Best practice: SEO for businesses â Backlinks in 2015

Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be a hard concept to understand at the best of times, but add to this the added complexity of SEO best practices in 2015 and those not in the know can find it impossible to grasp. A number of websites that were well established a few years ago have faded into oblivion thanks to poor SEO practices in the modern age.

Backlinks have been established as a fantastic way to propel a website up and up search engine results pages (SERPs). If people organically link to a website then it is considered a really good sign – and search engines pick up on this. Natural backlinks will make a website more visible, but paid-for backlinks will see websites being punished. The most popular and safest forms of natural backlinks stem from qualified online directories, influential bloggers and credible media sources.

But how are backlinks generated? There are a number of ways for a business or website looking to improve SEO to garner organic backlinks. Some tactics include creating infographics, which can generate backlinks in the hundreds; being active on social media, which can help to promote content and websites and encourage others to share links voluntarily; and requesting links (but not begging for them), which can be a very simple way of gaining the number of links required for SEO success.

Of course, with all the above it is still essential to work on building a brand image that is reliable, insightful and trustworthy. Earning links in 2015 is more labour intensive than in previous years, but the results can often be far more rewarding.

What tactics do you use to build organic backlinks?