Backlinks Help You Build Affinity with Your Target Market

I’m an internet marketing Neanderthal. The World Wide Web is simply a means to an end – the end being relationship building — for me. My business website is meant to build a bridge to prospective clients in my target market and anyone who cares to know more about me or my work.

When I approached Jeff at AlignTech Solutions for help with my business website, he told me, among many other techy details, about backlinks. The only thing I care about, I told him, is whether these things called backlinks will help me to build affinity with people.

A backlink is basically an incoming hyperlink from one website to a page or blog post on your website. Generally speaking, the more backlinks you have pointing back to your website, the more popular it will be. “Popular,” to a relationship-driven person like me, means acceptance and affinity.

Some Reminders About Backlinks

1. When someone links to my website or one of my blog posts or social media posts, it’s an electronic way of telling others, “Hey, I think what Betsy Rozelle has to say is relevant and important.” To Google and others who care about web traffic, those links to my site mean that it’ll rank higher on search engine pages.
2. When I comment in someone’s forum and add a link to my site, I just shouted, “Hey, I can relate to what you’re saying here, and I think your readers will relate to what I’m saying on my site, too!” That’s the exact type of affinity-building I aim for in all my electronic communications.
3. Backlinks signify trust. I’m not going to link to another website if I don’t trust that its content is what I want my readers to see. A backlink to my site is a vote of trust and confidence, and I don’t take that lightly. Neither should you.

The bottom line: If you have good, relevant content, other sites will link back to you. Make your content linkworthy, so that others want to be associated with it. If you’re like me, you’ve not (yet) been maximizing your website’s ability to build influence and affinity. How will you be more deliberate about that? I’d love to hear your ideas.