If you know a thing or two about SEO, you’ve probably heard the term “backlinks,” but you might be wondering what exactly a “backlink” is. A backlink is a referral from another website to your website that acts as a vote of confidence for Google to consider your website’s authenticity. Google is like an arena where websites compete for top rankings in the SERP, and many factors influence how they appear and rank.
Backlinking influences a website’s ranking by informing Google that other websites are referring to it.
This may have all sounded fairly straightforward, but it isn’t really. It is critical to understand what a “good backlink” is and how to earn one. That is exactly what we will tell you in this article. So read on to find out why links are important in SEO and how to build them more effectively.
What are Backlinks?
A backlink, also known as an inbound link, is formed when one website harnesses the power of backlinks, linking to or referring to another. For example, if a video gaming website links to a blog post comparing the best gaming PCs, the gaming PCs’ website receives a vote of confidence – or backlink – from the video gaming website. This tells Google that the gaming PCs website has some valuable content that another website finds valuable enough to link to from their own.
While backlinks are desirable, they are not all valuable. Links from high-authority websites or sites related to your industry are valuable, but some links should be avoided at all costs. As a result, it is critical to understand the various types of backlinks and backlinking sites before creating one. This is because, while a good backlink can improve your SERP ranking, a bad or spammy backlink is flagged by search engines and lowers your visibility in search engine results.
Also read: Ways To Measure The Success Of Your Links
Why Are Backlinks Important for SEO?
Backlinks are regarded as one of the most important factors in determining a website’s ranking. This is because, as previously stated, backlinks in SEO act as a vote of confidence from other websites, and the more votes there are, the higher the website will rank.
While there is no hard and fast rule for how many links a website needs to gain authority in SERPs, it is recommended that a website have 40 to 50 backlinks to the homepage and 0 to 100 backlinks to each individual web page to be competitive for SEO. However, quality is more important than quantity, and the higher the quality of links, the fewer links are needed for good ranking.
Also read: How to Get High-Quality Backlinks in 2023
The Factors That Determine a “Good” Backlink
Now that you understand the significance of a “good” backlink, you may be wondering what factors determine whether a link is good or not. Here are some of the most fundamental factors to consider when determining the quality of a backlink:
Relevancy
For scalable link building, it is important to get links from sites that are relevant to your niche. Domain relevance is an important factor in Google ranking and should be considered to avoid the Google Penguin penalty.
Authority
Domain authority is a website scoring method that tells you about a website’s chances of ranking. Obtaining links from high-authority websites will therefore push your link to the top of the SERPs and rank it. Tools such as Moz Bar and SEMRush can be used to determine a website’s DA.
While doing competitor analysis to check the authority of several domains at once, ensure that you have a stable internet connection. Services like AT&T, Verizon, and Windstream can be the best. Here are some perks of using Windstream Internet to help you make an informed choice for your home internet connection.
Link Placement
One of the most overlooked yet critical factors in SEO is the placement of your link in the content when creating a backlink. A good link placement arguably comes from the content’s upper body, with a good anchor text and a well-written, relevant body of text surrounding it.
Also read: Link Building – Beginners Guide [2023]
Strategies for Building Backlinks
Here are some actionable strategies for building high-quality backlinks to improve your website’s SEO:
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is an effective way to obtain backlinks from the websites you want. Many sites allow you to add guest blogs to their site, and you can contact the webmaster with your blog article idea and ask if you can include your link in the article and begin backlinking.
Avoiding Broken links
A broken link is one that does not lead anywhere and displays an Error 404 message. This has a negative impact on your website and is bad for SEO.
Links can break for a variety of reasons, but most of the time they are caused by changes to your website. You may have migrated your site to a new domain, moved pages and content to new URLs without properly redirecting the old URLs, or removed old pages or outdated content from your site. These links have a negative user experience, so make sure to fix or redirect any broken links.
Also read: Will You Use A PBN To Build Links? See The Pros and Cons
Create an Outstanding Content
Creating skyscraper content is the most important strategy for building high-quality backlinks. You can do so by following a step-by-step strategy.
First, find the most popular topic in your industry by Googling the keyword and finding the highest-ranked article. Examine what makes it so good and what you can do to improve your article.
Now, write a more detailed and well-written article that is three times better than the one that is currently ranking. To improve its quality, you could add more infographics or videos, use branded strategies, be more relevant and current, and use the appropriate keywords.
Now, pitch the article to high-authority websites to begin gaining backlinks to your website.
Also read: Importance of Human Written Content For SEO
Wrap-up
Backlinking is an important SEO strategy because it helps Google determine the trustworthiness of your website. As a result, it is critical to include quality backlinks as part of your SEO strategy in order to achieve greater visibility in SERPs.
