Why are backlinks so crucial to the SEO process? How can we get more links?

Author: Ryan Walsh

Date: 11/07/2025

Subject: Backlinks

Table of contents:

• What does link equity mean?
• How can having more link juice positively improve our SEO?
• Why can good quality links help improve a company’s SEO?
• Why can spam links damage a business’s SEO?

 

Introduction

Search engine optimisation is undergoing some significant changes right now, with AI becoming an increasingly fundamental part of how Google serves its answers. “Google AI Overviews” are being widely cited on most marketing blogs, with many consultants believing that they are somehow less important now.

However, some things, at the time of writing, haven’t changed.

Having a good backlink profile remains the key to success.

 

In your business sector, those with the best and most powerful links can reign supreme.
And this cannot be underestimated.

For some businesses we work with, we are not exaggerating when we say 100% of new sales come from their organic search engine optimisation efforts.

Then, when you factor in that backlinks are the most critical factor that Google takes into account when deciphering where to rank any business, well, you can see that backlinks are a big deal.

Backlink quality and content marketing quality are, therefore, the two most pivotal factors when deciphering where to rank a page on Google’s results.

 

 

Brief history lesson

It was said that Google co-founder Larry Page drew inspiration for designing Google’s initial formula, “PageRank,” from the way an author might write their dissertation.

When writing a dissertation, you often cite other people’s research, their data, and perspectives.

This is like a “thumbs up”, a nod of approval, however you want to phrase it.

It’s the author saying, ‘I have done my research, I have noticed this work; it’s good, I am citing it in my work.’

That’s where the inspiration for backlinks was formed, which works in a very similar way.

Imagine writing a comprehensive article, such as a 3,000-word piece.

Well, there you’re likely to be citing other people’s or businesses’ thoughts, stats, and research.

This way, you can then link to them, as it supports your work by demonstrating that you have conducted extensive research.

It also supports the author because, as we will discuss later, the more links, the more quality links leading to your domain, the more link juice, which can result in higher rankings.

 

How important are backlinks when it comes to improving a business’s organic SEO?

Backlinks to SEO are what blood is to human beings – essential, needed, and keeps everything flowing.
Let us explain why backlinks are essential in 3 steps:

 

1) Indexation

Have you heard of Googlebot?

Googlebot has an ongoing task; its job is to crawl the web and index pages. Googlebot is constantly crawling the internet, following links and indexing new pages.

What does this mean?

Well, Googlebot is like Google’s messenger; it spots new pages and notices changes made to existing pages.

Its job is to be Google’s “eyes and ears”, identifying what’s new, what’s changed, and how Google’s algorithm should adapt.

 

So, where do links come into this?

Simple, Googlebot uses links to find new content for marketing purposes. The spider’s job, as Googlebot is often referred to, is to crawl pages.

To do this, it requires links.

Googlebot follows both internal and external links. Links are, therefore, like the roads that lead into a website; the more roads, the more ways Googlebot will continue to crawl and index the content.

Additionally, more links mean that Google will often find the work more quickly and index the page more quickly.

 

Authority

You know, when someone wants to be famous, wants the notoriety, what’s to be a somebody?

Well, they often crave social media followers.

To some “social media influencers”, it is a sort of validation when they have a million or so people following them.

Now, backlinks are similar in a way; however, to improve a business’s SEO, what you need instead is high-quality backlinks, in abundance.

This indicates to Google that this is a well-known business, as otherwise, why would so many other companies want to link to you?

It says the business is the bee’s knees, a voice that is respected and therefore more authoritative, and it should rank higher in Google.

However, the links must be of high quality for this to be effective.

 

2) Helps you to be found

So, the third point is that backlinks are helpful because they make your content marketing easier to find. It’s not just Googlebot that is following your links; it’s also real shoppers. They may have read, for example, an article on The Guardian, which featured a list of the top 10 places to buy British suits.

Therefore, links help to teleport a reader and send them over to your website, where they can be converted.

What is “link juice”

What is this ‘link juice’ or ‘link equity’ that we hear so much about?

There are links, and then there are links.

You can build one million links, yet if they are all spam, they will do more harm than good.

On the other hand, you could have very few links, but they are of high quality.

If the links are of good quality, come from some of the world’s biggest brands, most respected bloggers, or widely respected businesses, then these links will massively help improve your SEO.

These links, the powerful links, the good links, the best links, wow, these are the links that can get your business jumping Google’s pages faster than an F1 car.

 

How do you gain more “link juice”

To gain more “link equity,” it’s simple: you need more quality links.
However, the hard part is understanding why widely respected businesses, global brands, and influencers with their blogs would link to a company.

Well, because you’re giving them something in return. And by that statement, we don’t mean money.

We mean, you’re providing quality information, high-quality content marketing, or, let’s say, market research that’s taken a ton of time for your business to gather and offer the results.

This, therefore, means that you have written something interesting to an author working for that business. They may have been writing their blog post and come across your work while researching the topic for their blog post. They may have seen your market research or your unique perspective on the matter and cited your website, offering a backlink.

Perhaps it was do-follow backlinks, which send “link juice” flooding through, and within a matter of days of the link being live, your business may start to move up Google’s rankings.

 

More on Larry Page

To understand anything, whether a product, service, or company, you must understand the founding owners. What drove them? What motivated them to create that service?

Larry Page co-founded Google, and it has been reported that he studied backlinks for his dissertation. Now, this is why we said right at the start of this article: why backlinks are similar to scholarly citations. Then, with this vision, the work was assigned to a man named Scott

Hassan, who programmed the initial code that went into creating Google’s PageRank formula.

 

Google’s PageRank

We won’t delve too deeply into the technical details here, but let’s say that we consider Google’s algorithms today to be highly complex. Which, in a way, they are; however, back in the days of Google’s PageRank, it mostly revolved around backlinks. How many backlinks does a business have?

Fast forward to 2025

Backlinks remain a core component of Google’s algorithm, with a greater emphasis now placed on the quality of links. However, trust our marketing agency when we say this: if you have a lot of links, and you combine them with high-quality backlinks, then Google will place you higher. Often, the businesses that rank number 1 in the search engine results pages are there only because they have a mass of high-quality links pointing to their website.

 

Who determines if a link is of quality or not

Link building is a fine art.

You could sometimes sit with someone for a hundred hours, yet they may not get the knack of building good backlinks.

In theory, it’s simple; in practice, they are hard to build. Let us explain why:

You can take your number one top competitor on Google, then set up an account with a backlink checking tool, such as Majestic, Moz Pro, or let’s say Ahrefs.

Ask us to pick, and we would choose Moz Pro, but that’s just a personal preference.

Then, in seconds, you can get a list of most of your competitors’ backlinks. Often, you can export these into a Microsoft Excel document.

So, why is link building so complicated? That sounds like a piece of cake, right?

Well, those links will be directed to those websites for commercial reasons. For example, a car retailer may have links from the car manufacturer, a safety award the car has won, or a customer satisfaction survey.

So they have earned those links.

Those links can’t be replicated because those businesses have often chosen to link to that website for the reasons stated above.

This is why link building is massively time-consuming; you may have to wade through a list of over 1,000 backlinks to find just one or even two that are willing to link to you. Yes, it’s that hard; it’s that difficult for a good reason. Those websites and businesses have to want to link to you.

For example, you have to ask, what are they getting out of it?

For example, a car safety award winner’s link directs users to their website; they are unlikely to link to anyone else, as not everyone will have won that award.

 

Site authority

Some websites are more authoritative than others.

For example, if you get a link from, say, BBC News, you’re likely to see your business’s organic search engine optimisation improve in the following weeks ahead. By that, we mean the link is expected to move the ranked page higher in the SERP’s. This means that the page will rank higher, gain more organic traffic, which you can then convert into more sales.

However, on the other hand, someone who’s just set up a blog and links to you, that website is likely to have a low DA, or domain authority.

That means there will be very little link juice flowing through, which is expected to cause no or negligible improvement in a business’s rankings.

Then there are spam links.

Well, these will put your SEO in reverse gear. Rather than moving up the SERP, you can move down. You may find that your business’s website gets “de-indexed,” which means it is removed from Google if you have a lot of spam links pointing to it. This is why some companies try to cut corners; they know that link building takes a considerable amount of time and is hard work, so they attempt to streamline the process.

This is when a business can obtain a link penalty.

Link location matters

Ideally, you will want to be the only other external link on that page, or at most, a few. Plus, you don’t want your link placed at the bottom of the page or, let’s say, in the footer. The best place for the link to be placed is within a paragraph, in a location where the anchor text is written naturally.

You will want the link to be “top of the fold”, which means it should be higher up the page, so more readers are likely to spot it and follow the link.

A word on link frequency

Ideally, you want a high number of quality links; however, you don’t want all of these links to come from just one or a few sources. You want as many quality links as possible, from a wide range of sources.

 

Do all links pass link juice?

No is the answer to that question; some links do, and these are called do-follow links. However, no-follow links don’t pass any link equity.

So, link juice is essential; however, you want a mix of do-follow and no-follow backlinks in your backlink profile. The reason is that if you have, say, 100 do-follow links, it can appear as if you have purchased the links.

Therefore, businesses need good-quality links, which will then pass through “link juice” to the linked page. It is then possible for the linked pages, the pages linked via internal links, to also rank higher in Google because the link equity can trickle down to those pages.

FAQ about link equity

What is the best way to obtain links with high DA/domain authority?

The best way is to create high-quality content marketing that offers helpful information, which bloggers and other businesses will want to cite.

By mentioning your work, that business may link to you. However, with that said, if a business mentions, say, market research that you have undertaken, yet they haven’t linked to you, then you can reach out and ask for a link.

Another practical approach is through competitor backlink research. By examining your competitors’ backlinks, you can often find links that your business can also build. Although this is time-consuming, due to the importance of links in the SEO process, it is worth the effort to look for backlink building opportunities that can be gained from analysing your competitors’ backlinks.

 

Is it possible to have too many links?

Link velocity is the term SEO agencies use to describe how quickly a business accumulates backlinks. You want to accumulate backlinks slowly.

Now, you can’t have too many good-quality links, that’s for sure, but you can most definitely have too many spam links.

If a website has too many spam links, this can trigger a link penalty.

Come to the best

Walsh & Partners is owned and managed by Ryan Walsh.

Ryan has over 10 years of experience in organic and local SEO. We firmly believe that the power of high-quality SEO should never be underestimated.

Partnering with a reputable SEO agency can help a business thrive; partnering with the wrong agency can cause a business to struggle and even fail. This is the extent to which an SEO company can make a fundamental difference.

Come to one of the most well-known companies in Cardiff: Walsh & Partners.