{"id":20649,"date":"2023-02-06T10:15:29","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T10:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fifteen-staging.fifteen.dev\/blog\/are-backlinks-still-important-for-your-seo\/"},"modified":"2024-09-24T15:08:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T14:08:32","slug":"how-important-are-backlinks-for-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/blog\/how-important-are-backlinks-for-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"How Important Are Backlinks for SEO?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attracting backlinks has been one of the most important factors used by search rankings to determine organic rankings. This has led backlinking to be a core part of an SEO strategy adopted by content marketers and SEO specialists to help their content rank highly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/digital-marketing\/seo\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Backlinks<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> help build the domain authority and credibility for your website. If more people are pointing to a page on your site, then surely it must be valuable and useful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is correct however, with Google\u2019s ever-changing algorithms and updates, it is proving that the value of backlinks is gradually decreasing. When Google finds a link pointing at your website, it can choose to do one of 3 things:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Count it in its ranking algorithm<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Ignore it, or not give it any weight in boosting your rankings<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Penalise you, if it thinks the link is manipulative<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In fact, most people would be surprised to learn how many links don\u2019t actually help you to rank, or can actually hurt. To keep Google happy, it\u2019s recommended to understand Google\u2019s best practices and know what types of links to avoid.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What is a SEO backlink?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first step to understanding how important backlinks are to SEO, is to understand what a backlink in SEO is. An SEO backlink is a link that\u2019s created when one website links to another. This can also be referred to as \u2018incoming links\u2019 or \u2018inbound links\u2019. This link from one website to another represents a \u2018vote of confidence\u2019, which is also picked up by the search engines. This SEO backlink shows Google that other valuable sites are vouching for your content. Overtime as your backlinks begin to grow, you\u2019ll build what\u2019s known as an SEO backlink profile.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What is an SEO backlink profile?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An SEO backlink profile is made up of the number of links and the quality of these links. Google will use this backlink profile to determine your site&#8217;s authority and popularity on a specific topic and decide where your website will rank. It will look at several factors when assessing your backlink profile including naked URLs, anchor text, dofollow and nofollow links and many more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Are there backlink tools for SEO?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes! Backlink tools for SEO allow you to check the number of backlinks pointing to your site and monitor their quality. They also allow you to manage and identify lost backlinks and potential backlink opportunities. Some of the top backlink tools for SEO include <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ahrefs<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEMRush backlink analytics<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/moz.com\/link-explorer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moz Link Explorer<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/linkminer.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Link Minor<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Where can I find a free SEO backlink checker?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It comes as no surprise that a lot of backlink tools for SEO come at a bit of a cost and require subscriptions. However, there are also a lot of free tools out there. Our favourite free SEO backlink checker is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/openlinkprofiler.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OpenLinkProfiler<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Other great free tools are <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.link-assistant.com\/seo-spyglass\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO SpyGlass<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/search.google.com\/search-console\/about\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Search Console<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Check out our SEO backlink building services<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every business with a website would benefit from a long-term backlink strategy to boost your site&#8217;s domain authority. This then allows you to rank higher for more competitive keywords and in turn, drive more traffic to your site for conversions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Find out more about our <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/digital-marketing\/seo\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO backlink-building services<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and how we can grow your SEO backlink profile, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/contact\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">get in touch<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with the team today. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attracting backlinks has been one of the most important factors used by search rankings to determine organic rankings. This has led backlinking to be a core part of an SEO strategy adopted by content marketers and SEO specialists to help their content rank highly. Backlinks help build the domain authority and credibility for your website. [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":27259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[953,1687],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-marketing","category-seo"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.8 (Yoast SEO v27.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Important Are Backlinks for SEO? | Fifteen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We explore how important are backlinks for SEO and how they can improve your website ranking in search engines.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/blog\/how-important-are-backlinks-for-seo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Important Are Backlinks for SEO?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We explore how important are backlinks for SEO and how they can improve your website ranking in search engines.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/blog\/how-important-are-backlinks-for-seo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fifteen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FifteenDesign\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-02-06T10:15:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-09-24T14:08:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/How-important-are-backlinks-for-SEO.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kyle Lindsay\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kyle Lindsay\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How Important Are Backlinks for SEO? 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