The e-commerce sector will become more competitive in 2025, with the International Trade Administration expecting it to reach $5.5 trillion by 2027. Given that online platforms offer great opportunities for reaching new audiences, many businesses are turning to them to stay ahead. However, with this trend, businesses are always faced with the challenge of standing out.
Good enough, backlinks can actually help get ahead of this competition. In fact, according to some experts, link building comes in third place after content and keywords in terms of SEO strategies. So, to understand how these links can help you, continue to read on.
Their role in SEO
Well, it’s quite unfortunate that with all the benefits backlinks offer, studies show that nearly two-thirds of businesses are yet to implement them. Worse still, about 41% of companies claim that backlinking is their biggest SEO challenge. Thankfully, several tools have emerged to help avoid these challenges. For instance, with a backlinks checker , you can identify potential link-building opportunities, assess competitors’ backlink profile and so on.
If you want to rank high on Google or any other search engine in 2025, you don’t want to ignore this strategy. From their definition, backlinks are basically hyperlinks from one website to another. They serve the role of a citation or reference and can improve your rankings by linking to more reputable and authoritative sites. You don’t have to limit your SEO efforts to only on-page efforts like optimizing keywords.
This off-page strategy can be beneficial, especially because it adds to your authoritativeness. It’s just like when a trusted friend recommends a product or business. Well, given an option, you’ll likely select the recommended brand just because you trust your friend. That’s similar to the effect quality backlinks have on search engines.
On top of that, backlinking helps make your content easily discoverable. You don’t want to bear the consequences of orphaned pages, which usually have problems with crawlability. In fact, search engines like Google may view them as a sign of poor maintenance.
Since Google is more likely to revisit a page that it has already crawled, implementing backlinks can help ensure you don’t waste quality content and miss out on the opportunity to get ahead of competitors.
More benefits
It shouldn’t be surprising that more than 40% of businesses spend approximately $1000-$5000 monthly to build links. And just like we already said, this can be a great way to improve brand awareness and reputation.
The business world is becoming super competitive, and you want to take advantage of such opportunities to acquire and retain as many customers as possible. Therefore, earning backlinks from websites with numerous monthly visitors can really help improve your brand awareness.
Imagine the benefits you can reap, given that, according to FasterCapital , 90% of customers are more likely to transact with organizations they recognize. But that’s not all. Backlinking can also improve your domain authority.
And even though Google doesn’t consider domain authority as a ranking factor, it can be helpful when assessing how to gain an edge against competitors. Of course, the higher your domain authority, the higher the chances of earning top spots on search engine results. So, as much as search engines don’t use it to rank, you can use it to determine whether your efforts are yielding fruits.
Some key considerations for building high-quality backlinks
In the past, Google did not really prioritize the quality of backlinks. Ranking was quite straightforward, as it was directly proportional to backlinks. However, the problem with this was the associated manipulative processes that included link farms. And if you can remember, many sites in the late 2000s compromised user experiences by offering spammy sites just because they wanted to rank high.
In response to these manipulations, Google made the following updates to its algorithm:
- The Penguin update of 2012 to penalize websites using manipulative link schemes and other spammy tactics to improve rankings
- The 2013 Hummingbird update that prioritized user intent and relevance over the number of raw links
- The 2015 RankBrain update to improve the evaluation of context and quality of backlinks using machine learning.
With Google’s commitment to user experience, you can be sure it pays more attention to backlinking. With that in mind, let’s explore some things you must keep in mind as you implement this SEO approach.
Generate link-worthy content
Already, over 89% of marketers are creating content with the aim of building links. If you have to stand out, your content must be able to solve problems, offer unique insights and answer questions. Consider:
- Conducting original research to provide valuable insights
- Infographics that are easy to share
- In-depth guides and tutorials
Guest blogging
As simple as it may sound, guest blogs can actually increase lead generation. Looking at the statistics, experts claim that about 65% of backlinks are obtained from guest posting. It not only helps you to build relationships with other brands, but it also helps increase your brand’s visibility among new audiences.
Plus, providing quality blogs can help establish you as an authority in your niche. Besides getting you backlinks, it could also increase retention rates because customers will always be coming back to your blogs if they need to understand something. This can add to your organic growth, as they may become your brand ambassadors.
Broken link-building strategy
Here, you assess broken links on other sites and recommend yours as a replacement. Once you have identified the links, you can contact the site owner to tell them about the issue. You may want to track the backlinks you receive and analyze their impact on your SEO. Based on the results, continuously refine your strategy.
Quality over quantity
We have already hinted at how Google has shifted from prioritizing quantity to quality. To assess the quality, it considers the following factors:
- Relevance: Always consider whether a link’s context makes sense and whether linking it could offer further information to users and search engines. Relevance ensures you can attract more relevant traffic.
- Placement: Always ensure the links are as natural as possible to avoid them coming across as spammy
- Link diversity: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – vary your sites
- Use trustworthy link sources
Backlinking has come a long way, from when marketers depended only on the number of links to now when quality is non-negotiable. Now that user experience has become king, search engines like Google are paying more attention to the quality of backlinks than quantity.
And as a marketer seeking maximum yield, you want to take advantage of such trends to stay ahead. With experts expecting the e-commerce world to grow rapidly in 2025, launching a website successfully is becoming more challenging. But by rightly using strategies like backlinking, you can always ensure that you maximize your return on investment.
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