Everything You Need to Know About Backlinks
What is a Backlink?
Backlinks (also known as Inbound Links or External Links) are when you link one website to another. Backlinks represent another website's traffic coming to your site. Search engines like Google or Yahoo will view your backlinks to see the quality content linked with other websites. They are one of the primary ranking factors when it comes to SEO. Pages with more backlinks can rank higher on SERPs (search engine result pages), which leads to more traffic and improves your DA (domain authority).
What is SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) is a set of practices designed to improve how you appear in organic search results. The goal for your web page should be the top result because where you get placed in the results will affect your traffic, which can be the change for your sales.
Factors that can affect your backlink Value
Authority of Site
You want a site with authoritative backlinks, one trusted by search engines, its users, and other websites. The higher authority the site has that is linked to yours; the more your site will have
after linking to it. After backlinking to an authoritative website, it will help your SEO rank.
Do-follow vs. No-follow Backlinks
Many people look down on the no-follow backlinks saying they are no good but don't realize that no-follow backlinks are still valuable to the search engine's ranking (SEO) and will likely be so in the future. It would be best to implement no-follow backlinks as a part of your link-building strategy. Do-follow backlinks are trusted and can help your PageRank significantly more than no-follow backlinks. Do-follow backlinks carry a lot more weight than no-follow links making them more valuable to the system and having more effect on (SEO). The main difference between no-follow and do-follow backlinks is that the no-follow link will tell Google not to associate the referring website with the referenced one after being linked.
Backlink Location
Having a good backlink location is very important; your links should be placed on websites of the same relevance to your topic, improving your ranking on the SERPs (search engine result pages). For example: If I am talking about dogs, I don't want to link to a site talking about the best tools to use at work.
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinking is one of the primary ranking metrics. They are excellent ways for other sites to signal to Google that your site is high quality and has good content. BackLinks help search engines discover the content on your site/webpage. Links identify your content as being valuable. Being seen as practical will bring people to your site.
Discoverability
Search engines like Google or Yahoo will revisit pages looking for new content. They will revisit sites because they know to check for links there. So if you are getting backlinks from popular sites, it will help your unpopular site get noticed by the search engines.
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic is when a valid backlink will point people to the valuable resources you are trying to show. That is why they are clickable, and they can be placed in a couple of different places. So when somebody clicks on your website, you will get more referral traffic back to your site.
Rankings
Search engines like Google rank sites higher based on many metrics. Backlinks are one of the most important of these metrics. The better the quality of the backlink is, the more value it provides for your site by increasing where you rank on SERPs. Having the top rank is the goal because that will get you more organic traffic.
What are Internal Links?
Internal links are links within your site that point to other pages on your site. Internal links help Google to understand the essential pages on your website. It helps Google find, index, and understand all of the pages on your site. Search engines will view pages with lots of internal links as more important than those with a few.
Two types of internal links
Navigational links
The navigational links let you create a set of site-wide links to keep visitors oriented and make it easier to move around the site. For example, those are considered navigational, and footer links when you are on a website with a header menu at the top.
Footer links
Footer links are considered site-wide links or by another name, boilerplate links. They appear on nearly every single page of a website. These links are usually header links, footer links, or links that appear on the sides of a website, like widgets and more.
Types of Backlinks
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is when you invite someone from outside of your company to write a blog that will get published on your website. Many businesses use guest blogging to inform their customers and guide them to products and services. Guest blogging offers many benefits and opportunities. It is a win-win situation for the host and the blogger!
How does it benefit the host?
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is the first and one of the most critical steps in marketing; it allows people to recall and recognize your business. It is the very foundation of marketing, and once you have that laid out, you can build upon it.
Fresh Content
Fresh content will drive more regular site traffic, which is what you need. It allows you to build a returning audience to the site because something new is offered that hasn't been seen yet. More people brought to the website will help improve your search engine ranking (SEO).
Leadership
Leadership isn't just important in our daily life, but for a business too. Having leadership skills will help prove to your readers that you will give quality content. It will help widen the knowledge base that all readers have access to.
SEO
To be a successful marketer, search engine rankings (SEO) are what everybody wants and needs. SEO will help you get more new customers, which leads to more sales. Doing everything you can, you want to try and get to the top on the SERPs.
How does it benefit the Guest blogger?
Better known
Being known in the marketing world is very important; it opens up ways for potential customers and jobs. You could potentially get more jobs than you know what to do with.
Audience
Writers want a big audience; having a bigger one, the better. To do that, you need to post content that your target audience wants to read. Posting something on a prominent site allows the readers to likely look at your blog and share your posts all over their social media platforms. That will create the bigger audience you were looking for.
Reach
Guest blogging for a big organization or site extends your reach for more potential readers. If you engage the readers well enough, they will follow you back to your own business or bio and have the desire to find out more about you.
Relationships
For new or emerging writers, guest blogging can help you build relationships. Having relationships with big organizations or famous bloggers will open new doors and more opportunities than you can handle.
Business Profile Backlinks
A business profile is a portfolio of links from every site linked to your site. It can contain authoritative sites, social media platforms, no-follow links, etc. It plays a big part in the SEO building block because it boosts your credibility.
Contextual Backlinks
A contextual backlink can be an outbound (links to other websites) or inbound (links to your content) backlink. A contextual link is any link found to be a relevant site within a body of text or a paragraph. They are always relevant to the context of the destination site. They may appear in a blog, press release, or any written content found online. Contextual backlinks show that your content isn't spam, was probably created by humans, and lastly, will be helpful for your readers.
What is a No-Follow Backlink?
No-follow backlinks are hyperlinks with a rel=" nofollow" tag. A no-follow backlink is a link that tells search engines not to pass any link authority from your page to the other website you're linking to. Google came out and said that they would treat no-follow links as a hint for the purposes of crawling and indexing.
They can come in a couple of different ways. For example, if your site or somebody else's site uses WordPress, all posted blog comment links will automatically have that no-follow attribute.
Do No-follow backlinks provide SEO value?
No-follow backlinks can help SEO (search engine optimization), and some say they only hurt SEO. They won't hurt your SEO if you aren't spamming at a vast scale. Any link can be turned into a no-follow link by simply adding (rel=" nofollow") to the URL.
Benefits of No-follow Backlinks
No-follow backlinks have some benefits, and they can help your DA (domain authority). No-follow brings referral traffic, leading to someone liking the content and giving a do-follow link. Not having any no-follow backlinks will make you look suspicious to search engines because no-follow backlinks normalize your profile.
How to know if your links are No-follow or Do-follow?
Not everything about a no-follow link is bad. No-follow links drive traffic to your website, which leads to better rankings, more leads, and more conversions. If you want to know if your link is a do-follow or a no-follow link, you inspect the link in the browser and check the HTML (hypertext language) code. If it says (rel=" nofollow"), it is a no-follow link. If it doesn't say anything, then it is a do-follow link. HTML is the standardized code used to build web pages.
When to use a No-follow Backlink?
After selling a link
After selling a link, the site can add a link that abstains from being an editorial vote. It's a safe way to buy links because the machines can read them and see that the link doesn't have to be counted as a vote by a search engine.
When someone pays you to post their content
Every backlink from sponsored posts should always be no-followed. It is because you're effectively paying for the link, so it shouldn't pass the PageRank. If you don't do so, you might look suspicious to google and can be penalized for it.
Widgets
Putting a no-follow link on widgets is essential because most people who embed the widget on their sites don't realize what else they are embedding on their website outside the widget's functionality. Google will tell the widget marker to add a no-follow on that link so that the webmaster adding the widget code to their site won't pass PageRank to your site without knowing it.
What is a Do-follow backlink?
A do-follow backlink points back to your website or blog and other search engines to crawl. These links help your SEO by simply passing the authority of the original site to the destination site. Every time you insert a do-follow link on a site, it links back to yours, which strengthens your authority by showing search engines what else is linking back to you. It will bring more traffic to your sites and higher PageRank. There are many helpful ways to get high-quality do-follow backlinks, but remember, quality over quantity!
When to use a Do-follow Backlink?
You can use a do-follow backlink when you have a link to another website and want Google to recognize that you have linked to it.
This type of link is beneficial for search engines, and it helps bots get a better understanding of what their content is really about. Only use do-follow links when you deliberately link to them and know it is a trustworthy and authoritative web page. Make sure it is under relevant websites, or it might look suspicious.
Best Ways to Get More Do-follow Backlinks!
Broken link building
Broken link building is when you find links and reach out to web admins with a resource that you've created to replace the link. Broken link building can be an effective tool in your link-building arsenal; after all, you're helping the company while still acquiring a link directing to yours or your client's website.
Link Exchanges
Link exchange (also called reciprocal linking) is when two websites agree to link together. There is a difference between the two terms, though; the most significant difference is that reciprocal linking is between two websites, whereas a link exchange can involve multiple links.
Writing shareable content
Writing shareable content means that you have good quality content, and it moves readers to want to share it with their people (friends, family, etc.). They might share it on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Writing guests posts
Guest posting is when you write an article to get published on someone else's blog. Generally, the writer will write based on the industry that they are in. Doing that will attract traffic back to their website, helping them also.
Free Tool Backlinks
You can get do-follow backlinks by hosting a free tool user on your website. It allows you to see who is linking to you. While also showing the DR (domain rating) for each backlink, people might backlink back to you if they think your content is good.
Conclusion
Backlinks play a crucial role when determining the ranking in search engines like Google or Yahoo. Remember, not all backlinks are created equal! Backlink location, relevance, and many more things play a big part in the backlink quality. The easiest way to get the backlink isn't the best way because the less valuable it becomes.
