Quality backlinks are important for SEO, as they help you achieve better keyword rankings and drive more organic traffic.
But how does that work exactly? Let’s go through it.
Improve rankings for target pages
Remember, a link to a page is basically a vote for it—the site linking to your site thought your page was worth linking to.
The PageRank metric works by assessing links coming into a page and giving that page a score. In technical terms, dofollow links pass PageRank to the target page—if the source page has a high PageRank score, it’s more likely that the page it’s linking to will have a high score as well.
That’s particularly true if lots of pages with high PageRank scores link to a particular page.
Why does that matter?
Because pages with a higher PageRank score will, on average, perform better in search results than those with a lower score.
If you have a page that’s struggling to rank, despite it having good on-page and technical SEO, consider earning some links that point directly to the page in question—for example, via a digital PR campaign.
Help pages get indexed faster
When you add a new page to your site, you ideally want Google to index it as fast as possible. That means it’s in Google’s database and is eligible to show up when someone searches for a relevant term—and to drive traffic.
If you have a big site, Google can’t crawl every page every day. It has limited resources, known as a crawl budget.
However, if your new page already has some high-quality links pointed at it, Google is more likely to find it quickly. You’re essentially making the page more discoverable, as it’s possible to find the page via the backlinks, as well as through your sitemap and internal links.
Backlinks also help show Google that the page is important, reputable, and worthy of being indexed.
Contribute to domain-level trust
Backlinks don’t just impact the pages they target, but also your website domain as a whole. That’s why SEO tools measure domain authority, as well as the authority of individual pages.
It makes sense that Google considers this: Imagine a site where all of the backlinks point at a single blog post, versus a site where many pages have backlinks targeting them.
Which one would you judge as the better website?
A varied backlink profile that links to many different pages on your site contributes to domain-level trust and can help improve rankings across the whole site, not just the pages that are linked to.
Support topic cluster authority
A topic cluster is a themed section of a website where each sub-page addresses one aspect of a topic as a whole.
For example: The NASA website organizes its content into broad themes, such as Humans in Space.
If a topic cluster has backlinks pointed at it from sites or pages that are also on that theme, it adds to the impression that you’re an expert on that subject or topic. Particularly if the links are of a high quality.
This content hub features information on individual missions, as well as other topics connected with the central theme.
And if we look at the backlinks pointed at this cluster, there are a number that could help support the idea that NASA is an expert in this subject:
- Wikipedia
- Universe Today
- Scientific American
Influence AI Overview visibility
You’ve probably noticed that Google search results now include AI-generated content for some searches. These are known as AI Overviews.
Brand mentions are more important than backlinks when it comes to visibility in AI Overviews and generative AI platforms in general, but backlinks could still be useful.
Many AI platforms are either tied to a search engine or have their own ability to crawl the web. It’s unlikely that backlinks are a direct ranking factor like they are with traditional search engines.
But these platforms are using the internet as a source, and backlinks are a key part of the topography of the web. It makes sense that there would be an indirect relationship between sites that do well in AI overviews and those with good backlink profiles.
And don’t forget that backlinks are often accompanied by brand mentions. Earning more links is a good way of earning more mentions, and vice versa.
Nofollow links matter
Since 2020, Google sees the “nofollow” attribute as a signal rather than a directive—think of it as a hint or suggestion. In the past, Google would never explore a nofollow link, but nowadays, they might.
That means it’s less clear how Google handles these links than it used to be.
It’s quite possible that Google will now sometimes pass PageRank via these links. That means a nofollow link from a site with a high PageRank score has a chance to improve the PageRank of the page it’s linking to. And Google might also use nofollow links for discovering new content.
Having some nofollow links as part of your overall backlink profile could have a direct impact on SEO. And even if it doesn’t have any, they:
- Ensure your backlink profile looks natural
- Drive referral traffic
- Can be an indirect signal accompanied by a brand mention