Staying relevant in a volatile market is the brass ring of modern businesses. As markets shift and our customers interact with us in new and changing ways, it can be easy for a business to lose its voice. Throw in a global pandemic moving your operations online and the quest to stay relevant becomes a whole lot more important.

That brings us to the topic of backlinks. Strategic networking and links to your website from other high-end sites can make a world of difference for your visibility. Search engines view these as a ranking signal, which helps push your site higher up in the results pages.

In the competitive world of SEO, that kind of edge over your competition is worth its weight in gold. And right now, businesses need every gold coin they can get. Let’s take a closer look.

The Importance Of Backlinks

As the name implies, a backlink is any link created on one website that leads to another site. Also known as “inbound links” in a lot of cases, they form an important part of the SEO process when used strategically. Businesses arrange for links to their websites from high-authority sites. The resulting link equity created by those links helps to drive up their rankings and overall SEO.

Backlinks from big-name websites to yours essentially signal to the major search engines that those websites can vouch for you. Think of it as a popularity contest in school: You could live your whole life being ignored by everyone around you. But having the cool kids say that you’re cool too has a knock-on effect. People will likely assume you’re popular just by association.

In the world of backlinking, big-name websites are the cool kids who “backlink” you in the same way the captain of the football time might by saying, “Hey, this guy’s alright.” Get enough validation like this, and the rest of the school (or just Google) will validate you, too.

G Suite Backlinks

A little insider tip: SEO is a much deeper web than many businesses will ever realize. Even when you have the basics taken care of, there’s always more you could be doing. That’s why it’s important to pay keen attention to new developments and opportunities.

Take G Suite, for instance. These cloud computing and productivity tools are used by 6 million paying businesses and have been in use for many years. But user profiles actually go largely overlooked. After researching new backlinking opportunities, we recently added backlinks to all of our G Suite profiles. And the results were impressive.

Your business emails go to multiple clients and internal sources over the course of an average week. They’re forwarded, responded to, tagged, archived and spread in so many ways. And your user profile accompanies each email, making it the perfect vessel for a link to your website.

Depending on how short each link is, you may be able to fit up to four separate backlinks into your profile. That’s four times the amount of link equity back for your important pages. Your user profiles would have stayed dormant otherwise, but now you have four unique chances to generate traffic.

And the best part? From what I’ve seen, most people aren’t even doing this right now. So get out there and blaze a new trail with your SEO by using the G Suite user profile right under your nose.

Bēhance Backlinks

Sure, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram can be effective for backlinking if used in the right way. But they’re also saturated with users, and getting a quality backlink can be difficult and time-consuming.

Consider using Bēhance, a social media platform that has a solid domain authority, is well-respected and has more than 10 million users. It’s a social media network that acts as a sort of work portfolio for users. There’s a lot of interaction between users and a wide spread of opportunities for your link to travel.

There is more than enough there to make for a solid backlinking campaign. Create a profile, approach leaders in your industry and create a backlink that matters with Bēhance.

YouTube Backlinks

While you’re using this time to reorient your business online, it might be a good idea to reexamine the resources you already have — like your YouTube account.

Beyond creating content yourself, which, let’s face it, can be hit-and-miss for some people, your biggest resource on YouTube is actually other people: relevant creators and people from your industry. These creators have worked their way to the top of your viewership. So why not approach them for a shout-out?

Aim for mid-tier influencers in your industry, and take some time to follow them for a little while before approaching them. Make them understand that you’re a fan and connect with them on that. Then, think about what you can offer them in return for a link and pitch them. Try to offer them real value and you’ll be surprised how many influencers are completely open to it.

As an aside, you may be put off to hear that YouTube backlinks are nofollow links. Don’t be. Links such as these are classified as citations, and they go a long way toward building URL trust with search engines. Many websites offer links like this, but a trusted website will take your website far. I used a backlink analytics tool to confirm that some of my best inbound links come from nofollow links. They work, and they work well.

Backlinking as a marketing strategy has immense potential to increase any website’s visibility. And with more pressure than ever to perform online during these confusing times, don’t you owe it to yourself to look at the whole picture?