The Importance of External Links in SEO

Every single business wants to boost search engine ranking and improve their SEO, and there are few metrics more powerful than external links. Why is this so valuable? External links point to and validate your website, ultimately increasing website stats and improving visibility for customers.

To better understand how we can benefit from this process, we should understand how link building works, how it’s measured, and what we can do to capitalize on this trusted and highly sought-after search engine metric. It’s definitely worth the time and investment.

What are External Links in SEO?

Quite simply, external links are hyperlinks from other websites that target your website, defining an external source of traffic and referrals. So, if a customer or client links to you, this qualifies as an external link or is sometimes referred to as a backlink. If you reciprocate this courtesy for them, you’ve provided them an external link, too.

The Power of Referral

The top SEO agencies around the world agree that external links are more powerful than internal links (which are still valuable), as they are actually one of the strongest controllable metrics in how to improve SEO.

It means we should be giving this area our full attention since it’s something we can actually work on and improve. The bottom line? What other people say about you carries more weight than what you say about yourself. So, while you optimize your website for Google and any search engines, consider how external links might be able to elevate your SEO ranking.

How and When to Achieve This

There is no better time to start than now. They also say it’s better to give than to receive, but it’s also nice to exchange. After building rapport with a client, a good and easy ice breaker in the SEO conversation could be providing an external hyperlink to help this new business partner become better optimized for search engine ranking.

You can use descriptive and relevant keywords in the hyperlink anchor text, reflecting the same topic or keywords as your client. Since it’s housed on your website, think of this as enhancing content for your visitors (and search engines, helping website stats) while offering a handy source of information for a useful referral.

Then, ask your customer or client to do the same for you on their website and offer you a backlink in the same way. Again, they should use relevant anchor text and a hyperlink to your website or a specific landing page. If you reciprocally do this and optimize correctly, you can both benefit from Google’s search algorithm which, by the way, is constantly changing.

Building Links – Why is it Important?

Research shows that building links or gaining external hyperlinks over time is one of the most important traits for boosting search engine ranking. Why? It’s known to be one of the most difficult to manipulate, so it typically demonstrates trust and popularity for any given subject. Consider it a third-party vote, where someone else has endorsed you in some way. In fact, there are many ways to devise a good link building strategy.

Other factors that can influence this include the trustworthiness of the source link, the relevance of content between the websites, the ownership (or ideal lack of) between the source and linked content, and the relevance of the anchor text in the content, for SEO purposes.

Consider the Source

Not all websites are created equal. Gaining referral links from trustworthy, high-authority websites is always considered more valuable in search engines and will be reflected this way in the metrics, compared to low-authority websites or those which direct visitors to irrelevant content. So, always consider the link source when considering how to improve SEO.

It’s more than likely that you’re working with genuine, trustworthy clients and customers so, at the very least, try and trade external links with the most reputable.

If used correctly, these SEO efforts can be optimized to earn the best possible result for search engine ranking and boost your website stats. And, while it’s not an overnight victory, these easy steps will help build authority for your site, and the search engines will reward you for your efforts. If you believe your website doesn’t generate enough traffic, this aspect and many others could very likely be improved on.

Work With Us

At Delante, we have built a team of experts, each with their own areas of expertise in the development of long-tail SEO, performance-based advertising, and, yes, building links. We love seeing our clients all over the world to grow, evolve, and improve SEO.

If you’d like help to develop your link building strategy and how this integrates into your wider SEO plan with a free quote, please get in touch for a consultation to find out how we can help.