Backlinks play a crucial role in ranking high on search engines. They are like votes of confidence from other linking websites. Backlinks pump authority to your website in the eye of search engines, provided it is done as per search engines’ guidelines.
What Are Backlinks?
Backlinks, or inbound links, are links from one website to another. It plays the role of bridges that connect different parts of the internet. When a website already has a reputation & is linking to your website, it passes hints to search engines that your content is valuable and reliable.
Why Backlinks Matter for SEO
Backlinks are important for several reasons:
- Boost Your Authority: Search engines like Google see backlinks as endorsements and authority. The more quality sites link to you, the more authority your site will gain. It’s like a popular person is talking about you. Suddenly, everyone’s paying attention!
- Traffic Growth: When users click on your website backlink, they’re redirected to your site. Quality links increase visitors to your website. You can expect a good traffic boost if several sites link to you. So, the more people come to your business, the more sales potential there is.
- Better Ranking in Search Results: Quality backlinks can help improve your site’s keyword ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The improved visibility of your website in SERP means more possible clicks to your website. So, good quality backlinks can put your website at the top of the ranks and boost traffic.
Types of Backlinks
All links to your page don’t contribute equal value to your website. Here are following two types of links we can categorize:
- Natural Backlinks: These are earned naturally when other sites find your content valuable. Imagine someone recommending a great book to their friends—that’s a natural backlink! It is also called link baiting. But it was very helpful and worth sharing.
- Manual Backlinks: These are created through outreach efforts, like when you ask another site to link to your content. It can be done in other ways, like submitting press releases, images, guest postings, etc.
How to Build Quality Backlinks
There are differences between creating backlinks and creating quality backlinks. Creating quality backlinks to your website is challenging. It is a time-consuming task if you are looking for good backlinks. However, the following are some ways to create backlinks.
- Create Valuable Content: High-quality and informative content attracts other websites to link to your content for their audience. It is like sharing good content/images/videos on social media.
- Guest Blogging: You can reach out to other popular blog owners in your niche & offer them good quality content for their audience. Your in-depth content can allow you to link to your website.
- Engage on Social Media: If your content is good enough to share on social media platforms, people find it worth sharable in their network. This will also increase the chance of getting linked to someone’s website.
- Press Releases: Is anything important going to happen in your business? A digital press release is best to let people know about it.
- Image Linking – Use high-quality images on your website with proper alt tags; if done properly, many can link your image. You can also submit the image on various image portals.
Measuring the Impact of Backlinks
Measuring the effectiveness of your backlinks can help you understand their impact on your site’s performance. Tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush can show how much traffic comes from specific links and how they contribute to your search rankings.
Following four points you should consider while measuring the impact of backlinks
- Anchor text relevancy
- Relevancy and quality of linking page
- Relevancy and quality of linking domain
- Link locations
So, backlinks are equally important for SEO as on-page optimization. High-quality links improve ranking in SERP, visibility, ranking and boost traffic to your website. Getting quality backlinks takes time and effort, but it will ultimately reward your website.
