Once upon a time, backlinks were basically the “be all end all” of SEO. You wanted a website to rank, you blasted a bunch of backlinks all over the web and that was it.
However, Google quickly put an end to that, as they realized that people were taking advantage of it. So backlinks were essentially de-valued in regards to how big of a part they play in Search Engine Optimization.
Now, the real question is – Are they still relevant for SEO in 2022?
Sort of.
It depends how you want to go about doing the SEO.
I say sort of because these days you can make a website rank without backlinks at all. Especially if you’re in a niche that is not as competitive, you can get a website to rank by writing really good content, good blog articles that you post regularly, good internal linking, and over time you’ll get the website to rank.
As a side note, you’ll get some backlinks occurring naturally, from social media and similar.
Now, backlinks certainly do work, and definitely can help you get your website to rank – as long as you make backlinks on quality websites that Google sees as trustworthy.
And example of this would be if you are doing local SEO, directories like Yelp or Hotfrog can be good places to list your website and make a link.
However, they should only be used as a supplementary to your main SEO strategy. You shouldn’t rely on backlinks alone,. While some backlinks can make a big difference, without quality content and a well structured website you’ll have a hard time ranking.
If you do rely mainly on backlinks and actually manage to pull it off, it’s likely that your website’s ranks will fall at one of the future Google updates – That’s the unfortunate reality of what’s happening now.
So, make sure that the website itself is very, very high quality, you’re posting high quality content and well written, regular blog articles and you’ve got the 3 pillars of SEO covered.
Then, use backlinks as a booster to help Google index the website faster, and get it to rank faster.
One thing to note, bad backlinks can have a catastrophic effect on your SEO. Even good links can go bad, and can tank your site, which you may never be able to recover from. So keep this in mind when making backlinks.