How do backlinks and internal links affect domain authority?
If you’ve ever wondered “what are backlinks?”, or find yourself baffled by domain authority, we’re here to help you decode the jargon.
Gaining valuable backlinks and creating an optimal internal link structure can increase your website’s domain authority [earning vital search engine brownie points]. Today’s blog post focuses on how to utilise your link-building strategy to improve your website’s domain authority and gain a higher ranking position in relevant searches for supercharged search engine performance.
What is a backlink?
Backlinks direct you from a page on one website to another. You can either earn a backlink by having another website link to your site or you can create a backlink to another website by linking to it. Either way, these links boast a powerful search engine boost. The more contextually relevant links you have from websites with high domain authority, the higher ranked your website is for relevant search queries. This in turn makes it more discoverable for search engines and useful for site visitors, as they direct them to a relevant resource through a clickable link and generate referral traffic.
How do you get more backlinks?
There are three methods for generating more backlinks:
Build backlinks
Backlinks are built by reaching out to other site owners and editors and asking them to link to your page. Demonstrating a clear value proposition increases the likelihood of a link being built, so offer to write a one-off post for them on your specialist subject or suggest your link as the replacement for any broken or dead links on their website.
Earn backlinks
Backlinks are earned when people choose to link to your page after organically discovering your impressive content on search engines. Helpful content that offers specialist knowledge is more likely to be referenced, so ensure your content maintains a high quality that will engage your audience and give you a competitive edge.
Create backlinks
Backlinks are created when you manually add links from other sites onto your website, such as submitting a business directory entry or commenting on a blog. They can make quite an impact on the user experience [for better or worse] so choose wisely.
What are internal links?
An internal link directs visitors to a different page on the same website [like this link which links to our homepage], so they stay on the same domain. When placed effectively, internal links can help users navigate your website easily and explore your full offering, spread link equity across your site and create an information hierarchy on your website.
What are external links?
External links direct visitors to a domain outside of your own, from a page on your website to another site. In this sense, they’re essentially backlinks.
What is an internal link structure?
Internal link structure refers to the layout of your internal links within your wider website architecture. A strong internal link-building structure should try to create a minimal number of links between the homepage and any of the other pages on your site to aid your page crawlability for site engines and improve the overall user experience.
An ideal internal link structure follows a pyramid formation, with the homepage on top and any category and subcategory pages underneath to allow link equity to seamlessly flow throughout the entire site.
What is domain authority?
Domain authority is a search engine ranking score that predicts how likely a website will rank on search engine result pages [think of it as an ‘SEO credit score’]. The score is based on website index data such as linking root domains and the total number of links on a website. It isn’t a Google ranking factor and doesn’t influence search engine result pages, but it can be used to help you understand how competitively your site will perform in Google search results to help you optimise your performance.
How to improve domain authority
There’s no quick fix, but websites with a large number of high-quality links from external websites will rank higher on the domain authority scale, whereas the websites of smaller businesses tend to have much lower scores because they have fewer inbound links. Newly-built websites always start with a domain authority score of one, which increases as the site develops and earns more authoritative backlinks, so stay consistent in your strategy.
When a high authority website links to a page on your website, this creates a backlink that increases your domain authority. If you then link to other pages on your website from that page, this will build internal links that spread the domain authority you received around your website to maximise the benefits for your site.
Therefore, focusing on increasing the number of high-quality links directed to your site will not only increase your domain authority but will also improve the overall SEO performance of your website. [Bonus!]
Have your backlinks given you the slip? Leave it to the professionals and allow our talented SEO team to rein them in. We’ll create your bespoke link-building strategy to give you a step up in the search engine rankings and review your wider site layout to see how we can squeeze the most out of your content. Let us know how we can help with a quick chat on 0115 671 3868.
