Backlinks
Backlinks are links that reside on other websites but link to your website. In other words, with regard to search engine optimization, they are votes of confidence given by other sites to yours. The more quality ones you have, the higher your website will likely rank in search results. There are many types, do follow backlinks, no follow backlinks, bookmarks, sponsored, and GBOB.
Why Are Do Follow Backlinks Important?
Do Follow Backlinks are the cornerstone of website authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. They are essentially votes from other sites. Each of these votes informs the search engines: “This content is worthy, reliable and useful”. So the more of these “votes” you have, the better your site will be ranked in Google and other search engines.
Using links to a search engine algorithm isn’t new. As a matter of fact, these were the building blocks of Google’s very first algorithm initially called “PageRank”. These link assist as, page ranking, technical ranking, DA increasing, PA increasing, and visitor trust. Even with the thousands of changes that have been made to its algorithm, Google still considers these one of the most important ranking signals.
For example, in an industry study that we conducted, it emerged that links remain one of Google’s major ranking signals. Beyond perception by search engines alone, these are also pivotal in driving direct traffic to your site. When people click these links from other websites, they get directly to your content. It increases your site’s traffic and increases brand awareness by bringing an audience organically.
What Kind of Backlinks are Worth Having?
Not every link is worth having. That is to say, in the effort of getting better standing in the SERPs, one should focus on quality links.
Put in other words: One single-quality backlink can be more powerful than 1,000 low-quality links. As it turns out, high-quality backlinks do have the same key characteristics.
- They Come from Trusted, Authority Sites
Would you rather get a backlink from Harvard… or some random dude’s website. This is what’s called “Domain Authority”. Put simply, the more authoritative a site is, the more authority it can give to your site-if it links to it, for instance.
Semrush classifies TechCrunch as an hyper-authoritative domain. Since the link is coming from an authoritative site, Google weighs heavily on it. As a fact, I notice an uptick in my organic search engine traffic right after TechCrunch linked to me. Are they hard to get? Definitely. Are they worth it? Absolutely.
- Include Your Target Keyword In Link Anchor Text
Just a refresher: anchor text is the visible text part of a link.
Now, a word of warning: You don’t want to overdo it with keyword-rich anchor text. Actually, Google’s algorithm has an element called “Google Penguin.” Google Penguin weeds out those websites that adopt black hat link building strategies. It particularly zeros in on sites that create links with exact match anchor text.
- The Site Linking Is Topically Related To Your Site
Relevance is what Google wants to see when one website links to another. In this instance, Google would put MUCH more weight in links from sites having to do with marathons, running, and fitness compared to sites about fishing, unicycles, and digital marketing.
- The Link Is a “Dofollow” Link
Google and other search engines don’t consider links that have the “nofollow” tag on them. Or in other words, nofollow backlinks aren’t counted by search engine ranking algorithms. Fortunately, most links online are “dofollow” links. And the majority of the links that have the nofollow backlinks tag aren’t particularly valuable anyway. For example, these types of links tend to be nofollow:
- Blog comments
- Press releases
- Paid advertisements
These aren’t super helpful links for SEO anyway, so it’s really not a big deal that they’re nofollow.
- The Link Is From a Domain That Hasn’t Linked to You Before
Let’s say you get a link from Website. Well, let’s say Website A links to you again. And again. And again. As it happens, links from the same website are subject to diminishing returns.
Or to put it another way: It’s generally much better to get 100 links from 100 different websites versus 1,000 links from the same website. Now that you’ve seen what types of links are the most helpful for your Google rankings, it’s time for me to show you how to start building them.
Create a Linkable Assets
In most cases, your backlinks linkable asset will be an amazing piece of content-whole is why search engine optimization and content marketing are so closely tied together. One day, I read that Google uses 200 ranking signals. Which was curious to me: “What are these 200 signals?”. Of course, Google wasn’t going to make any such announcements. So, I started compiling statements from Google and patents that I could find online.
That list of 200 factors took an insane amount of time to compile-it took me over 2 weeks. But finally, after many late nights, I FINALLY compiled a list of 200 ranking factors that Google could use in their algorithm. To date, this singular content has generated more than 5,900 do follow backlinks from 2,100 domains.
Use The Moving Man Method
First, you find web pages, resources or businesses that are outdated, rebranded or recently changed names. Then find the sites that are still linking to these outdated resources. Finally, you email people to let them know that they’re linking to something that’s out of date. Let me show you how this works with a real life example….
A while back I read that a website for a big SEO agency website suddenly shut down.