Backlinks are among the most frequently used terms in search engine optimization. Establishing backlinks with renowned and authoritative websites plays an important part in Google’s algorithm. They can be the decisive factor in whether a website rises or falls in Google’s search results.
Backlinks are sometimes referred to as inbound links, incoming links, or one-way links. These links are clickable and allow you to jump from one website to another’s page. Google and other big search engines think backlinks heavily influence the quality and quantity of your website. The pages with backlinks are more likely to get good organic search engine rankings as they are packed with more information that provides their web pages and websites with good traffic.
What Are Backlinks?
Backlinks are considered votes for your website compared to other websites. Many votes tell search engines that this piece of content is worth reading, credible, and useful.
As a result, the more votes you have, the higher your site will rank in Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. Introducing backlinks in a search engine’s algorithm is an old concept. The original Google algorithm called the PageRank was founded using backlinks. However, Google made several changes in its algorithm later. Backlinks still flourish to continue to be a key ranking factor. Backlinks are still considered one of Google’s three most necessary search engine ranking factors, along with ‘content’ and ‘rankbrain’.
Backlinks are not all created equal. Quality backlinks are administered to put a higher rank in the SERPs. A single top-quality backlink can outperform 100 low-quality backlinks. As it turns out, the same characteristics are exhibited by high-quality backlinks.
Watch this video to understand the importance of backlinks and how to build them
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Now that you know the answer to the question – What are backlinks? It is crucial to understand why they are important before incorporating them into your optimization strategy.
Backlinks serve as valuable votes from other websites that tell the search engines that your content is credible and useful.
So, the higher the number of these “votes” you manage, the higher your site will rank in Google and other search engines.
Websites with More Backlinks Rank Higher on Google
The concept of using links isn’t new. It has been there since the foundation of Google’s original algorithm, PageRank. Despite several years and innumerable changes made to the algorithm in those years, backlinks continue to hold their importance as an important ranking signal.
Google also confirms that backlinks are amongst their three most crucial search engine ranking factors.
It is a signal to Google that other businesses vouch for your content. When several websites link to a particular website/webpage, search engines get to know that the page/ site is worth linking to and surfacing on a SERP. So, earning backlinks can positively impact your website’s ranking or search visibility.
What are Dofollow Backlinks?
A link that moves authority or “link juice” from one webpage to another webpage is known as a dofollow backlink. It tells search engines to follow the link and consider it as a vote of confidence for the linked website. Dofollow backlinks are the most valuable type of backlinks in SEO as they contribute to the domain authority of a website and increase its search engine rankings.
What are Nofollow Backlinks?
A nofollow backlink is a link that does not pass any link juice or authority from one website to another. The nofollow attribute tells search engines not to follow the link or count it as a vote of confidence for the linked website. Nofollow links were originally created to combat spam and low-quality links. While nofollow links do not directly contribute to the SEO of a website, they can still drive traffic and increase visibility.
9 Best Types of Backlinks
Depending upon the websites, there are eight different types of backlinks with different levels of importance. These eight backlinks help you make your link-building plans for acquiring top-notch links that will benefit your SEO.
1. Editorial Backlinks
Editorial descriptions containing a link to your site and embedded inside relevant, high-quality material are the perfect backlink.
As a general rule, editorial backlinks are formed when your content (like an article or infographic) is mentioned as the source of certain information, a business representative is quoted, or when your site is featured in a link roundup on a certain topic.
To acquire editorial backlinks, generate evergreen content that establishes your position as a thought leader, establishing your site and brand as a go-to destination for interviews and industry expertise. Create easy to share and captivating content that has the potential to go viral.
Utilize SEO tools capable of identifying hot keywords and subjects that rivals have mastered but your site has yet to tackle.
2. Backlinks From Guest Blogging
When sending guest articles to established websites, attaching an editorial hyperlink to your site is often viable. Guest blogging outreach should be a big part of almost any SEO plan. You should try to find high-quality sites for these opportunities.
3. Backlinks in Business Profiles
When you set up digital profiles for your business on business listing websites, social networks, industry directories, and review sites, you almost always have the option to link to your website (or a few). Search engines see these entries as proof that a site has been around for a long time.
4. Backlinks from Webinars
Webinars (and their recordings) provide useful information for sites to link to. Websites often put webinars on their pages to link to your company and mention what your company does. You can gain these backlinks by using strategies similar to those used for blog promotion. Your webinar can be a resource for the websites you’re focusing on for guest blogging.
5. Free-Tool Backlinks
Giving up a great tool for free is another effective way to gain both attention and backlinks, which have a significant and long-term influence on SEO. That could include making a simple-but-useful item, like a cost calculator that would be useful to people in your business, or giving away a free version of a commercial app. To generate backlinks, market the tool with sites that have a similar readership to yours (use SEO tools to find them) and the sites your guest writing targets.
6. Acknowledgment Backlinks
When a company makes a gift, has a representative speak at or supports an industry event, etc., sites frequently display acknowledgements. You can determine the source of your rival’s backlinks and help you make a strategy to get your website’s recognition using these acknowledgment backlinks.
7. Guest Post Bio Links
If a site that welcomes guest blogging does not allow backlinks inside the article, it will almost always allow them within the author’s bio section. It doesn’t matter that these backlinks aren’t linked to editorial content. They still affect SEO because guests often backlinks websites with more viewership. They know where other people go to read blogs and articles, and find recipes.
8. Badge Backlinks
The creation of a badge to be awarded to other companies as acknowledgement for their position or performance in some way is a brilliant approach for creating backlinks and should be considered. Whenever such sites proudly display the emblem on their websites, you will receive a link back to your website. Once again, you’ll want to use SEO tools to identify websites with audiences comparable to your own to identify potential targets for your badge program.
9. Comment Backlinks
When you comment on a blog article, you are normally permitted to provide a link back to your website. Spammers frequently exploit this, which may be used to establish bad links. However, if people leave genuine comments on high-quality blog pieces, sharing links can help you boost traffic to your site and raise your brand’s awareness.
Sponsored or paid links are links that are paid for by the website owner or advertiser. These links should include the rel=“sponsored” attribute to indicate to search engines that they are paid links. While paid links can help improve a website’s SEO, Google and other search engines require them to be disclosed and identified as sponsored or paid.
UGC Links (rel=”ugc”)
UGC links are links that are created by users or customers of a website. These links should include the rel=”ugc” attribute to indicate to search engines that they are user-generated content. UGC links are valuable for SEO as they can indicate to search engines that a website has an engaged and active community.
How to Analyze Backlinks?
Analyzing backlinks is an important aspect of SEO. It helps to identify the quality and quantity of backlinks to a website. There are several tools that can be used to analyze backlinks, including Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush. These tools provide insights into the number of backlinks, the domain authority of the linking websites, and the anchor text used in the backlinks.
Best Kind of Backlinks
Links in Social Media Posts
You must be wondering what are the best backlinks, links in social media posts are a valuable type of backlink for SEO. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can drive significant traffic to a website. When a link is shared on social media, it can also help to improve the visibility and authority of a website.
Referral Backlinks (Referral Domains)
Referral backlinks, also known as referral domains, are examples of backlinks that come from other websites. These links can be a valuable source of traffic and can help to improve a website’s SEO. Referral backlinks can be acquired through outreach, guest blogging, and link exchanges.
What Kinds of Backlinks Should You Avoid?
1. Paid Links
Search engines look at your site’s value based on how well it’s been liked by other real and earned sites. Google says that buying and selling links can negatively affect a site’s search rankings. You don’t get what you pay for when you buy links to get an SEO advantage.
2. Backlinks in Press Releases That Are Not Newsworthy
Creating press releases to get backlinks is not a good thing. It could ruin your SEO because this practice is considered to create spam. Website visitors hate getting spammed by such backlinks.
3. Low-Quality or Irrelevant Directory Links
It might not be good for your SEO if you set up profiles in directories that aren’t trusted or well-regarded (or if they aren’t relevant to your business). They are also considered spam, and many website viewers detest them.
4. Low-Quality Forum Backlinks
One brand’s forum postings, particularly those containing hyperlinks, should be confined to high-quality forums and real debates. People who try to spam these places with links may not get the results they want.
5. Domains with High Spam Score
Domains with high spam scores are websites that are considered spammy or low-quality by search engines. Backlinks from these websites can hurt a website’s SEO and should be avoided. Tools such as Ahrefs and Moz can be used to check the spam score of a website before acquiring backlinks from it.
What Types of Backlinks Are Valuable?
Amongst the various types of backlinks, some hold more value than others. In other words, one must focus on quality backlinks. A quality backlink is more powerful than thousands of low-quality backlinks. Following are some examples of types of backlinks that are valuable:
Backlinks Coming from Trusted, Authoritative Websites
The concept of Domain Authority applies to websites, such that sites with more authority can pass on more valuable links to your site (via a link).
You will be able to notice a boost in your organic search engine traffic once you get a backlink from a high domain authority website.
Although these links are hard to get, they are definitely worth it.
Link’s Anchor Text Includes Your Target Keywords
An anchor text is the text part of a link that the audience will read. So, links with anchor texts that include your target keyword can be important for your growth. According to Ahrefs, there is a proper correlation between anchor texts with keywords and higher rankings for that keyword.
It is important to understand that going overboard with keyword-rich anchor text can stimulate action from the Google filter in Google Penguin. It filters out websites employing black hat link-building strategies.
A Relevant Site Links to Yours
Google bots are smarter than you can think of. So, when a website links to another, they check whether the two sites are related. Suppose you published an article about the best universities in the US. Google will put value links from sites talking about education, universities, and scholarships rather than sites about fitness, health diseases, or fishing.
It is a “Dofollow” Link
Search engines, including Google, ignore links with the “no follow” tag. While most links have do-follow tags, some examples of links from the sources that tend to be no follow are:
- Blog comments
- Paid advertisements
- Press releases
No Follow link
Links From a Domain That Hasn’t Previously Linked to You
Suppose you get a link from Website X.
Then, let’s say Website X links to you again. Will the second, third, and fourth links continue to be as powerful as the first?
No.
Links from the same domain have diminishing returns. So, it is better to get ten links from 10 different websites instead of 100 links from the same website.
So, leverage the power of the right backlinks and watch your site grow.
Best Practices
Before we dive into the different types of backlinks, it’s essential to understand some best practices for acquiring them. First, focus on acquiring backlinks from high-authority websites relevant to your niche. Second, avoid link schemes or buying links, as they can harm your website’s reputation and rankings. Third, diversify your backlink profile to include a mix of dofollow and nofollow links. Finally, focus on building relationships with other websites in your industry to increase the likelihood of acquiring high-quality backlinks.
Create a Linkable Asset
A linkable asset is a piece of content on your website that is unique, valuable, and shareable. Examples include long-form blog posts, research studies, and interactive tools. Creating a linkable asset that stands out from the competition is a powerful way to attract high-quality backlinks. Once you have created a linkable asset, promote it through social media, email outreach, and other marketing channels to increase its visibility and attract links.
Build Backlinks from Link Roundups
A link roundup is a blog post that lists the best content on a particular topic. To acquire backlinks from link roundups, research blogs in your industry that regularly publish them and pitch your content as a valuable addition to their next roundup. If your content is included in a link roundup, it can attract backlinks from other websites that find it useful.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building is the method of searching broken links on other websites and putting back links on them of your own content To use this tactic, find websites in your industry that have broken links, identify the content that was linked to, and create similar content on your website. Then, reach out to the website owner and suggest replacing the broken link with a link to your content. This tactic not only helps you acquire backlinks but also helps the website owner by fixing their broken links.
Infographics and Other Visual Assets
Visual content like infographics and videos are highly shareable and can attract high-quality backlinks. To use this tactic, create a visual asset that provides value to your audience and promotes it through social media, email outreach, and other marketing channels. Visual assets that are unique, informative, and visually appealing are more likely to attract backlinks.
Submit Testimonials
Submitting testimonials to companies or products you use can be a great way to acquire backlinks. When submitting a testimonial, include a link back to your website and make sure your testimonial provides value to the company. This tactic not only helps you acquire backlinks but also builds relationships with other companies in your industry.
Blogger Reviews
Similar to submitting testimonials, asking bloggers to review your products or services can be a great way to acquire backlinks. To use this tactic, identify bloggers in your industry and reach out to them with a request to review your product or service. Make sure your product or service provides value to the blogger’s audience and offer them a discount or other incentive to encourage them to review it.
Link Reclamation
Link reclamation is the process of identifying mentions of your brand or content on other websites that don’t include a link and reaching out to the website owner to request a link be added. To use this tactic, set up Google Alerts for your brand or content and identify mentions that don’t include a link. Then, reach out to the website owner and request they add a link to your website.
Reverse Engineer Your Competitor’s Backlinks
Finally, a great way to acquire backlinks is to reverse engineer your competitor’s backlinks. To use this tactic, identify your top competitors and use a backlink analysis tool to identify the websites that link to them. Then, reach out to those websites and suggest they link to your content as well. This tactic helps you acquire high-quality backlinks from websites in your industry that already trust your competitors.
FAQs
1. What is an example of a backlink?
Backlinks are hyperlinks from one webpage page to another. If another website connects to yours, you will get a backlink from them. In case when you connect to another website, you are providing them with a backlink.
2. How many backlinks per month are good for SEO?
In general, a grade of 60 to 100 is excellent, 40 to 50 is acceptable, and less than 40 is not outstanding. If you wish to create top-quality backlinks, start by getting links from websites with decent domain authority. These links must be relevant to your subject and trusted by search engines worldwide.
3. Which is the most powerful type of backlink?
The most effective backlinks are those that are do-follow. Do-follow backlinks carry the SEO juice from the website that provides the link to the website that receives the link.
4. Which backlink is the least important in SEO?
The worst backlinks are the ‘Tier 3’ backlinks. The search engines will punish your website if you build these backlinks. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads, spam comments, and general directories are all examples of Tier 3 backlinks.
Conclusion
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