Organic traffic is essential for a website. A study by BrightEdge found organic search was the leading driver of website traffic, accounting for over half of traffic to all sites and 73 percent of traffic to business sites.
Furthermore, organic traffic is targeted, meaning visitors who come to your site from search engines are already looking for information and products that your site offers. This makes them more likely to stay on your site, visit again, and possibly become a lead or customer for your business.
So, SEO is crucial for websites. It’s vital to get and stay at the top of the search engine rankings. The first page of Google results receives up to 92 percent of clickthroughs. The top-ranked site has an average clickthrough rate of 28.5 percent, while the tenth-ranked site has just 2.5 percent.
Google Ranking Factors
Google’s website ranking algorithms are closely guarded secrets, and Google updates them periodically. But Google’s engineers have revealed some ranking factors, and careful studies by SEO experts have uncovered others.
There are several categories of Google ranking factors, including domain and on-page factors. Backlinks continue to have a significant impact on site rankings.
A backlink is a link from one web page to another. To search engines, backlinks are significant because they represent votes of confidence from other sites – other site owners consider your site content valuable enough to link to it. So, when you receive a backlink, Google can view that favorably when ranking your web page. Links to your site from another are called inbound links.
But not all backlinks are equal in Google’s eyes. High-quality links are links from sites with higher domain authority, i.e., sites that Google trusts. These are the most beneficial for your site’s SEO. If they’re relevant to your site, all the better. The more high-quality links your site receives, the higher your ranking will tend to be. Low-quality links from sites that Google views suspiciously may hurt your site rankings.
Guest Posting For Backlinks
How do you get high-quality links? One common method is guest posting. This is where you write a post relevant to your site and get it published on a reputable blog in order to get a backlink from the blog to your site. This method has been used for over 10 years by website owners.
An easy way to find blogs is simply by searching for your website topic with the word “blogs” added. Another way is to use Alltop to find popular news sites in various categories.
When considering a blog, keep these things in mind:
- What is its domain authority (check it here)?
- Can you write a post of the length and type the blog expects?
- Are their links do-follow or no-follow? Do-follow links pass the blog’s domain authority to your site, while no-follow links don’t
Strategic guest posting can be an effective method for increasing your site’s rankings. But there are some downsides:
- It takes a long time: sometimes, you must wait weeks for a response from the blog owner, and often there’s no response.
- You are giving away valuable content to blogs that you could have posted on your site.
- You have no control over the blog: in the future, it may engage in shady SEO tactics that will hurt your site’s rankings.
Backlinks are valuable for your website’s SEO, and guest posting can effectively boost your rankings. But you must consider whether you’re willing to expend the time and effort required.
