What Exactly Are Backlinks and How Are They Related to SEO?

Sydney, Australia, 29th May 2022, ZEXPRWIRE, Backlinks are links created when one website or webpage links to another website or page. They are also referred to as incoming links, inbound links, or one-way links. 

Search engines like Google, Bing, or yahoo consider these backlinks as votes for a particular webpage. Thus, web pages with a higher number of backlinks tend to rank high in organic search results. When one website links to another, it is believed that the contents of the other website are noteworthy. 

Backlink building is an important aspect of search engine optimization, it is the main signal used by search engines in search result rankings. Backlinks can be used to improve a website’s authority, and websites with greater authority naturally rank higher on search results. 

If a website is still struggling to appear on the first page of SERPs then what it needs is to hire the assistance of an expert SEO agency that will help generate quality backlinks. 

In the past, the number of backlinks would directly affect a page’s popularity and rankings, but that’s no longer the case. The focus now is more on the quality of the backlinks. In today’s post, Let’s get into what websites need to know about backlinks, and how they directly affect our SEO efforts.

Backlinks: Why are they important?

Backlinks are the main signals search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo use in determining if a website’s content is valuable, credible, and useful to searchers. Hence it is a major factor that will determine how high a site’s ranking will be on search engines. 

Google’s original algorithm was based on backlinks. Although Google has made numerous changes to its original algorithm, backlinks remain a key ranking factor. Links, content, and RankBrain are the three most important Google ranking factors. 

Therefore, incorporating backlink building into a SEO Strategy will help make those SEO efforts more effective. But before looking for any kind of backlinks, a user must know that not all backlinks are valuable. Some might even cause search results ranking to drop. 

What type of Backlinks are valuable to SEO?

As mentioned earlier, not all backlinks are made equal, some are valuable, while others can harm the website’s SEO efforts. In other words, in order for a website to rank higher on SERPs, the website needs to know the type of backlinks that are useful and focus on those quality backlinks. 

Let’s take a look at the types of backlinks that can positively affect the website’s SEO efforts.

1. Backlinks from trusted and authoritative websites

Is it better to get a backlink from Forbes or a random website? It’s definitely better from Forbes. And as it turns out, Google agrees with this. This concept is what is known as “Domain Authority”.  

Basically, what this means is that a website with a higher Domain Authority can pass on more authority to a website via backlinks than websites with low domain authority. This type of high-quality backlinks from an authoritative website can be very difficult to obtain, but they are definitely worth it.

2. Target Keywords in the Link’s Anchor text

Anchor text is the visible text part of a link that a reader can clearly see or read. They can positively or negatively affect a website’s SEO efforts depending on how they are used. In general, the anchor text on a link should include a target keyword. 

Creating a keyword-rich anchor text improves a website’s rankings for that keyword. But avoid going overboard with keyword-rich anchor texts, so it doesn’t get flagged as a black hat link-building strategy.

3. The website or webpage linking to another must have related content. 

When websites link to other websites, Google checks to see if those two are related. If a website is based on health, then Google will put more value on links coming from websites about hospitals, pharmacies, and drugs than from sites about fitness, cryptocurrency, or digital marketing.

4. Only “Dofollow Link” are considered by search engines

Links can be classified into Do-follow and no-follow links. Google and other search engines tend to ignore all no-follow links. In other words, no matter the amount of no-follow links on a website, it doesn’t count in search engine ranking algorithms. No-follow links do not improve a website’s SEO efforts.

5. Links from a website that has not linked to it in the past

When a website has 80% of all backlinks coming from a single source, the backlink juice won’t be as powerful as it once was. In other words, links from the same website have diminishing returns. Hence, it is better to get 20 quality links from 20 different websites than to get 2000 links from a single website.