As we discuss and pitch our SEO services, one question we get a lot is why are linkbacks important? After all there is now a whole cottage industry on doing linkbacks, so why are linkbacks important?

There are two reasons why linkbacks are important.

Traffic

The first reason is traffic. On Tuesday, our traffic spiked by over 200%. Why? Because we got one link from a website called SEOMoz, which has a large audience. The blog that ended up on their front page, called How many SEO Consultants Actually Know What They’re Talking About? featured our company along with other people in the SEO field. When you have a site with hundreds of thousands of hits a month link to a site like ours, a lot of traffic comes.

SEO

The second reason is SEO. Not every website is judged the same by Google. In fact getting one link from a well regarded website can be worth just as much as 100 links from garbage websites. The website SEOMoz carries a large authority rank around keywords like SEO or search engine optimization. Having a large site like SEOMoz link to a smaller site like Digital Firefly Marketing is a signal to Google that SEOMoz trusts Digital Firefly enough to link to their site. Google files that away into its index and uses it in its algorithm to place our website in search results. By linking to our site, SEOMoz has increased the probability Digital Firefly Marketing will rank in the top ten on Google or even in the top three where most people go to for search results.

Linkbacks do have a way to create a snowball effect as well. Raising awareness of a site creates a bigger audience for blogs, webinars, ebooks and other items people may find interesting. Moreover, members of that audience can become leads, or advocates providing more links to your site, which keeps the snowball going with more direct traffic from links and more links to increase your Google results.