Table of Contents
Introduction
In today's digital era, where everything seems to be moving online and companies and individuals always looking for ways to beat their competition in the digital sphere; it's evident for both newbies and experts to explore SEO (search engine optimization) as it is a standalone essential component that helps you rank up in Google searches.
SEO is a complex strategy that consists of several crucial parts to consider, from which "Backlinks" serve as a start strategy that helps you attract more traffic to your website.
Backlinks are critical to SEO success because they are the cornerstone of Google's page rank algorithm. Backlinks have been shown to have a favorable impact on organic search performance in independent SEO studies. Another important point to remember about inbound links is that they pass link equity or backlink authority from one website to yours.
In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about the start of SEO Strategies "Backlinks." So if you are a business owner looking for ways to attract more traffic to your website, or an SEO professional looking for a refresher or learn to create high-quality links; stay tuned, as we are going to cover the following;
- What are backlinks?
- Why are they so important?
- How to earn backlinks?
- Types of backlinks
- What makes a good backlink?
- How to remove toxic backlinks?
What Is a Backlink?
A backlink is a link created between the websites to link one website to another. In simpler terms, a link of your website/webpage/landing page that you place on some other website, and when someone clicks that link; it brings them to your website. Backlinks are also referred to as inbound links or external links because they attract the traffic of another website to your website.
However, just like any other game, we must understand the rules and underlying link-building opportunities to win the traffic from the other sources. The quality of the backlinks placed plays a vital role in yielding the desired outcome. Some of the basic rules to keep in consideration while creating a backlinks strategy are the following;
- The page quality the link directs to
- The content quality of the linked page
- The relevance of the inbound link
- Create contextual backlinks; they should either be relevant to your topic or provide additional information regarding your topic of discussion.
NOTE: If you have added a backlink to some website that doesn't match the content and your website's offering; the irrelevancy of information might drop your quality score in Google ranking.
Importance of Backlinks for SEO
Creating backlinks to your website increases your SEO's quality. Furthermore, they help the search engine distinguish between the websites that offer valuable backlinks and high-quality content. Consequently, Google and other search engines rank such websites higher than others.
Three primary results that you can achieve through backlinks are;
- Higher Ranking
- Enhanced Discoverability
- Increased Referral Traffic
Higher Ranking
Backlinks are seen as a vote of confidence by search engines such as Google. In general, the more votes your web pages receive, the better chance they have of ranking for relevant searches.
Organic search traffic is significantly correlated with the number of backlinks from unique websites (referring domains).
SEO assists your website to rank higher in the search engine, allowing more people to find it when they search for specific terms. You can attract more traffic to your websites by creating backlinks from authoritative websites, either from the sites that are linked to you or from search engines.
Enhanced Discoverability
Search engines discover new material by returning to previously visited pages in order to find new links.
Because search engines return to popular pages more frequently than those that are less popular, if you receive backlinks from known pages, they will be able to find your content more quickly.
Simply put, the more backlinks your site has, the more likely it is to be among the first few results. You can bring more focused traffic to your site if you have a higher page rank in search engine results.
Increased Referral Traffic
Backlinks are used to direct users to useful sites. It's for this reason that they're clickable. You obtain referral traffic when someone clicks on a link to your website.
Most importantly, backlinks can aid in the promotion of your company. People are more likely to believe in your goods or service if they find links to them from trusted bloggers or websites. This is because they trust the people promoting your expertise or in this case having the backlink of your website. You can leverage others' influence and advertise your company through backlinks.
What Makes a Good Backlink?
When examining your backlink profile keep in view that not all inbound links achieve equal results in SEO ranking. Here are the six key factors that influence the quality and usability of your backlink profile.
- Relevance
- Authority
- Traffic
- Placement
- Follow vs. Nofollowed
- Anchor text
Relevance
A high-quality backlink should, first and foremost, have relevant content. One reason for this is that your visitor is more likely to click on a relevant link.
For example, if you run an architecture website, it makes sense if you obtain a link from a building website or possibly a lumber supplier. It passes a signal to search engines that others vouch for the piece of content on your site. It implies that anyone searching for lumber to restore or build a home will almost certainly require the services of an architect.
Authority
Another factor that contributes to a high-quality backlink is the site's trustworthiness. One of the advantages of the internet today is that anyone can publish their work, but unfortunately, not every source is reliable, especially if you need quality links.
High-quality websites normally carry more "authority backlinks" and offer more value (link equity) than otherwise.
Quality links are used by search engines to label your page as authoritative. When websites with great content have links from other high-quality websites, search engines appreciate it.
Traffic
Before you consider using backlinks to improve your rating, keep in mind that these links are primarily intended to drive visitors from another website to yours that works as a signal for search engines to know to identify which backlinks are liked by the audiences.
As a result, Google keeps those websites in higher ranks where the traffic is routing to and finding their required information. Track your traffic with Google Analytics.
Placement
Some links on web pages are likely to pass more authority than others since people are more inclined to visit prominently placed links. The main reason why links seen in the mid content are more valuable than those at the content's footer is that users rarely click on it due to lower search visibility.
Follow vs. No follow
Although the No follow tags might affect the rankings of the connected website, they rarely do.
Because link building requires time and work, it's preferable to focus on gaining follow links. If you obtain a Nofollow link, don't make a big deal about it as it could still be useful for SEO purposes.
Anchor Text
The clickable words or visible characters that make up a backlink are referred to as anchor text. These are words/phrases that are displayed usually in underlined blue color as hyperlinks.
Google claims that anchor text has an impact on rankings. An exact match anchor text is a keyword that reflects the page's topic. For example; an exact match anchor text in a link to this page would be "backlinks."
How to Get Backlinks?
There are three most prominent ways of acquiring more backlinks;
Earning Backlinks
When people find your material through search engines like Google, social media, or word of mouth, they choose to link to it. Earned incoming links are organic.
Create truly useful content that others will want to connect to for increasing your chances of getting more backlinks.
Creating Backlinks
This is when you manually add your website's links to other websites. You may need to double-check any existing hyperlinks to your website. Before you try to add more backlinks, think about how effective are the ones you already have.
While creating backlinks remember the following
- Make sure your website's specific links are all unique. To find out if your site is using acceptable SEO keywords, conduct target keywords research or conduct a site audit or a backlink audit
- It is advisable to use target keywords rather than generic terms.
- Link your website to a website with a similar piece of content or a related niche. This enables you to know that whoever clicked on the related backlink is already interested in the product or service you are offering.
Building Backlinks
When you contact other site owners, editors, or webmasters and ask them to connect to your page, you're trying to build backlinks. You'll need a clear value proposition for this to succeed. This is where link-building strategy comes into play.
Guest Blogging
A common method of gaining backlinks is to write guest posts on other blogs and websites. The links received from guest posting definitely give your organic traffic a boost.
Broken Link Building
Finding relevant dead links on other sites and contacting them to recommend your working link as a replacement.
The Skyscraper Technique
Find relevant material that has a lot of connections, improve it, and then ask those who are connecting to the other content suppliers to link your content instead.
Find Bloggers
Contact influencers in your field and ask them to post about your business or service on their site or social handlers with a backlink to your website.
Publish in online directories
Creating articles and submitting them to online directories is another approach to obtain backlinks to your website. Many webmasters will allow you to post articles on their website if your piece of content is relevant to their industry. Some will even let you publish your articles for free.
Unlinked Mentions
Request that unlinked references of your brand be made clickable by contacting the author.
Types of Backlinks and Their Impact
There are two types of backlinks that help boost our SEO:
Nofollow
A Nofollow link instructs search engines that a link should be ignored, it does not pass link equity. These external links don't share any information from one website to the next. As a result, they usually don't help you improve your search rank or visibility. In 2019, Google announced evolving the Nofollow attribute as a means to provide webmasters with additional ways to identify the nature of links.
Dofollow
These links are the most desired backlinks. Just keep in mind that links from reputable websites are the most valuable and assist you to increase the search engine rankings.
However, certain do-follow links are deemed to be toxic. These links are obtained by breaching the terms of service of search engines or by visiting dubious websites.
Google may penalize or even de-index your site as a result of this. It's important to remember that the quality of backlinks determines where you rank; not the quantity.
How to Find Your Backlinks?
You can get insights about your backlink profile through the following tools
- Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool is a useful tool for finding external links and determining what is the text used to link to your website. If your site is linked to another website but the anchor text isn't being used properly, you should request that the website change the anchor text to something with relevant keywords in it. This will also help you improve your backlink quality score
- Google Search Console this tool provides you data of your overall performance and the organic search traffic. It is a free tool that allows you to verify the ownership of your website
- LinkMiner is another tool that has the least requirements to find backlinks
- Semrush provides tools like Backlink Analytics and Backlink Audit.
- . These tools help find backlinks to help improve your site's organic exposure, ranks, and traffic.
- Osborne Digital Marketing provides a free Free Website Audit as well as manages your online reputation through a reputation management team to create a customer-based approach.
Why Is It Important to Remove All Toxic Backlinks (Unnatural Links)?
Be careful who and what you are linking to, you should monitor your backlink profile every week to make sure nothing has changed. If you want to remove a link, you must contact the owner of the website. Avoid questionable link buying practices and regularly check your backlink profile.
Here we are talking about Reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking occurs when one webmaster sets a link on his site that leads to the site of another webmaster and vice versa. The benefit of this form of link exchange is that it allows you to promote each other's websites.
The disadvantage of reciprocal linking is that many of these links are irrelevant and do not fit in the search engine algorithms. Even if the irrelevant backlinks are ignored, the outward connections are still counted, which may lower the websites' relevancy scores.
Backlinks are important because they tell you how many people link to your site. You can find out who owns toxic backlinks through Back Link Checker.
Backlink Audits help you find all the backlinks to your site including the toxic ones that could harm your website's SEO ranking and credibility.
Conclusion
SEO is essential for every business these days to enhance its online presence. It consists of several elements that complete the SEO puzzle and help you rank higher in Google searches. Out of SEO core elements "Backlinks" serve as a cornerstone in improving your website's SEO score, authority and deriving more traffic.
Gaining backlinks is essential for search engine optimization so it is advisable to earn links from reliable and authoritative websites. Backlinks can help search engine crawlers index your page or website as a well-optimized website.
So, be considerate and adapt to backlinking strategy to be on top of your SEO game. It might seem a bit overwhelming; therefore our experts always remain available 24/7 to help you create a winning SEO and backlinks strategy.
Have a happy ranking-higher journey ahead. 🙂
