Why links are important for SEO

Links can be different, but almost every link is important for SEO. WEDEX will tell you about internal, external, and inbound links and why you should use backlinks for SEO.

What are links and why are they needed?

At the beginning of the Internet era and with the emergence of the first principles of SEO, the success of page promotion was reduced to filling it with keywords. In the absence of sophisticated search algorithms, search engines simply analyzed websites and individual pages on the web using the following logic: «More keywords => more likely to match the query => worth recommending to the user.»

And everything would have been fine, but cunning proto-seo experts realized that you can spam with keys and make search engines go crazy. Thus, search engines began to weed out outright scammers and cheaters and began to introduce additional markers of «quality» and page ranking, including links.

Hypertext has become one of the means of measuring the ranking of pages and sites on the web, which Google is actively using today.

A little history about Google and link processing

An interesting algorithm called PageRank, named after one of the company’s founders, Larry Page, is responsible for processing website rankings. The main idea of this algorithm was that the search engine would use links between web pages in addition to keywords to evaluate the ranking factor. In simple words, the number of links to a page equals the quality of that page.

What are backlinks?

For high-quality SEO, the most important links are those that lead from other sources to your site or vice versa – from your site to a source. Such links have different names:

• external links;
• external links;
• backlinks (also known as backlinks).

The essence of such links is that they lead somewhere beyond the main resource. Such links have many different uses, for example:

• a link to your page in another specialized publication or website;
• link to someone else’s blog on your website;
• linking
• etc.

Today, backlinks are one of the most important SEO markers for Google. If your materials or articles are linked to by specialized and thematic sites, it is a wake-up call for search engines: «This site is authoritative, its content can be ranked better!»

Another important SEO aspect is that Google’s search engine crawlers periodically crawl and re-crawl pages on the web. If your website or blog is regularly linked to by other resources, it is more likely that search robots will be able to follow this link to your site and conduct additional indexing of existing or new content.

For these reasons, backlinks are very important for high-quality SEO of almost any website and resource. Let’s take a closer look at the peculiarities of working with links and how to improve the ranking of your website.

Types of links

In general, there are three types of links on the web. The classification can be made based on the purpose of the link. So here are the main types of links.

Internal links

Internal links refer to those links that lead to pages and anchors within the same domain name. In fact, these are the same links to blogs within the site, sales pages, «About Us» pages, etc.

Inbound links

Inbound links are links that lead to your website from other sources. For example, the About page is used to create a Wikipedia article about your business. The author of the article will add a link to the page with the company’s history, which will lead to your website.

Outbound links

Outbound links are links that lead from your site to some other resource. For example, you are writing a long-form article about cat food, some of the information for which you took from the blog of 4paws-of-cats.com.

To preserve your integrity and to inform the search engine that you are not just duplicating content, but linking to another page, you provide a link to the derivative material. Everyone is happy:

• and the owner of the original website, as its rating has increased;
• And you – because the search engine will not classify the material on your site as plagiarism and duplication and will rank your material normally;
• and the search engine – because you reported the derivative text yourself.

What are backlinks?

There are two types of backlinks: inbound and outbound links. These are the links that direct users to another resource and help search engines build authority ratings for websites and pages.

Which backlinks are most useful for my website’s SEO?

Backlinks that lead to your website are the most important for the search engine. They are the most beneficial for SEO promotion, but they are also the most difficult to obtain. If you have a question why this is so, here’s a counter question: «Who really wants to advertise a potentially competitive resource when you can re-rank everything in your own words?»

Reciprocal external links

But not all of the Internet is so hostile to similarly themed resources. It all depends on the context. For example, you can often find a format where two sites cooperate in the following way: both sites publish guest articles in which the authors link to their sites. Another example: the author of site A simply likes the materials from site B, so he or she volunteers to link to it.

You can also order a mention of your site for a basic barter or monetary basis. We’ll talk about this a bit further down, as there are some things to consider.

Difference between quality and low-quality links

Each of the above-mentioned types of links has a direct impact on SEO website promotion. First of all, it is worth highlighting the main signs of links that can worsen a website’s ranking in search engines.

The main negative feature that can characterize a low-quality link is the low quality of the resources on which these links are placed. For example, a link to site A was placed on an Internet forum, among article directories on the Internet, and on FAQ sites. If these resources were previously found to be spammy, spreading false information, and users complained about the quality of the resource, then it is highly likely that the link to site A will also be marked by Google as low-quality. The example is generalized.

The situation may be the opposite – you have placed a link to an unscrupulous website on your website. In this case, your site may be marked by the search engine as «questionable».

Signs of quality links for SEO

And how to create a «high-quality link base»? This is a more interesting question. Here are some characteristics that will help you organize high-quality link building that is useful for SEO promotion:

• The subject of the resource. Your links should be placed on those sites that are relevant to the topic and direction of your industry. That is, if a company sells small sailing boats, you should focus on finding websites that specialize in the same topic, and avoid resources that cover events in the large superyacht industry.
• Resource rating. Before agreeing to place your links on a website, you should make sure that the resource has a positive rating. You can check this by examining the site’s performance, asking the owner about the quantity and quality of traffic, and finding out if there are any problems with spam. As a rule, websites that offer link placement on their pages provide the necessary information on their own to assure the client of the result.
• Content topic. The more relevant the content is to the topic of the article or the page on which it is located, the better. Returning to the example of yachts: if the link to your page offering to buy a used boat is located on a donor page that talks about different types of motors, it is better to find an article that is more relevant to the topic of your page.
• The nofollow attribute. The absence of this attribute allows search engine crawlers to freely explore the links embedded in the page. If this attribute is noticed on the page where your backlink is located, you should contact the donor’s support.

The importance of quality internal links

Not only backlinks are important for SEO. The internal linking system should be transparent and understandable not only to the user but also to search robots, as it allows them to explore your site in more detail. You should also pay attention to the correctness of anchor links and anchors in general.

How to get backlinks and improve SEO?

In general, we can distinguish the following sources of backlinks:

• Social networks. Being active on the pages of thematic communities and accounts will increase your online presence, and therefore
• Adding links to target directories on your own. The simplest example is a complete mapping in Google Maps with the addition of the necessary links. Nowadays, there are a lot of local targeted directories for businesses and even blogs that you can join for free.
• Creating content for other websites on a voluntary reciprocal basis. This example has already been mentioned above, but we emphasize that it is a really effective way to get high-quality backlinks that are relevant to your business.
• Posting reviews. The presence of regular partners is a plus. The ability to share genuinely positive reviews is a significant plus. Returning to the voluntary basis, you can agree with partners to exchange reviews on thematic sites with links to each other. It is important that these are genuine reviews.

So, we have four free ways to get backlinks, i.e. classic SEO tools. What about paid options?

Use of paid backlinks

While «natural» links will really have a qualitative impact and can help SEO in the long run, using paid backlinking services is a slightly more complicated process.

You can check this by looking at statistics and real user reviews. Fortunately, such services exist. For example, Collaborator, PRposting, or LinkStream offer various opportunities for promoting backlinks and link building.

Buying backlinks is a really working tool, but it requires tracking the real effectiveness of links, checking the quality of donor sites, and a general understanding of the market and competitors. This work goes beyond the «pay and get results» conditions, so it is better to delegate it to a responsible SEO specialist.

Conclusions

Backlinks, like internal links, are an important part of SEO.  However, just like other aspects of SEO, links evolve and are redefined over time. Here are some backlinking tips that are relevant for 2025:

• Backlinks are the most valuable and difficult resource to achieve. They act as a kind of «trust marker» for search engine crawlers. A large number of links from trusted websites can help to improve the ranking of your pages and web resources.
• Paid backlinks are OK, but… When it comes to trusted service providers. The aggregator site should accompany your links at all stages of promotion, and even better – provide statistics.
• Natural backlinks are the best option, but… Improving rankings with them may take longer.

Oleksandr Shmidko

SEO Specialist

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