Backlinks promote your brand. Simply by virtue of their existence, they provide additional exposure for your online presence. Since your website and information show up on webpages relevant to your niche, backlinks help create awareness of your brand. This translates into a passive boost to your Web traffic over time – one that you don’t need to put additional work into maintaining.
Backlinks boost your authority. The more Google’s automated processes “respect” your authority, the higher your website’s ranking in relevant, organic search results. A high-quality backlink tells search engine crawlers that your presence online is the real deal – an authority within its niche. This, followed by registry listings, is the major deciding factor in Google’s regard for your website’s authority.
Backlinks work well with social media. Backlinks in social media work with social media marketing, or SMM, encouraging social media users to spread awareness of your brand on their own recognizance. With Google’s recent emphasis on SEO in social media, this adds additional muster to Google’s regard for your website’s authority within its niche, as well as driving additional traffic to your site directly.