What are Backlinks?
Backlinks are the links from one website to the other. They are also known as inbound links, incoming links, or one-way links. Google and other search engines like Yahoo consider these backlinks as votes. The website with the higher number of backlinks is considered to have more original content and this has a better ranking on the search engine.
Common terms related to backlinks
Here are some terms which are related to backlinks and can prove to be informative for you.
Link–Juice: when a webpage is linked to other webpages or articles it passes “link juice”. This juice helps in increasing the ranking of the website. Passing of link-juice can be blocked by using a no-follow tag.
No-Follow link: these links are not useful to increase for increasing the ranking of the webpage. When a website links to another website but the link has a no-follow tag on it, it does not pass the link juice. Usually, people put no-follow links when they are linking the website to an un-secure website.
Do-Follow Links: all the links that you add to any website or blog are, by default, do-follow links.
Linking Root Domains: All the links to your website from unique domains are called linking root domains. Even if the other website has linked to your website multiple times it will only count as one.
Low-Quality Links: these links do more harm than good. They come from spam sites, harvested sites, or even porn sites. Be careful whenever you buy backlinks.
Internet Links: linking going from website to website from the same domain are called internet links. This process is also called interlinking.
AnchorText: anchor text is the text which is used to create hyperlinks. These backlinks are useful when you are trying to rank a particular keyword.
Why are backlinks important?
Ranking: search engines such as Google rank all the websites according to the backlinks. The website with the most backlinks will have more ranking for the relevant search queries.
Discoverability: you can have more ranking over the search engine you have more backlinks. Search engines usually revisit popular pages, that is why your content can be easily discoverable if the link is provided to a popular page.
Referral traffic: backlinks provide people with relevant resources according to the keywords entered. Whenever some clicks on the linked website this is called referral traffic.
How do backlinks work?
In search engine algorithms, backlinks play an important role and also in the overall growth strategy of a website. In simpler terms, backlinks can be referred to as the conversation between websites.
Take, for example, X is a blogger and has written an article regarding a recent event. Another blogger Y, working with a well-known online magazine writes about the same event from her perspective and links to X’s article. This creates a backlink for X’s article. The magazine’s authority will increase as it is well known and through that X’s gets a valuable backlink from a well-known website.
Practically it is a win-win situation for both parties involved.
How to get good quality backlinks?
Backlinks are of many types and not all are created the same. Here are some things which add to the quality of the backlinks and contribute to the increase in ranking of the webpage on search engines.
Relevance: The backlinks should be relevant to the website on which it is put on. Google, usually, places more value on the relevant backlinks, and people are more likely to click on them.
For example, if a written has two pages, one about cats and another about recent literature, the literature page will be more valuable. Anyone who has an interest in reading, writing, or literature is more likely to click on a link from the literature website given by the writer rather than clicking on the cats’ page.
Authority: More authority is transferred by the backlinks which come from strong webpages. But this does not mean that a strong page will always have more authority; Google for example has different criteria described in the patent documents to provide authority to outbound links on a webpage.
This means that not only the outbound backlinks are valuable, inbound backlinks also contribute to a page’s authority.
Traffic: More referral traffic is usually sent through backlinks from the page which have high-traffic. Pages that offer original content have a high ranking and thus, have good traffic and good backlinks.
Followed vs. No-followed: no- link pages do not influence the page ranking so you must prioritize. Followed links on the other hand can make a good impact on your ranking on the search engines. This doesn’t mean that no-follow links do not have any value, they still might have some value on the search engines.
Getting more backlinks
There are 3 ways to get more backlinks for your webpage: creating them, earning them or you can build them.
Earning Backlinks: this happens when people start noticing your content on search engines, social media, or through word of mouth. Once they have noticed it they start to link to your webpage. Earning backlinks can be done by creating good and useful content.
Creating Backlinks: you can create backlinks when you add links to your sites from other sites.
Building Backlinks: when you reach out to other website owners and ask them to link your page this is called building backlinks. There are some tactics which are used to build backlinks:
Guest blogging: offer to write a post for another website.
Broken Link building: this can be done by replacing the deed links with your active links. For this, you also have to approach the website owner and suggest a replacement.
Unlinked mentions: find the mentions of your content and then ask the author to make the mention clickable.
Skyscraper technique: for this, you must find content that has many links already attached to it, then create better content them it and ask the attached links to link to your content instead.
Strategies to Build High-Quality Backlinks
High-quality backlinks are the most important factor in increasing the ranking of a website over the search engine. When high-quality and organic websites link to other websites it gives positive signals. Here are some of the strategies which can be used to contribute the increase in ranking of the website:
Content: The ability of any website to attract backlinks depends on the quality of the content it produces. High-quality content should be posted on the entire website, this helps other sites to determine whether they want to link to you or not. If the website lacks in quality, other sites will not see you as a good fit. Another thing is to publish original research. Original research can be done by conducting surveys, producing case studies, etc. Moreover, publishing content in the form of lists instead of long narratives. This format is easy to read on both desktops and hand-held devices. Also, keep in mind that the content which contains visual aids can be more attractive and can attract the attention of other websites easily and good quality backlinks.
Outreach: Providing good content can help you get good backlinks but singularly it is not enough. To add more backlinks to the website it is essential to reach out to other bloggers and websites. For this purpose, an easy approach is to reach out to sites that link to competitors this way you can easily identify which sites can provide you with quality backlinks as well as how to compete with the customers. Websites can also request links with your brand mention which means that if you are producing good quality content you will eventually start getting mentions, you can simply request the site on which your brand is mentioned to add a link to your website.
Relationship: Reaching out can form long term relationships between websites. Both parties are in a win-win situation. To further leverage the partner partnerships, websites link out to related sites. This means that one website can link to another website and in return get links back to your website. This can also get you on the radar. Creating an environment in which both websites get what they want to form a symbiotic relationship. One of the best ways of getting backlinks from other websites is to add their link to your website. This increases the chance that the other site will also feature your link on their site.
Conclusion
Internet is becoming a competitive environment day by day. Websites look for new ways to increase the number of visitors. Backlinks play a very important role in providing the website with new viewers. Google is the top search engine in the world has always depended on backlinks to increase the ranking of certain websites so that the users can get organic information according to their needs.
But eventually, it becomes a symbiotic relationship where one site cannot survive without the other one.