Do you know what are backlinks and how they affect your SEO and blog search ranking?
Backlinks in digital marketing are one of the key ranking factors in search engines. Backlinks can be thought of as votes from other sites that indicate that your site contains quality content, leading to increased rankings and increased website traffic.
There are two main types of backlinks you should focus on when it comes to SEO: do-follow and no-follow backlinks. Here’s what you need to know about each type of backlink.
Table of Contents
What are Backlinks? An Introduction
Do you know what are backlinks in SEO?
A backlink is a link on another website that is linked to one of your web pages. It’s not as simple as it sounds, though—the right kind of backlink will lift you higher in search engine rankings, while bad links (especially irrelevant ones) can severely impact your search engine visibility.
It’s important to get some high-quality links to your website, because of their ranking benefits.
Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo reward sites with good links from other quality sites by increasing their ranking in search results.
There are many types of high-quality backlinks: editorial links, earned media coverage, social media shares, and more. You want all of these on your site!
In SEO, a Do-Follow Link is a hyperlink that can be followed by both humans and search engine crawlers (spiders).
Such a link is a follow link as opposed to just an ordinary hyperlink that does not pass PageRank or other website scoring values for ranking value.
The number of do-follow links pointing to a page directly affects its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). Links from highly authoritative domains are trusted more than others by Google, so having more such backlinks is beneficial.
Do-follow links can also help boost the overall PageRank and authority of your website. Link building is an important part of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).
Backlinks can be of different types, each contributing differently to SEO success. The type of links you need for quality search engine ranking depends on which site pages you’re targeting.
External Links
As a new entrepreneur, you’re bound to hear backlinks come up in conversations. In fact, if you run a search for any online business-related forums, you’ll find an array of topics relating to backlinks. So, what is a backlink?
In simple terms, it is any link that connects one web page (or website) to another. Backlinks can be either internal or external links.
An external link is a link that connects a different website to yours. They can come in several different forms, with hyperlinks being perhaps the most common type of external link.
Links can be placed within web pages, in comments on social media sites like LinkedIn or Twitter, in forum websites like Quora, Reddit, and elsewhere.
If a website uses your images or videos on its website, then it will act as an external link for that website. Here, you will get a backlink from that site.
Internal Links
An internal link is a link on one web page of a website that links to another web page on the same website.
It’s an important aspect of search engine optimization because if you don’t have at least some internal links, then search engines won’t be able to index all of your pages.
If Google or another search engine can’t see every single page, it’ll use an algorithm to decide which ones are most important. That could hurt traffic from Google overall.
There is no specific rule for how many internal links a page needs. It’s more about relevance than quantity.
A page that talks about SEO could use an internal link to a keyword Research guide as long as it seems relevant and not spammy.
The best way to find internal links is by looking at what people already do on your site. If a lot of users end up clicking through certain links, then you’re golden.
If that’s not working for you, try finding some pages with a lot of inbound traffic, then check which pages have links to them from other sites.
If no one has done it then, it might be an opportunity for an internal link. This technique is called competitive intelligence.
Other Types of Backlinks
Here are some backlinks examples that you must know: –
- Editorial backlinks
- Guest blogging backlinks
- Free-tool backlinks
- Backlinks in business profiles
- Guest post bio backlinks
- Badge backlinks
- Comment backlinks
What Is Link Building OR How to Create Backlinks?
Link building is a fundamental part of search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google and Bing assume certain types of websites are more valuable than others.
One way to achieve a higher rank in Google is by having many qualities, relevant links from trusted sources.
This establishes you as an authority on your niche, which results in higher rankings for everything on your website.
Backlinks also help drive some relevant traffic to your site from other sites that link to you. It also helps reach a wider audience through other websites.
Benefits of Link Building
The major benefit of link building is that it helps increase page rank.
One of the key benefits of having Backlinks is the ability to increase traffic to a website. When you get a backlink from another site, you’re essentially sending a search engine signal that says, Hey Google! This site is relevant to our keyword phrases.
Check it out! If users like what they see on that page, then they’ll go check out other pages on your site as well.
Having quality, relevant links to your site can also lead to increased sales. One reason for that is that search engines use click-through rates (CTR) as a factor in determining rankings.
If users frequently click on links leading to pages within your site, then you have a higher likelihood of appearing at the top of search results related to keywords relevant to those pages. If people like what they see on those pages, then they’ll be more likely to make a purchase!
Another benefit of link building (importance of backlinks) is that it can give your site a reputation for being high quality. That’s because Google uses a variety of factors in determining rankings, including trust signals.
For example, if another website links to yours, Google might conclude that you’re an authority on that subject and rank you accordingly.
If you have lots of relevant links coming onto your site, then search engines will likely view it as more trustworthy.
The other advantage of having lots of good links pointing at your site is that those links can act as social proof: Users don’t know you or have any reason to believe you deserve to be ranked highly.
But when they see other websites vouching for you by linking to your content, they’ll assume there must be something valuable on your site worth checking out!
The bottom line: good quality backlinks help convince search engines like Google, Bing that pages within your website are credible and relevant!
That is why you should always try to get more backlinks (high-quality) to increase your website authority as well as search ranking.
How to Find High-Quality Links
Creating backlinks to your website is a good way to attract organic search traffic. But, if you don’t have high-quality links pointing to your website, it could have a negative impact on your site.
There are several other factors that ascertain a backlink’s overall quality, including its popularity, age, and content relevance.
You should focus on earning links from websites with authority in their respective niches. This will ensure you get an influx of targeted traffic for years to come.
The easiest way to determine a link’s quality is by analyzing its source. Authority can be measured in two ways: PageRank and Domain Authority. PageRank refers to Google’s metric for rating page quality, with a score of 1–10.
Domain Authority measures an entire website’s worth, with scores ranging from 0–100. The higher these numbers, the better chances you have of receiving high-quality links that will improve your site’s search ranking.
There are several tools (backlink checker) available for checking both metrics. Two popular ones include Moz Open Site Explorer and MajesticSEO. You can also use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest to know the authority of a website.
It is important to check the Link’s Position on the Page, the higher the link has placed the chances of getting click increases and Google will pass more page rank to that page.
Also, check the link quantity, if a page has too many links, then the page rank will be distributed to all the pages, so each link will get less page rank and it also looks spammy.
Link Anchor Text also plays an important role as Google uses anchor text as a ranking signal. so, link anchor text should be relevant and doesn’t always use the targeted keywords only. So, whenever you are building links, don’t use the exact keyword-rich anchor text everywhere.
Also, check if the link is do-follow or no-follow as the do-follow link passes the authority to the linked page and no-follow links only give hints to search engines.
Types of Backlinks to Avoid
The very first thing to consider when creating a link is whether or not it’s going to be considered bad. Here is an overview of some of those: * Paid links – it’s very easy for search engines to tell when someone paid for a link, which makes these typically untrustworthy.
You can learn more about the Guidelines of Paid Links on the official Google search central Blog.
You should also avoid links from press releases that are not newsworthy, Low-quality or irrelevant directory links, Low-quality forum backlinks, etc.
Final Thought on Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the major factors to Google. The quality of backlinks is more important than the number of backlinks.
So, always focus on acquiring quality links for your site and keep internal linking on articles to pass page rank within the website.
As a beginner blogger, you should focus more on internal backlinks rather than External Backlink. Also, link out to other relevant resources within your blog post.
What is your Favorite link-building strategy, do let us know in the comment section?
Hi Archana,
It was a nice introduction to link building. I’m deeply connected with it; and the most important part for me in this post was to avoid specific types of links. Yes, we always hear to avoid paid links, but in reality, this exists. I’m also not a fan of this, but it’s also a fact that new businesses come into organic race, buy strategic links, and often outrank websites following pure white-hat-formula.
But still, steady and natural link earning is my way and that’s how it should be.
Hey Shyam,
Link building is one of the essential when it comes to getting better ranking in SERPs. However, most newbies either ignore or don’t know the importance of link building.
Remember one thing, link building can make a huge difference in your blog performance, if it is natural and relevant to your niche. BTW thanks for your valuable comment.
Thanks
Regards,
Exactly. We’re on the same page, Archana 🙂
Hii Archna
Thank you for sharing this insightful article on backlinks and their impact on SEO. It’s a great resource for bloggers looking to improve their website’s visibility. Much appreciated!