You know as well as us that building relationships and establishing credibility are key to closing deals. Well, the same goes for your company's website in the digital world. Backlinks, or links from other websites to your company's website, can serve as a "digital referral" of sorts, which indicate to search engines that other reputable sources vouch for the credibility and authority of your website.

Before you rush to create or request links from just any old website, you need to understand that not all backlinks are created equal. The relevance, authority, and credibility of the linking website all play a role in determining the value of a backlink. For example, a link from a well-established industry website (e.g a Government or education website) with high credentials will carry a lot more weight than a link from an unknown or low-authority website (e.g your mates sports blog).

However, just like in the sales industry, the backlink market is not immune to shady practices such as buying or trading links. These practices can ultimately harm your website's visibility in search results and even lead to penalties from Google.

So, what's a good strategy to request and embed trustworth links?

The key is to focus on building relationships and creating valuable content that will naturally attract backlinks. Just as you would network and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry to attract potential clients, your company's website should aim to do the same.

By creating valuable and informative content, such as linkable whitepapers, case studies, or industry reports, that addresses the specific needs and pain points of your target audience, you will position your company as a credible source of information in your industry and increase the chances of other reputable websites linking to your content. Place these key pieces of information on your domain as well as social media sites (eg LinkedIn) where you know that they can be read, shared and spread across the web with ease.

As discussed, backlinks can be a great way to boost your website's visibility in search results, but they're not the only factor. Your SEO strategy needs to also focus on producing relevant content, ensuring your site is well structured, loads quickly and can be viewed online with ease. We often say if you create content and links just for SEO purposes, they never do as well as the links and content that are created for the benefit of your clients.

So continually focus on creating valuable (linkable) content and building relationships with other reputable websites in your industry to attract natural backlinks and watch your organic reach (and leads) soar.