Why inbound linking is important for SEO

As you know, inbound linking and outbound linking are among the most important elements of SEO. We can find them for example in an off-page SEO strategy , to increase the referencing and the authority of your domain.

These links are used to share additional information about the content to search engines, and what they bring to Internet users. The purpose of this article is to better understand the difference between inbound links and outbound links, and their benefits.

This question has been asked over and over by many website owners. When it comes to SEO, there are a lot of techniques and methods you can use to stay ahead in the competition, from reducing bounce rate to using keywords, the list goes on. Inbound linking has been popular, websites have jumped to top spots using it, but does it do more harm than good?

What Are Inbound Links?

Both inbound and outbound links are important and are the building blocks of a successful SEO campaign. As their names indicate, inbound links allow, by definition, to bring visitors and therefore traffic to a web page. In contrast, the outgoing link brings out visitors and therefore traffic.

Let’s start with the inbound link, which is a link located on another website, and pointing to a page on your site. An inbound link is also called a ” backlink “, and our last article focuses on this type of link.

Inbound links allow Internet users to easily navigate Google between different domains, while remaining consistent with their searches. To picture a little more, the inbound linking constitute virtual bridges between the different sites.
It is essential that these links are added in a natural way, and that the anchor text is composed of strategic keywords, and that it is relevant to the subject of the link.

Why Inbound Linking Is Important?

Backlinks are undoubtedly an important part of SEO. Here are the reasons why:

Higher Engagement

An inbound link, or backlink, is a vote of confidence from other websites. If they have decided to talk to you, it is because you have offered informative and relevant content.

A large number of backlinks, and especially quality backlinks from trusted sites, will increase your domain authority, your credibility and therefore your e-reputation. Visitors will therefore have more confidence in your site if it is validated by others.

Inbound links pointing to a page of your website can also come from an internal link, these links added to easily navigate between your different articles for example. Internet users will then tend to stay longer on your site, which will increase the duration of visitors’ sessions, which can affect the ranking of your site.
These links are easy to use and increase your domain authority and page authority.

Improved Visibility And Ranking Of The Website

Getting inbound links for your website can have a direct impact on the visibility and ranking in the Google results pages of your website.

This type of link, plus optimized anchor text with the right descriptive keywords, will allow crawlers to better understand the subject matter on your web pages, and therefore index them correctly.

An inbound link from a quality site with a lot of readers will bring more or less traffic to your website, and therefore improve your visibility.

To more easily get links pointing to the pages of your website you can:

• Publish unique, informative, and relevant content for your readers
• Promote your content on social networks
• Practice guest-blogging
• Create easily shareable content such as infographics

Can Inbound Links Hurt Your Ranking?

It is still a mystery how search engines like Google calculate page rank even though we do know some things. So it is still uncertain if inbound links harm your website. Many recent studies suggest that inbound links from bad or low ranking websites and forums, private blog networks, and low-quality directories may be causing you harm.

Inbound linking is hard work, and many website owners resort to spamming blog comment sections, something that is of no use in SEO. Multiple low-quality, spammy links will do nothing to improve your ranking and may get you penalized.

Good inbound linking come from authoritative websites and use natural anchor text. What was anchor text again? Anchor text is clickable words that link one page to another. Natural anchor text means that you are not randomly hyperlinking keywords.

What Are The Best Practices For Inbound Linking?

Here are a few tips to help your website make the most of SEO.

• Make sure you maintain excellent blog content. This will allow people to want to link to it and thus organically generate inbound links.
• Create case studies about your clients. This a great way to get them linking to your website. To make this work, you need to make your clients look good, so make sure you choose customers who are aware of your products and services and are satisfied with your results.
• Create free tools and shareable templates. This is a great way to get people to link to your website. Opt for tools and templates that will make your audience’s job easier.
• Do something funny. In today’s world, funny things spread like wildfire. You can create humorous content that is linkable, just be sure to do some research on how your audience will respond, you don’t want to go about offending anyone.
• Don’t stuff keywords. Just because there are a lot of keywords doesn’t mean that you have to use all of them. Adding too many keywords will get your content labeled as spam, and all your hard work will go to waste.
• List your business in relevant web directories available on the web that you can create a page on. Some are chargeable, while others are free.
• Several websites with an editorial content platform use guest bloggers to feed their platform. See if such a relevant platform in your industry could allow you not only to reach an interesting audience, but also to link to one of your own articles or offers on your website.

What Are Inbound Links For A Website?

Why are these links so important? Quite simply because Google can see the inbound linking that point to your site. This means that other sites recommend that users to visit your website . And according to Google’s algorithm, if other sites talk about you through a link, then your site is interesting.

These inbound links therefore prove to the search engine that your site is relevant. In the process, Google therefore tends to make the pages of your website move up in search engine results.

In other words, if you want to get ahead of your competitors, it is important to be better than them on this criterion of external links .

When it comes to the links on your website, you can build internal links . These are links between the pages of your site. Thus, you allow the Internet user to consult a page on a specific subject without leaving your site. The creation of links between your pages is called the “internal mesh”. This SEO technique is recommended by Google because it improves the user experience on your site.

For SEO specialists (SEOs), inbound linking is an integral part of good SEO practices. When an SEO consultant talks to you about SEO optimization, he necessarily thinks of inbound links (backlinks) . However, do not rely only on inbound links to appear in first place in Google. Getting a site to rank well on search engines is a job that requires experience and time.

What Are Outbound Links?

You will understand, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to understand that an outgoing link , also called an external link, is the opposite of an inbound link, and therefore represents a link placed on a page of your own website pointing to another. You will therefore send traffic and therefore Internet users to another external domain.

With these links, you encourage your visitors to visit another website or blog. Also, make sure that these outgoing links point to quality content that is relevant to your readers, at the risk of losing credibility.

This type of link is often little used, since website or blog owners are sometimes afraid to deviate and lose readers to other content. But using external links sparingly, and providing your readers with quality references, will only add value to your site.

Why Are Outbound Links Important?

Increase Relevance

Thanks to the different links on your site, search engines like Google can learn a lot about you and your content. They will collect different information, whether it is on your field of activity, your competitors, or the relevance of your pages.

If your outbound links point to high authority pages, you will only increase the trust Google places in your website.

Improve Reputation

In a logical sequel to the first point, by placing outgoing links to quality and high authority sites, you improve your business reputation on the internet.
Internet users often do not have the time to visit a large number of websites to find all the information they are looking for. By providing them with quality links in your content, you will be seen as an expert in your field, offering relevant and complete content.

Boost Value

Quality content is what will set you apart from the competition. By using an external link pointing to other quality content, you will naturally increase the value of your pages.

Visitors will then be more likely to come back to read your content, if they know that you have good content.
By thus boosting the value of your pages, Internet users will come back to your website, your domain authority will increase, at the same time as the trust placed in your site, and therefore improve its ranking.

Generate Backlinks

Outbound links can help you build and network with other website owners or bloggers.
By placing links to their content, you validate them and encourage them to do the same for you. And as we saw in the first part of the article, the more your site has a significant number of inbound links, the more your SEO will improve.

Two types of links:

There are two types of links: “nofollow” links and “dofollow” links.

• The nofollow attribute will tell search engines that you don’t want web crawlers to follow this link.
• The dofollow attribute will tell search engines that you want this link to be seen and tracked by crawlers, which will give “juice” to your netlinking.

Conclusion

Links in general, and inbound and outbound links are essential in an SEO strategy, and play an important role in the reputation of your website. These links, and especially their authority and quality, will allow search engines to judge your website, and its value, reputation and ranking will depend on it.
Link your website with quality sites, whether for inbound or outbound links, and search engines like Google will give you more value, trust, and credibility.
Many online tools allow you to rent or even buy links. It will still be necessary to check the quality of these before any transaction.