How Fewer Backlinks Can Actually Get Your Website Better SEO Results

Building backlinks is a complicated and time-consuming process. Unfortunately, it’s also crucial for building your online presence. 

Backlinks are a powerful part of your SEO strategy. In order to make the top ranking of a search engine results page, you need to prove to Google and other search engines that your content is worth the top slot. With backlinks, you’re able to show these search engines that other websites value what you’re creating. 

With each backlink you secure, your website is given another “vote.” The more “votes” your website collects, the more likely you are to see your content reach the top of a search engine results page. 

However, each vote is not counted equally. When securing your backlinks, search engines will give each link a different weight. While having a high number of backlinks is great for optimizing your website for search engines, it matters more how strong those sources linking to you are. 

When it comes to securing backlinks, you want to focus more on high-quality backlinks and less on getting as many backlinks as possible. When you’re establishing the right connections, fewer backlinks can actually help your website. 

Let’s take a look at how you can secure the right backlinks to improve your search engine visibility.

1. Clean Up Your Website’s User Experience

Backlinks are only one part of a search engine optimization, or SEO, strategy. While they are an important component, they aren’t the only thing you need to focus on if you want your pieces to reach the top of a search engine results list. Other factors, such as user experience, may be holding you back. 

If your website is riddled with technical errors, difficult to navigate pages, or hard to read text and design, it may be pushing your visitors away. When website visitors are coming to your page only to leave almost immediately, this signals to search engines that there is something wrong with your site. 

In order to improve your user experience, you need to eliminate potential technical errors that may be holding you back. Check the speed of your website, whether or not your site is mobile-friendly, and if you’re posting duplicate content. Other technical errors may include redirects or lost-page errors. 

Eliminating these technical errors can remove another hurdle standing in your way from reaching the top search engine slot. When you know your visitors will have a positive user experience when they reach your website, you can focus on securing the right backlinks to bring your content even higher on a search engine results list.

2. Reformat Your Site’s Architecture

When setting up your website, you want to create a natural path to help your visitors find the content they’re looking for. The architecture of your site, or the way your pages flow from one to the next, needs to consider how a website visitor may browse within your site. This is also true for search engine crawlers. 

Anytime a visitor or crawler lands on your website, they need to have a clear understanding of where they should go next. If your site architecture is confusing or poorly laid out, visitors may come to your site, become confused on where to find the information they need, then decide to leave. Additionally, if crawlers need to comb through page after page to find relevant content, this will impact your search engine ranking. 

Reformatting your site’s architecture can make it more apparent to visitors and crawlers what your site can provide. By establishing a hierarchy to different pages, it becomes easier for crawlers to get a grasp of what kind of information is on your website. The more they understand your value, the fewer backlinks you’ll need. 

Think about what your visitors may want to engage with next when they land on your website from an inbound link. Push those readers to a product page, your homepage, or even an about page for your brand. This clear pathway can encourage both search engine crawlers and potential leads to keep browsing.

3. Focus on Your Content’s Value

Cleaning up your technical errors and establishing a clean site architecture is important for laying a solid foundation for your backlink strategy. While these steps can help clear the path to the top of a search engine results list, it isn’t enough to reach that first slot. In order to secure quality backlinks, you need to create content that has real value for your clients and customers. 

Creating strong content is the most important step in your backlink strategy. In order to convince a website or blog to link to yours, you need to prove that you know what you’re talking about, that you have a unique perspective, and that you’ve put real time and attention into the content you’re developing. 

When you’re creating content, think about the target audience – not the search engines – that you want to reach. Consider what questions they may have when they get online, what kinds of content they like to engage with, and what information they need to move to the next step of the buyer’s journey. Putting the reader’s needs over a search engine can help you gain more organic attention and increase the number of links you can secure. 

Putting the focus on the content you’re creating can help you make more genuine connections with other websites and blogs. When the owners of the websites and blogs see that you’re sharing information that is valuable, they’ll want to connect with your page and include links to your website. If you’re able to secure organic backlinks from authoritative sources, you can get ahead with fewer backlinks.

Conclusion

When it comes to your backlink strategy, more isn’t always more. If you want to see your page reach the top of the search engine results list, you need to put in the work to establish a solid plan that can help you create long-lasting relationships and connections. 

Rather than beginning your backlink strategy by trying to secure as many links as possible, think about how you can build up your website to improve your overall quality. When you thoroughly think through the work, attention, and needs of your website and create content that fits the expectations of your target audience, you can see better SEO results.