What is a backlink?

A backlink is simply a link from one website to another.

 

Why are backlinks important?

As you may know, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm. No one knows exactly what they are but research has found that backlinks have a huge impact on your site’s rankings.

Think about it; if hundreds of websites are linking to a specific website, it tells Google the content is worth linking to, and therefore deserves a higher ranking than other similar content.

Essentially, a backlink represents a “vote of confidence” from one website to another.

 

The structure of a backlink

Here’s what a backlink looks like: <a href=”https://www.example.com“> Link text </a>

 

Types of backlinks

Not all backlinks hold the same value. There are two main types of backlinks; dofollow and nofollow backlinks.

The nofollow tag tells Google to ignore the backlink and not pass any link juice to the linked website. So no matter how many nofollow backlinks you build or buy, you won’t recieve any SEO benefit.

Dofollow backlinks don’t have this issue. But then again, not all dofollow backlinks hold the same value. For example, 10 backlinks from high authority websites can easily overrule 100 backlinks from new or low quality websites.

Keep in mind that Google may penalize, or even de-index your website if it has a lot of spammy backlinks. What’s important is the quality of backlinks, not the quantity.

 

How to check existing backlinks?

There are countless tools you can use to monitor your site’s backlinks. A few of our personal favorites are Google Search Console, SEMRush and Ahrefs.

As a webmaster, it’s important to know the following:

• How many backlinks do my website currently have?
• How many unique domains are linking to my site?
• What’s the average Domain Authority (DA) of those linking domains?
• Are the majority of my backlinks nofollow or dofollow?
• Are the backlinks coming from websites related to your niche?

If you find any backlinks from suspicious or spammy sites, contact their webmasters and have them remove the links immediately. Otherwise you may suddently find your website being penalized or even de-indexed by Google.

Even a minor penalty can drop your rankings for a few weeks so it’s highly recommended that you don’t buy backlinks from untrusted sources.

Back to the topic of checking your backlinks, Google Search Console can do the job but it takes time for new backlinks to be tracked and analysed.

With tools like SEMRush, you can not only monitor your own backlinks but also the backlinks of your competition. You can even sort by Domain Authority to see what the most impactful backlinks of particular site is.

Ahrefs, which has the world’s largest backlinks database, is the best tool for monitoring backlinks but it’s very expensive.

 

Why do you to link to pages within your domain?

If you’re just starting out, chances are not many sites will link out to your content. So how do you kick-start your backlink building journey? The answer is internal linking.

Internal links are links that go from one page of a domain to another page of the same domain. This is different from backlinks, which link out to pages on other domains.

While internal links are commonly used for navigation purposes, they help Google find, index and understand all the page on your site. If used strategically, internal links can send page authority to important pages of your site, which results in higher rankings on Google.

 

How to get more backlinks

There are only four ways to get more backlinks. You either create them, earn them, build them or buy them.

 

Creating backlinks

This is where you manually build backlinks to your site. The most common ways are submitting your site to business directories, commenting on blog posts and replying to forum threads. This approach takes a lot of time, especially since it’s hard to find websites that allow you to post dofollow links.

 

Earning backlinks

This is where people discover your content organically and choose to link to it. They may find your content on Google search, social media or by word of mouth. Organic backlinks are considered to be more authoritative than created backlinks.

 

Building backlinks

This is where you reach out to other webmasters, asking them to link to your content. While some may do it without anything in return, others tend to see what’s in it for them. So we suggest using one or more of these link building tactics:

• Guest blogging: Offer to write a quality article on their blog for free, in which you can link back to your own site.
• Broken link building: Use a dead link checker to find relevant dead links on other sites and suggest your working link as a replacement.
• The Skyscraper Technique: Find relevant content with lots of links, make something better, and ask those linking to the original to link to you instead.
• Unlinked mentions: Find unlinked mentions of your brand, then ask the author to make the mention clickable.

 

Buying backlinks

While we don’t recommend buying backlinks, manually building them can be quite a daunting task. Fortunately, we have a comprehensive database of quality dofollow backlinks that you can access to easily outrank your competition.

Keep in mind that quality backlinks are by any means cheap. So if you come across a website trying to sell 100 backlinks for $10 or so, run the opposite direction. They most likely provide nonfollow backlinks or backlinks from suspicious and spammy sites.

 

So if you want to boost your site rankings with our high quality backlinks, feel free to contact us. We’ll be sure to give you a good rate.