As the popular saying goes, “No man is an island.” The same goes true for web pages too- no page on the internet exists in isolation. It has to be linked up from somewhere for people to get to it. This is the reason why search engines use backlinks as a measure of a site’s popularity and general trustworthiness.
Backlinks – What Are They?
Backlinks, simply put, are links that point “back” to a webpage or website that you own. Say, for example, you have an article that teaches people an easy recipe for kimchi. Someone on Twitter with an affinity for Korean food found your article interesting, so they then shared your kimchi recipe to their followers by tweeting a link to it on their feed. That link is what you would call a backlink to your page. It redirects a user from one website to another.
Why are Backlinks Important?
Backlinks were the main driving force behind Google’s original search algorithm called PageRank. There have been many changes since then, but still, they still remain a key search engine ranking factor that would ultimately determine a site’s placement on Google’s search engine ranking pages (SERPs).
Consider a backlink as similar to a public vote of confidence from other people and websites. If somebody considers your page relevant and trustworthy enough, then they would “vote” for your page by placing a link to it on their own posts and pages.
The more high quality backlinks that you have, the better. Search engines like Google, as we’ve mentioned above, use them as a metric for ranking. To be able to rank in Google’s SERPs, your content has to be crawled and indexed by Googlebot first(note: Googlebot is Google’s own web crawler software). If there’s no way to get to your page due to it not being linked or backlinked anywhere, then you can’t rank for the keywords that you’re targeting.
Every new page or site published on the Web has to be crawled by search engine crawlers. But of course, this process could take some time. If you have quality backlinks on high authority websites and high-traffic news sites, then your pages would be able to get crawled easier and you’ll be able to rank on SERPs as soon as possible.
Not only are backlinks good for algorithms and web crawlers, but they’re great for human readers too. Organically-placed backlinks allow visitors to discover content that is strongly related to their current interests, and could provide them with information that they are highly interested in.
What Are Quality Backlinks and Why It Is the Most Important Part of SEO
What do we actually mean when we say “high quality backlink”?
Backlinks are not all the same. It’s been known that Google also looks into backlink quality, and “weighs” their importance according to some metrics.
Here are some of the factors that Google takes into consideration when determining backlink quality.
- Relevancy
If you’re a food website that primarily has recipes and articles on cooking techniques, it doesn’t make sense to have most of your backlinks come from finance sites. Your content should be relevant to the sites and pages that you have your backlinks on. Links that have no degree of relevancy to your site’s content and your pages’ content are most likely going to be a waste of time.
- Site Diversity
Search engines like Google favor backlinks that have been built as organically and naturally as possible. Don’t just build backlinks in one go. Google would find it weird and suspicious that you’re getting so many backlinks in such a short period of time. Trickle them out in short doses over a time period and make sure that they’re coming from a lot of different sources like directories, magazines, social media postings, authority blogs, and press releases.
- Domain Authority
If you’re a cook, you’d rather be taking lessons from Gordon Ramsay than from some unknown cook in a not-so-well-known restaurant. SaaS link building agencies will help build high authority links that are given more weight than those coming from websites with no authority at all.
- Link Location
Where your link is placed matters too. Backlinks that are incorporated naturally and seamlessly into a site’s content are more valuable than links just placed randomly on a site. For example, if your backlinks were placed on the sidebar or footer of a page, then Google might deem them irrelevant.
How to Create High Quality Backlinks
Securing high quality backlinks take time and effort. If backlinks are going to be the backbone of your SEO efforts, then it’s time to start building them now. Here are some of the methods that you can use.
- Maintain a blog
Having a blog is a great way to garner backlinks. When you publish interesting and relevant content, then it’s more likely that people would want to link to them. This is probably one of the best tried-and-tested methods of creating backlinks.
- Guest on other blogs
Write an awesome blog post and see if other blogs (in your niche, of course) would think it’s a good fit for their own site and publish it. Not only is writing blog posts a great way to promote your own pages, it’s also a great way for you to showcase your expertise too.
- Write press releases
Press releases are an old-school way of drumming up interest for your company. But they still work. Write an eye-catching press release and publish it on your own site and social media, or have it submitted to large newswires so that your company gets more coverage.
- Partner with other companies
If you’re a food and cooking website, then try to partner with companies that sell cooking equipment or food containers. Having links to other companies in complementary industries is a great way to get both high quality traffic and backlinks.
- Ask for reviews from clients
If you sell products or sell services, encourage your customers to provide reviews for them on Google and other review sites. You’d be able to get backlinks and feedback, as well as strengthen your brand’s relationship with its clients.
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