When “Googlebot” indexes the backlink, it will know if it’s quality or not. In short, if you have a lot of quality links, your SEO can improve. Yet, if you have a number of rubbish links, low-quality links, or spam links, then this will damage your company’s organic SEO.

 

What’s the difference between internal and external links?

So, both types of links need to be used to improve a business’s organic search engine optimisation. Internal links can spread link equity across your website and keep shoppers on it, thus helping to lower the bounce rate.

Then, there are external backlinks, such as when one company links to another. For example, Ryanair links to an external car hire website to help you book a hire car.

Gaining relevant, high-quality links from high-quality brands like Ryan Air can help boost your business’s SEO.

External links are sometimes called “incoming links”—not to get too complicated here, but some links will send link equity, and some will not. However, if you have a number of quality links from well-known companies that send link juice or link equity, this can mean your organic search engine optimisation can start to improve.

 

Different purposes

SEO agencies like ours will use different links for other purposes. For example, with well-written anchor text, internal links are used to improve engagement metrics, keeping a visitor on the website longer. It also helps to boost the number of pages they visit, which boasts engagement; you can check your company’s bounce rate using Google Analytics.

Yet external backlinks are used to improve a website’s authority; this has become particularly important since the Google E-EAT update.

 

Here are several reasons why your business still needs high-quality backlinks

Google’s algorithm

So, Googlebot is constantly crawling and indexing the web. Googlebot, therefore, finds how many backlinks lead to your domain. Now, if your business has a lot of quality links, then Google’s algorithms will perceive your website as necessary and authoritative.

From the days of Google PageRank to now using Google E-EAT, Google rewards businesses with higher rankings on Google’s organic SERPs if the company has a lot of quality links. However, as we keep banging on about it, these links must be high quality and relevant to move your business up Google’s ranks.

It’s like the game Snakes and Ladders, which you might have once played. Good links move you up, and wrong links most definitely move you down.

 

It helps to reduce a company’s bounce rate.

So the reason businesses, such as top solicitors practices in the magic circle, devote hundreds of hours to writing informative blog posts/articles on their company website is not because they want to dispense advice for free. Their top hot-shot lawyers might actually be being billed over a thousand per hour! So why are they contributing or writing blog posts every month?

The short answer is that getting a business on Google’s page is now fiercely competitive. In some sectors where a company ranks on Google, it can make or break its survival. It can, therefore, mean the difference between surviving and thriving.

That’s why businesses all over the U.K. use Walsh and Partners, a trusted team that has helped many businesses get onto page one of Google, sometimes from a standstill.

So, the reason these businesses spend so long drafting, proofreading, and updating their content marketing is simple. It can help improve their SEO and draw in backlinks. Now, it’s also an SEO agency’s job to improve engagement. So often, the articles that a business writes are interconnected or overlapping, so adding anchor text, encouraging the reader to read another article, improves dwell time.

Google’s Rank Brain monitors engagement, which means how engaged or interested a shopper is with your website. Are they spending a long time reading the article? Are they reading many pages, including product pages? Or are they leaving straight away, sharply increasing the bounce rate?

 

Anchor text and Google Search Console

For those who do not know, anchor text is simply text that is normally highlighted in a different colour from the rest of the text. You can click it to either visit another page on the same website or to go to another website.

So, anchor text can help a shopper understand what the page is about, but it’s also beneficial for search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing, ChatGPT, or Google, as it sums up the page’s content in just a few words.

For example, if you have many internal and external links labelled with words relating to herbal tea, then it’s clear to Google algorithms that you retail different types of tea.

However, a word to the wise: Don’t over-optimise the anchor text. For example, if you sell aluminium ladders, don’t mention the same description repeatedly, as this can lead to what SEO agencies refer to as over-optimisation. So, you need to think about using white hat methods when it comes to writing the anchor text.

 

Helps with indexation

So imagine that you run, let’s say, a well-known solicitor practice based in several cities in the United Kingdom.

Your business might be writing numerous articles every single week. This means that Googlebot will need to crawl and index the work first in order for that article you have written about employment law to appear in the SERPs.

So, the work will need to be indexed by Googlebot. When you publish an article, it could take many weeks to get indexed. That’s because Googlebot might be busy crawling and indexing the rest of your website.

But let’s say you use an internal link, say from a main page to the blog post. Or perhaps the web designer has designed the website so that new articles appear on the homepage. This way, Googlebot will follow the internal link and index the work.

This means that Googlebot will most likely discover the work much faster if you add internal links to your website. So another benefit of using links, that’s internal links, is that new pages that have been linked to might get indexed faster.

Can our agency help you grow your business?

We now have a minimum pricing of 1k per month. Here at Walsh and Partners, we can take care of all aspects of improving your business’s search engine optimisation. For example, we can help build quality links, write high-quality content marketing with a high Google E-EAT score, and improve your business’s technical SEO.

If you would like us to offer you a quote, please get in touch with one of the team today.