Have you been wondering what are Backlinks in SEO and why do the Search Engine Optimization experts often use this term?
If you are a blogger or have only recently started your website, you must be struggling to understand Backlinks in SEO & why are they so important?
In this blog, I intend to offer you every essential information — what are backlinks, why are backlinks important, and how do backlinks work. You’ll also learn about how you can analyze the backlinks of your competitor’s website, and you can acquire them for driving traffic on your website.
So, are you excited to learn about backlinking and implement it on your website?
Unquestionably, Yes, you must be!
Without any further ado, let us start learning. Here we go:
What are backlinks?
A link created from one website to another website is called backlink in SEO. Backlinks are
also referred to as incoming links or inbound links.
For instance, you’ll get a backlink, when some other website will link to yours. On the other hand, if you are linking your website to someone else’s website, that means they are obtaining a backlink from you.
Simply put, Backlinks are the incoming links on your website.
Backlinks are one of the major metrics of ranking high on the SERP. The more the backlinks, the more are your website’s chances of ranking higher.
Let’s take a look at some common terms that will help you better understand what are backlinks.
Anchor Text: The clickable text that appears in the hyperlink is called anchor text. This anchor text must be relevant to the content of the page you are linking to. The web standard is the blue underlined anchor text, while you can also change the underlining and color of the anchor text by making required changes in the HTML code. When your aim is to rank for a particular keyword, anchor text backlinks can do wonders.
Link Juice: The domain authority & the ranking of an article or homepage is enhanced, when it passes through link juice while a web page links to it. If you do not want to pass through link juice, you can use a No-follow link. The term, Link juice is used to refer to the equity or value passed from one site or page to the other.
Do-Follow Link: All the links that add to a post are by default do-follow, and they pass through the link juice. Do follow links are those links that pass over authority and value to the website by allowing Google to follow and reach their website. You can give someone do-follow by including their keyword in the anchor text.
No-Follow Link: The no-follow links do not pass through the link juice, and they do not pass over any value or authority. They do not contribute to the ranking of the page or article. A no-follow link is usually used when an article or webpage is being linked to an unreliable website.
Internal Linking: This is the process of linking one page to another within the same site or domain.
How Do Backlinks Work?
We have learned how backlinks can help in growing your business or website. It plays a very crucial role in building the overall SEO strategy for your website and in search engine algorithms.
Backlinking is a kind of conversation among the websites. For instance, blogger A writes an article on SEO and related topics. Another blogger B who writes for a popular Search Engine marketing journal links to A’s article while he shares his perspective. This activity will create a backlink to A’s post.
Since the online journal is well-known, many other sites would request to link back to A’s article as promoted by B. This is going to be advantageous on both ends — as it enhances the authority of online journals, & blogger ‘A’ gets a backlink from a popular online journal. So, it’s like a win-win situation where both sides are at the winning end.
Backlink Guidelines.
In today’s modern SEO practice, most backlink guidelines are about the overall authority on a topic & your content itself. You can achieve this in a number of ways including original research, Link reclamation, forging a relationship with influencers, and allowing guest blogs on your site. There are many other ways you will come across through the SEO lifecycle as you’ll learn more about backlinks.
Some easy-to-go techniques for Link Building:
Links from Friends & Acquaintances: You can ask your friends and acquaintances to link your site. While doing this, you must also take care of the fact that obtaining links from industry or niche where your site belongs is always advantageous over getting them from any random site.
Create Content compelling: Create some real compelling content, so that other businesses and website owners would themselves be interested in referring and linking to your site. Create and then put in all efforts to let people know your content without waiting.
Why is Backlinking important in SEO?
Do you wonder why backlinks are important in SEO? What affects good backlinks can create on your website?
The answer lies in the question itself — why do we do SEO?
To enhance traffic & establish our brand! Right?
Yes.
Backlinking is one of the major supports of building a robust SEO strategy. This easy and highly efficient process of linking your website back to others can drive quality traffic through referrals and can hence enhance the authority of your website tremendously.
The ever-evolving Google algorithms are sophisticated and hard to get through. But, link building can always be a savior with its unique way of helping search engines determine which website must rank for which keyword. Backlinks provide a signal to Google and other search engines that your website is worthy of citation and is a quality resource. This means that websites with more backlinks have better chances of ranking high over the SERP.
Good and Bad backlink:
There could be two forms of backlinking — bad & good.
If you really want your business or website to function for a longer period, you must always go for natural link building. Using any manipulative technique, like a black hat SEO or buying links isn’t a good idea if you want to persist.
By natural link building we mean that instead of buying links, you must earn it. It may be time-consuming and difficult but in the end, the result stays, that is what matters.
Getting a link from an authoritative website like the New York Times has to be a difficult journey. But, when you get one, it brings a long-lasting impact on your website and enhances ranking on the SERP.
Let’s take a look at how creating natural long-lasting backlinks can help your business grow. Let’s get started:
- Referral traffic
You get referral traffic when someone clicks a link on your website. This referral traffic can further help in enhancing your ranking.
- Discoverability
Search engines like Google bots & crawlers visit authoritative websites more often to find new content and backlinks. So, if you can get backlinks from these authoritative & popular sites, it is more likely that you will be discovered more easily. Search engines will often revisit pages and websites that they already know and if you have backlinks from these popular pages, you can easily get noticed by search engines.
- Rankings
Backlinking is a kind of language that Google understands as a vote of confidence. The more backlinks, the more the vote of confidence. And, more votes will mean better ranking for relevant search queries. Upon deep study, you’ll understand that most organic search results are related to better referrals from unique domains. So, backlinking, in particular, natural backlinking has a huge impact on organic search ranking.
Conclusion.
While obtaining natural links may take a little more time than buying them or obtaining from some kind of manipulative strategy, they are sure to stay longer. Be patient, and never rely on strategies that are against Google guidelines as it could be terrible for your site’s SEO.
You have learned in this blog post what are backlinks in SEO and how they can drive quality traffic to your site. We hope you can now be able to implement this amazing strategy to drive traffic.
While backlinking is one way in adding value to your website, there are various other strategies that can help you — whether you want to reach users at a national scale or targeting local consumers, AdMedia has all the solutions that you need to make your goals happen. Once you settle with obtaining enough backlinks, you must look for other strategies that can create valid clicks and High Conversion Rates.