Valuable Backlinks Help You Change the World
At the heart of every successful blog is a passionate thought from a creative person. Their ideas flow from their mind directly into digital space for all of us to read. Readers consume these thoughtful expressions and feel a meaningful change in their lives.
There is another thing at the heart of every successful blog: backlinks. The best, most profound, life-changing thoughts can be poured into your blog, but if nobody ever sees it, your potential to change the world has been wasted! Backlinks help your blog get noticed by the masses, and they work toward that goal in multiple different ways:
- More backlinks means audiences from your backlinkers’ websites find you through a direct suggestion from a source they already trust.
- Search engines use backlinks as a key metric in understanding how valuable your blog might be to users who seek information.
- Backlinks help build your brand recognition with the world. When your name appears on websites that users visit, they start to understand your brand exists, strengthening your outward appearance. This even happens with people who are not in your audience yet.
- They also open the door to building relationships with other websites, which could offer more value than just a backlink.
Recently, I wrote a guide on building backlinks for your blog. It is a powerful resource, so check it out if you want to understand backlinks and the process of generating them a bit better.
Backlinks Signal Audience Members
Users of other websites, over time, build trust in the information that the site provides. As a result, when those sites introduce a topic to their audience, their readers tend to explore it. This is something you can make use of! Become the topic a blog introduces to its audience, and their readers will explore your content simply because their already trusted source told them to!
This “Social Proof” concept is incredibly impactful and has a proven history of being an effective marketing tool. Have you ever seen a commercial where a well-known celebrity, one you admire, says that they use some product and then lists a couple of blurbs about why the product is so great? You see it every day! That is taking advantage of Social Proof. Someone you admire or trust tells you to try something because they tried it.
With that in mind, there is a pretty good chance that you do not have the budget to pay a celebrity to promote your blog. Instead, you can work with other “well-known” blogs in your niche and build backlinks to your site from theirs. In this case, the other “well-known” blog will be the “celebrity,” and their users will be the fans that follow their advice. Those users will receive the signal that your blog is worth looking at, which will drive more traffic to you.
Search Engines Use Backlinks
Practically all users on the internet use Search Engines to find the content they are looking for. Since this is the case, you must help Search Engines know that your content is worth displaying to searchers. You do this through several different types of effort because there are several factors Search Engines take into consideration when suggesting content. One major factor is the number and quality of your backlinks.
Backlinks function as a voting system in the eyes of Search Engines. These crawlers find your content through other sites linking to it. When these engines crawl those other sites and they uncover links to your content, these Search Engines view those links as “votes of confidence” (another form of social proof). Those links signal that the other site believes your site has some valuable information for its readers. This, in turn, tells the Search Engine that there might be something important for searchers to read.
The quality of those backlinks is also critical to the Search Engine. Links to your content from other sites should be in a context that is relevant to your site’s niche. For instance, if you have a food blog, links to your site should be content about food. These contextual links will carry more weight than links from a site about repairing cars.
Additionally, when that other site has a lot of Domain Authority or a high Domain Rating, the vote it gives you carries more weight in the eyes of the Search Engine. Tools like Moz or Ahrefs can provide insight into how impactful a “vote” from a given domain might be. Taking our food blog scenario from above, a link from FoodNetwork.com will have significantly more weight than a link from FoodsOfJane.com, simply because FoodNetwork has more authority in the food domain.
With this in mind, you will not be able to start with links from a highly authoritative site unless you know someone working there and have an inside contact that can hook you up. Instead, target getting backlinks from lower authority sites first. Then once you build up your authority, you can leverage your authority with the content you have written on those lower authority sites to convince those higher authority sites that your content is worth something to their audience.
Once you start building your link network with these other sites, Search Engines will start recognizing your blog in the same light as those high-authority sites. The more of these contextual backlinks you have, the more your site will be suggested to searchers.
Build Brand Recognition With Backlinks
Have you ever been in the grocery store and seen two options for a product you want for dinner, like mac n’ cheese? You see one of the most well-known brands, Kraft, and a slightly lesser-known brand, Goodles. The Kraft box might be 30% more expensive than the Goodles box, yet in the back of your mind, you still think Kraft is worth the extra cost. Your brain signals that you “know” what Kraft tastes like and that you like the taste. It also tells you that you have only tasted Goodles one other time, and it was more “meh” than you prefer. At that moment, you tell yourself that you know Kraft and you do not know Goodles, and that alone makes you pay the extra 30%.
This is a story we hear all too often. Humans will almost always choose the name they know over the one they do not know. This is one of the components of something called “Brand Awareness.” When people know and trust a brand, they will talk about it. This might happen in person, on social media, and even on their own blog.
The more people talk about your blog, the more people will know about your blog. With backlinks to your content on every site related to yours, no matter where people visit, they will see a conversation about your blog. That exposure will eventually wear most people down. As a result, more people will be curious about your brand. That will lead them to explore what you have to offer. This will, in turn, increase your Brand Awareness.
Create Relationships Using Backlinks
In most cases, before obtaining a backlink from another site to yours, you must talk with a human from that site and convince them that your content is worthy of being promoted to their audience. After all, it is their reputation on the line. They need to understand you before associating their brand with yours. When they do, you can gain considerable benefits. These can catapult you to an even higher level.
Building relationships with other sites and blogs in your niche will get your name out there. When you do good work with one of them, other blogs in your niche will start to take notice. This can happen through casual observation, but it can also develop through intercommunication. When you have a relationship with one player in your niche, that relationship can lead to other crucial relationships.
Beyond that, a relationship with one human might open a door for another meaningful connection with another human. You might converse with the “Head of Guest Posting” for one blog who moonlights as a content writer on another blog. If they are impressed enough with your work or like you, they may drop your name while working on that other blog. This could lead to a new partnership you previously did not even consider exploring.
More relationships means more connections. More connections means more potential backlinks. More backlinks means more potential audience members. A bigger audience means your message is given to more people. That means you have more impact on changing the world.
Build Your Backlinks
Backlinks are a vital element in a successful blog on the modern internet. As a blogger, you cannot afford to pretend they do not exist. Nor can you ignore the power they have. Instead, you should lean into them and make the most of them.
Start your journey today, as I did on LouPrime.com. It can be the difference between 100 monthly visitors to your blog and 10,000. With tools dedicated to analyzing and monitoring your backlinks, it is now easier than it has ever been to build up your authority. It only takes a little work to start getting your name out there.
Check out my guide to backlinks. You will see that it takes a little research and a few simple emails or messages to start a conversation that could net you a valuable backlink. I did it. I know you can do it! Just take that first step and start creating your backlinks today!
