I am often asked about backlinks and whether or not you can generate traffic to your website without building any.
Backlinks still remain an important factor in SEO but there are certainly more ways than ever before to start sending traffic towards your website.
In this article, we will look at backlinks in detail and how you can start generating traffic to your website without the need to build any at all.
What are backlinks?
- What are backlinks?
- Are backlinks important?
- Do backlinks increase traffic?
- How can you boost traffic without backlinks?
- Can you do SEO without backlinks?
- Can I rank on Google without backlinks?
- Conclusion
Firstly, let’s introduce exactly what backlinks are…
Backlinks are when a website links from one site to another. High-quality backlinks are like votes of confidence for your website. The more high quality, relevant links you have pointing at your website, the more authority you have in Google’s eyes and they are still a significant signal of trust which in turn help websites rank higher.
Whilst they are an important ranking factor for Google’s algorithm, there are many other ranking factors that are also important. Some of the other key ranking factors include:
- Optimised metadata
- Content quality and relevance
- User experience
- Technical SEO
- Social presence
- Internal links
- Content coverage
Are backlinks important?
Backlinks are important for SEO and are certainly one of the more significant signals to tell Google what it is your website offers.
Backlinks can not only be a source of authority and relevance for Google but they can also drive potential customers from one site to the next. This means that the more links you have on other credible sites within your industry, the more eyes you can put on your website and grow your following.
Do backlinks increase traffic?
Backlinks can certainly increase the traffic to your website. Again, the more links you have on relevant websites, the more chance there is to drive traffic.
Whilst backlinks can be a significant driver of traffic, there are certainly more ways than just building links to increase traffic.
How can you increase traffic without backlinks?
You can certainly start attracting traffic to your website without the need to build backlinks. Having good quality content that your potential users want to read is far more important and sharing this to your audience on social media will immediately bring traffic to your website without the need to build backlinks.
Some of the best ways you can begin to attract traffic to your website include:
- Social media
- Creating user-focused content
- Building brand awareness
- Asking the audience to engage and share your content
- Driving PPC traffic to your website
Can I rank on Google without backlinks?
You can certainly rank in Google without any link building. Whilst building external links still remains an important part of SEO, depending on the competitive nature of your niche, you can most certainly rank without links.
Consider the competitive landscape of your niche
As a part of your SEO strategy initially, it is important to analyse the competitive landscape of the keywords you wish to rank. You can use free and paid SEO tools that will analyse your competitors’ backlinks and tell you how competitive it is based on the number of links they have pointing at their website.
Content coverage
A well-optimised website that is full of quality content covering a number of related queries and topics that provides a great user experience is the website that is going to stand the test of time. Providing a good experience for your users and providing quality content is what is going to help your website long term.
Internal linking
You can also focus your efforts on building links internally as a way to drive traffic to the pages you wish to rank higher. This is going to send traffic to relevant pages and will ultimately benefit the user experience, as well as make it easier for Google to find all of the pages within your website.
Conclusion
You can certainly drive traffic to your website without the need to build backlinks to your website. Social media is a great way to drive awareness and build an audience and means that if you have a website, naturally your audience will be interested in it and visit. By creating quality content that engages your readers, you can certainly drive traffic in this way. Whilst backlinks are important, there are certainly a lot of other ways to help increase traffic and your SEO presence. Ultimately, you need to approach SEO from all angles and try to do as much of everything as well as you possibly can.
