Does Your Website Need SEO Backlinks for Success in 2017?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a term that is familiar to almost anyone that spends any time at all using the internet. However, a relatively small portion of website owners or business people really understand why SEO is so important or how all the factors involved such as SEO backlinks and keywords all work together to determine how a website is ranked. A long list of very good reasons makes SEO important for almost every business in today’s world, regardless if a business happens to primarily do most of its business online or offline.
However, if you don’t think SEO and your website’s ranking matters all that much for your business, I can tell you why it absolutely does matter, and matters a lot. Simply put, your website’s ranking matters because an overwhelming percentage of your customers rely entirely on the search engines to provide them with the best options available when they are looking for a product or service. If your website or business is not highly visible and easy for your customers to find, they will have a long list of competitor websites easily accessible with a simple click of their mouse or tap of their finger.
There are many factors that affect the ranking of your website, actually about two hundred of them, so it’s not a simple equation. It’s no secret the algorithms used by Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engine providers to rank websites have dramatically changed over the last several years. However, through all the changes in SEO one factor that remains a dominant element in achieving a high ranking and ensuring your business is highly visible to customers is still SEO backlinks.
Why Your Business Website Needs SEO Backlinks
The benefits of SEO backlinks to your website are very significant. In fact, Moz.com, a well-known authority on all things related to SEO, recently conducted a study that determined over 99% of websites that ranked in the top 50 search results had backlinks. Additionally, their data revealed a correlation of 0.30 between high ranking websites and backlinks, making it one of the most influential factors in a site’s ranking out of all two hundred website ranking elements.
While there are certainly other important factors as well in how your website ranks, SEO backlinks are absolutely crucial to the success and visibility of your website. The key takeaway is very simple. If you believe it’s important for your business website to be visible, accessible and rank well in the search engines then you must invest the time and resources required to develop quality backlinks.
SEO Backlinks Deliver Real Benefits
Achieving a respectable rank within the search engine results is without question vital to the success of a business in 2017. However, SEO backlinks offer several other key benefits as well that some business owners may not realize.
Get Your Website Indexed and Improve Your Ranking Faster
Backlinks make it easier for the search engines to discover and index all the pages of your website. Having backlinks to your site provides the search engine bots with a direct path to the individual pages of your site and all of the content contained within. This means the bots can evaluate all of the other SEO factors of your website and provide a higher ranking if you have followed proper SEO guidelines.
Targeted Traffic and Higher Conversions
Developing SEO backlinks provides direct referral traffic to your website. If done properly, this traffic is highly relevant to your product or service and the chances of these visitors becoming a reader, customer or long-term client of your business is perhaps greater than almost any other way you might encounter a potential prospect. Traffic to your website from visitors that already have an interest in your product or service is invaluable and gives you a significant edge on your competitors.
Reduce Marketing Costs and Build a Foundation for Long-Term Success
Achieving a higher website ranking in the search engines, capturing targeted traffic and ensuring your business is in a position to effectively compete in the marketplace can dramatically change the outlook of your business on a long-term basis. All of these benefits increase customer loyalty, produce real revenue you can track and significantly reduce marketing costs over time as your client base builds.
This in turn dramatically improves profitability, allows you greater control over your business and builds a solid foundation for long-term growth.
While there are certainly many factors involved in starting and operating a successful business, investing the time and resources required to develop SEO backlinks as a focus area in your overall SEO strategy should not be overlooked. Many times, spending additional money on marketing related activities for your business is something that can be difficult to justify, especially if you have a hard time identifying a significant return on your investment.
However, when it comes to investing in SEO backlinks, the short and long-term return on your investment is something you can identify in real dollars, actual profits and long-term growth.
