Backlinks are the links to your site from other sites. For example, an online article is posted containing a link to a blog post on your website; that particular webpage of yours has received a backlink.
More backlinks mean a higher ranking on search engines. Backlinks are important for SEO because they are a ranking factor, and with backlinks, your website can rank higher.
While not all backlinks are beneficial, there are two kinds of backlinks; dofollow and nofollow.
Dofollow backlinks: Dofollow links are visible to search engines and boost your site’s domain and page authority. They also pass on website strength.
Nofollow backlinks: Nofollow links may not affect rankings but are still helpful for your website as they can help visitors find your site easier.
Where you place your backlinks matters in SEO, contextual backlinks are valuable in SEO because they can be related to the same keywords and topics on corresponding web pages.
Why do backlinks matter?
Backlinks are the most important factor for search engine ranking. You can build authority and popularity with backlinks and help your website rank higher in search engines. Backlinks help users find additional information related to the topics they are researching.
When someone visits a website that provides a link to your site, they will have an opportunity to check out more of your website’s content.
Search engine bots discover your website through backlinks and crawl it to index the content. Your website needs backlinks. If it doesn’t have them, bots will not easily find your site and struggle to crawl your pages.
What effect do backlinks have on my ranking?
Backlinks are widely seen as the most significant ranking factor for SEO. This is because of their ability to increase the visibility of a web page in search engine results. There are many factors that determine whether or not your website will rank higher, one of which is the number and quality of backlinks.
If you have backlinks from reputable websites, it will likely help your site rank and increase traffic. However, low-quality links will not help improve your ranking as much as high-quality ones would. Therefore, low-quality links can do more harm than good for your website and should be avoided.
Advantages of backlinks
Improves organic ranking
Once search engines notice your website as an authority, They will start ranking your website higher in the search results. Google places priority on websites that are visited by users often. So if you have quality backlinks, Google will believe your site is credible and valuable.
Fast indexing
Search bots use backlinks from other sites to find new pages. Therefore, it’s important to have a healthy amount of backlinks to find your content more easily and have it listed faster.
Referral traffic
One of the benefits of backlinks is that they help you get referral traffic. If a visitor comes to your website through a backlink, the visit will show up in Google Analytics as a referral visit. Referral traffic has much better targeting and is usually more relevant than other types of traffic. It can result in a lower bounce rate than other kinds of traffic.
Position your business as an authority
When other sites link to your website, it gives your business more credibility on certain topics and allows people interested to learn more about a topic. Google is also looking at your website’s backlinks, so a higher number of them will help it learn more about your website.
How to get backlinks?
Backlinks are a critical factor for search engine rankings, and it is a good idea to take care of your backlink profile.
There are different ways to build backlinks. Here is a list of some of the most common tactics that you can use to earn quality links:
Create helpful and shareable content
One way to get backlinks is to create quality content. You should be producing content that other bloggers and industry experts would want to share. You can create different types of content; some examples include how-to articles, guides, list posts, and quizzes. Another way is to create a linkable asset, like create a super in-depth article, list, or your own research.
Start guest blogging
Guest posting can be a good way to improve your search engine rankings and create backlinks for your website. However, you’ll need to gain the trust and respect of other websites to get accepted as a guest blogger on their site.
Many websites offer a contributor account or a write for us section where anyone can write and get featured. You can insert a link to your website in the author bio or within the content itself.
Write testimonials
You can get a backlink from displaying a testimonial on another website. A lot of businesses rely on testimonials for social proof. They might even showcase them on their homepage. You can submit a testimonial to gain some links. Find those that are relevant to your industry and send them your testimonial.
Broken link building
Broken link building is a quick, easy way to gain more links. While looking at your competitors, you can also check their websites to see if they have any broken links.
Broken links are links on the website that no longer work, and the source website removed them. This can be a good opportunity to create a new link for your website. For this, you have to find the broken link, and then by contacting the website owner, you can ask him to replace the link and give your link in the replacement.
Spy on your competitors
It would help if you watched what your competitors are doing. It’s a good idea to find out where they’re getting some of their backlinks. You can use SEMrush to find all the backlinks for any URL, giving you a complete and detailed link profile.
If someone from your competitor published a guest post, you could also publish an article there. So, for example, if your competitor has created backlinks by guest posting, you can also do a guest post on that website. And if they have a link from a forum, you can also create a profile in that forum and earn a backlink.
Participate in forums
There are different ways to get backlinks for your website, one of which is to participate in forums. Participating in these discussions also helps you build a reputation as an industry expert who can entice visitors to your website.
You can also answer different questions on Quora. The Quora platform is a social-media question-and-answer website with information on many topics.
As mentioned earlier, quality backlinks can help you get more exposure to Google’s organic search results and make it easier to get traffic.
To be successful in the marketing world, it’s important to understand what quality backlinks are and how they can be earned. It’s not always easy to get quality backlinks, but you can make sure that you aren’t wasting time on activities that don’t bring anything in return with the proper techniques.
You can also go through the Digital Marketing Maturity Assessment and know which area to utilize more to develop your digital impact.
