Why Link Building is Still Important in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a constantly evolving landscape that companies have to adapt to. One of the most important limbs of digital marketing is the realm of SEO, which has traditionally been held up with a combination of technical prowess, content creation and link building (backlinks). 

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are links back to businesses from articles or pieces of content published on different websites. They’ve been known to help increase SEO authority and drive traffic. 

However, the rise of AI search and developments in Google’s scrubbing have changed how traditional SEO link-building services are perceived in the industry. Changes in the business have led many to believe that utilising backlinks isn’t a worthwhile practice anymore. 

This blog will share insights into why link building is still an effective and important element of a comprehensive digital marketing approach. It should aid you in understanding how the tides are changing and how the smartest companies are staying abreast of them. 

Link building is still vital to establishing trust (depending on the links)

It might have been enough to utilise low-quality backlink sites as a means of making content more indexable. However, now, especially with AI summaries, Google is increasingly offering the benefits to those who work with and buy quality backlinks. High-quality references and citations are essential for AI visibility. 

The content needs to be helpful and user-friendly before being published on reputable, relevant sites. The principles of E-E-A-T need to be applied to the content and its eventual location if you want it to be recognised by SERPs and AI engines. 

Building links can provide competitive differentiation

Competition is stiff out there these days, meaning many businesses will have websites populated with the best possible technical SEO and perfectly written content. In these cases, backlinks can act as a tiebreaker in terms of rankings. Pages with high-quality referring domains will consistently rank higher than those without. 

Quality backlinks can actually drive referral traffic

Link building used to be all about generating authority behind the scenes, but when you prioritise quality over quantity, you’re actually more likely to generate referral traffic. And as we know, traffic begets more traffic. 

Backlinks still drive indexing and discovery 

Google doesn’t actually know that every page on the internet is out there. In many cases, the search engine needs a path to discover websites. Backlinks on frequently crawled sites act as a faster highway to your content. This allows it to get indexed and ranked. 

Link building requires a considerate approach

Any good backlink-building agency will know that the practice isn’t dead, it’s just changed. Rather than creating as many backlinks as possible, you need to know how and where to buy quality backlinks safely, moving away from maximising numbers to picking for impact. It might be harder, but it should be more rewarding when approached correctly. 

For more insights into the world of link building, get in touch with us at Digital Next today. And to read up about plenty of digital marketing processes, check out our blog!