What are Backlinks?

Backlinks play a major role in off-page SEO Do you know What are backlinks? In this article, I am going to discuss backlinks and how to earn it.

A backlink is a link from one website or webpage to another website or webpage. Backlinks are one of the most important aspects of off-page SEO. Search engines like Google see backlinks as votes or support from other sites. Backlinks do play a part in increasing organic search engine result ranking of a webpage.

Importance of Backlinks

Backlinks are kind of votes from other websites to your website and webpages. They ensure that your site is reliable, valuable, and worth visiting. The more backlinks your site has the more its search engine ranking increases. That is why backlinks are still the most important factor for a sites’ ranking and domain authority in search engine result pages. If you want to rank higher and be more visible in search engine results, you cannot ignore building quality backlinks.

Types of Backlinks

There are mainly two types of backlinks- do-follow and no-follow backlinks. Search engines like Google tend to ignore links with no-follow tag. A no-follow tag is used by a site when it is linking to another site that it does not want to pass its authority to for some reason. The no-follow backlinks do not contribute to the increment of web page’s ranking neither do they decrease ranking.

That is the reason all sites look for the do-follow links. Do- follow links do increase the ranking of a webpage. Do-follow links from a site that has good Domain Authority score are considered more valuable. To check the DA score of a site you can use Mozbar, SEMrush, etc. The quality of backlinks matters rather than the number of links. For example, you have one thousand sites with low DA score linking to you or one hundred sites with great DA score linking to you, the latter will benefit you more.

Quality or Quantity

While link building what do you look for, the quality or quantity of links. It is a very good question as it determines the DA score of your webpage. If you get a link from a site with great DA score, for example, sites like Forbes, they improve the ranking and authority of your site. That is why quality link building plays a very good role for effective SEO.

How to Earn Backlinks?

There are many ways one can earn backlinks. But earning quality backlinks is what matters most. The following are the most useful white hat techniques for link building:

1. Create Linkable Assets: This means that you must have some valuable content on your site or webpage. It could be a good blog, an article, a video, etc. that people find worth using and worth linking to.
2. Broken Link Building: It is simply about finding 404 error pages. For this, you search for broken links and then recreate them and reach out to sites that are still linking to those dead pages. Tell them that they are still linking to dead pages and you have a better-updated version of that. They will probably link to you.
3. Guest Blogging: It is also a very good way to build links and by guest blogging, you are not only building backlinks but also growing your brand by targeting the right audience.
4. Create Infographics: Because they catch a lot of eyeballs and people tend to read infographics rather than long articles. Infographics and other visual content get more attention and that is the reason they are valuable for backlinks.
5. Competitive Link Research: You can check links of your competitor by various tools. For example, use Ubersuggest and put in the URL of your competitor and you will find all the people linking to them. Then you can create your own content ten times better than your competitors and reach out to the people.
6. Skyscraper Technique: This technique is given by the founder of Backlinko site Brian Dean. In simple words, this technique is about creating your content too good that nobody could touch your content. This technique demands hard work but it is worth it as it may bring you some quality links.

How to Check Backlinks?

You can check your backlinks by using tools like Google Search Console, ahrefs, ubersuggest, SEMrush, etc. By checking them you can find which are valuable and which are harmful. This step is important as harmful or toxic links can affect your ranking in search engine results and there is a possibility that your site might get penalties from Google. That is why it is better to get rid of harmful links to be secure for good ranking in SERPs.

Conclusion

Thus we can say that backlinks are a very important factor in determining the ranking of a site or webpage in SERPs. We also covered the importance of backlink as they work as votes or reference to your site. Do-follow links and no-follow links and why do-follow links are more important. We covered various techniques for creating backlink. And finally, the ways to check backlink to find out harmful links and get rid of them. Quality backlinks matter for high ranking and good domain authority. That is why one must focus on quality rather than quantity of links.