What are backlinks?
Backlinks (also known as “inbound links” or “one-way links”) are links from one website to a page on another website. Google and other major search engines view backlinks as “votes” for a specific page. Pages with a large number of backlinks have higher search engine rankings.
For example, I write an article or blog post in a popular forum and refer to a complementary topic or explanation from my site by including a link from my site.
Because this link will point directly to a page on my website, it’s a “backlink”.
Also read: How to Start a Blog for Free: Simple Step-by-Step Guide » Moumentec Blog
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are basically votes from other sites. Each of these voices tells search engines: “This content is valuable, reliable, and useful.” So the more “votes” you have, the higher your position will be in Google and other search engines.
The use of links in the search engine algorithm is nothing new. In fact, backlinks formed the basis of Google’s original algorithm (known as “PageRank“).
Although Google has made thousands of changes to its algorithm since then, backlinks are still a key ranking signal.
Google confirmed that backlinks are still one of the top three search engine ranking factors.
What types of backlinks are valuable?
Not all backlinks are considered equal. If you want a higher ranking, you must search and focus on backlinks from sites of great value and quality as well. In other words: one quality backlink can be more powerful than 1,000 low-quality backlinks.As it turns out, high-quality backlinks tend to share the same key qualities.
Quality #1: They come from trusted sites
Would you rather get a backlink from Harvard…or a popular news site?As it turns out, Google feels the same way. This concept is known as “domain authority”. Basically, the more authority a site has, the more it will delegate to your site (via a link).
Because whenever the link comes from a strong site, Google places a high rating on that, and your site’s ranking rises, and you get countless visits from Google search, all from the backlink from the aforementioned site. Is it difficult to get these links? Yes, of course. Do they deserve it? If your content is truly valuable, it deserves better.
Attribute #2: It contains the target keyword in your link
As a reminder, anchor text is the visible text portion of a link.
In general, it is essential that links contain anchor text that includes the target keyword. Because there is a big difference in rankings between keyword-rich anchor text and the top rankings for that keyword and a relationship between them. A quick word of warning:
You should not go beyond or exaggerate, give a different explanation of the link to your site, or cheat in placing keywords. Because google has a filter in its algorithm called “Google Penguin”.Google Penguin filters ignore sites that use black hat link building strategies. It specifically focuses on lifting sites that build backlinks with accurate matching anchor text.
Attribute #3: The relevance of the site (and page) to you is objectively related to your site
When one website links to another website, Google wants to see that the two sites are linked.
This makes sense if you think about it: Imagine you just published an article about running a marathon.
In this case, Google will give much more weight to links from sites about marathons, running, and fitness versus sites about fishing, unicycles, and digital marketing.
Attribute #4: The link is a “Dofollow” link.
Google and other search engines ignore links that have a “nofollow” tag attached to them.
(In other words, nofollow links are not counted by search engine ranking algorithms.)Fortunately, the vast majority of links on the web are “dofollow” links.Most links containing the nofollow tag are not valuable to begin with. For example, links from these sources tend to be nofollow:
- Blog comments
- Press statements
- Paid ads
These links aren’t very useful for SEO anyway, so it’s not a big deal that they don’t follow them.
Characteristic #5: The link is from a domain that has never been linked to you before
Let’s say you get a link from website A.
- great.
Well, let’s say Website A links back to you. and again. and again.
Are the second, third, and fourth links as strong as the first?
- no.
As it turns out, links from the same site have diminishing returns.
Or in other words:
It’s usually better to get 100 links from 100 different websites than 1,000 links from the same site.
In fact, there is a study that confirms that your site’s ranking is related to the number of sites linked to your site and not the number of backlinks connected to your site. These are the factors related to Google ranking.
Now that you’ve seen the types of backlinks that are most beneficial to your Google ranking, it’s time for me to show you how to start building them.
The best ways to build backlinks
Create linkable assets
If you want visitors to link to your website, you need something on your site that is worth linking to. (Also known as “linkable assets”). A linkable asset can be a post on your blog, a video, a piece of software, a quiz, a survey… basically anything people want to link to.
In most cases, a linkable asset will be a great part of your content (which is why SEO and your content promotion are so closely linked).
For example, when you want to publish a blog post on your site, write a topic that everyone is searching for, and place links for reference to confirm the validity of your information, and so on.
Imagine that Google announced that it uses 200 signals or conditions to rank sites. This raises curiosity about what these 200 signals or conditions are?
Google did not announce it and did not intend to announce it to the world. Therefore, if you were able to guess these conditions and do an in-depth and logical research and were able to collect all or most of them, then you will have discovered it for the first time and it will be your invention.
Therefore, the patent for its discovery will return to you and it will become a reference to which a large number of bloggers will return. Thus You will have multiple backlinks, which will increase the value of your site in search engines.
Or as another example, if I was able to work in a field and I did many researches and attempts until I was able to succeed in it, then I wrote a blog post explaining it in detail for those who wanted to emulate it and work on it, then it is also considered one of my assets. Anyone interested in the field that I explained in that blog post will refer to it. It will be of great value to search engines.
In addition, it will gain the trust of other bloggers and they will place links to your blog post in which you explained how you succeeded in that field on their site, thus increasing the number of backlinks to your site and your site will increase in strength with search engines.
Build backlinks from links to news sites or forums
Imagine if people published in famous forums or news sites blogs or publications with high-quality content of great value as an example of the good content that the visitor needs, which you publish on your site or blog, that would be great, wouldn’t it?
Fortunately, this is a real thing and many bloggers rely on it to build backlinks to their sites.
Here is a simplified explanation of how to work, step by step.
Search for topics similar to your content using the Google engine. Search using the title of the article for which you would like to create a backlink, or search using keywords specific to your website or blog. Until you find a forum or site that allows discussions and participation in it through comments or something like that.
Then share your opinion, suggestion, or point of view gently and tactfully to make the reader interested in completing what you wrote, and through it, you place a backlink that refers to a topic in your blog that takes the reader to your comment or what you wrote to your site to continue reading. Thus, you have achieved an excellent and strong backlink.
You can also share your content on social networking sites.
Use the advance man method
You can search and find web pages, resources, or businesses that are old, rebranded, or recently changed. Next, find sites that still link to these old resources. And email people to let them know they’re linking to something old. And that you have better and updated content than these old sites so that your site can be relied upon as a source explaining a product or how it works or something like that to make it easier for these people to promote their goods or merchandise…
To extract these backlinks from these old sites, there are several methods and tools that you can use. All you have to do is obtain the site link and examine it with one of these tools or sites that provide this service. There are free sites and paid ones.
The most important sites that provide the service of checking the site for backlinks
2- moz
4- semrush
5- majestic
There are still many sites that perform the same task, limited to only 5 examples.
After you find the links, here is a template that you can use to write to these people in order to communicate with them using your modern and effective article.
Hello [name of addressee],
I was looking for some content to read about [topic] this morning. I came across your excellent post: [title of post or job].
Anyway, I can’t help but notice that you mentioned [an outdated and outdated resource] in your article.
As you may have heard, [problem with an old resource].
Here’s a screenshot of where that link is: [screenshot]Also, I recently published an article about [topic]. It may be a good replacement for [Old Supplier].
Either way, I hope this helps, and have a great day!Thanks,
Your Name
Taking into account attaching examples of the extent of readers’ interaction with your topics in your message to the people you want to target.
Exploiting broken backlinks
This strategy is similar to the method of using the advanced man method, the difference is that with exploiting broken links, you only search for pages that have 404 errors, and exploit them.
To find 404 links you should focus on resource pages in your niche. So if you were in the fitness industry, you would search Google using the following search strings:
“fitness” + “resource page”
“fitness” + “resources”
“fitness” + “recommended sites”
“fitness” + “links”
You will find pages like these.
Now you can email the site owner and request a link. But this method looks like you are begging for a favor and does not work properly.Instead, tell the site owner that the links you will find are broken. You can easily find broken links on any page. Just use the nifty Check My Links extension in Chrome. This program quickly finds any broken links that happen to be on the page. They also highlight them in red to make them easier to find:
The last thing you need to do is send this email to the site owner about the broken link:
Hello [Site Owner Name],
I was just browsing your resources page today, and among the lists of great resources, there were some broken links.
Here are a few of them:
[URL 1][URL 2][URL 3]Oh, and I have a website, [your website], that also posts quality content related to anything on a regular basis. If you think so too, feel free to post a link to it on your resource page.
Either way, I hope this helps, and keep up the good work!Thanks,
Your Name
Post posts in forums you are a member of
Forums are often a place for sharing ideas and topics for which there is no explanation on the Internet, or it is few and insufficient, so most Internet users resort to searching for information in forums whose members address such topics, so they ask their question and wait for someone with experience or someone who has the answer to their question to answer them.
This is your opportunity to exploit it to attract interested visitors by answering their questions and inviting them with a backlink to follow to complete your article in which you explain the answer to that questioner. By following your link and you were able to answer their questions, they will interact with you by thanking you, and thus you have obtained strong and good backlinks.
You will also find a topic that talks about the content that you publish on your blog, and at the end of it you will find visitors’ questions in the comments about anything that seems incomprehensible to them. You can exploit it and direct them to your site by convincing them, but they could not understand it. You explained it more precisely in your article.
Send certificates
Businesses large and small love to brag about customer testimonials. So, if you offer a product or service, or train or teach something you are proficient in, to clients you target through an advertising campaign on social media sites, and at the end of the training, you send a certificate to your clients or those who follow your services and training. To prove to them that you’re a real person and care about them, they’ll often add a link to your website… without you even having to ask them.
Blogger Blogger Reviews
If you have software, a physical product, a consulting service, or anything of value that you sell, you can easily turn that into dozens of high-quality backlinks. How? By offering your product to bloggers for free.
Here’s how:
Look for bloggers in your niche who might be interested in what you have to offer. If you sell an informational product that teaches people how to make their own soap, you can search on Google with the phrases “making soap,” “making soap at home,” etc.
Your results will be a mixed bag of blogs and news sites. And you’ll get a strong list of bloggers who might be interested in your offer.
Therefore, all you have to do is contact these bloggers through this email form:
Hello [website owner’s name],
I was looking for [some homemade soap recipes] today when I came across [website].
You have a great team!In fact, I just launched an educational guide [that teaches people how to make luxury soap at home]. I usually charge [$X], but I’ll be more than happy to send it home for you to try and do a review.
Let me know your impression of this product.
my regards,
Thanks,
Your Name
One word of caution: You should be careful about the formula you use for this strategy.
Note how you shouldn’t offer your product in exchange for a link or review… which violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Instead, send them the product and let them decide whether it is worth mentioning on their blog or referring to it with keywords specific to the product such as the product name and also mentioning the name of its owner so that visits will come through a Google search without the need to put a link to it in the blog.
In fact, a friendly reminder is usually enough to get most people to log in to their site and add your link.
Reverse engineering your competitor’s backlinks
Every content has its own ways of building backlinks.
So I suggest that you take some time to monitor your competitors or what is called (reverse engineering). This way you will be able to find many opportunities from connections that exist specifically in your field of specialization.
Here’s an example of this method:
Let’s say you run a health and fitness blog.
And one of your competitors is Nerd Fitness.
Well, when I check this site’s link profile in the Backlink Checker, I notice that a lot of their links come from the podcast:
Specifically, people from this company (especially the founder, Steve Camp) appear on other people’s podcasts as guests.
Just like that, you have a nice list of places you can go to get links.
(Obviously, you need to reach out to the people who run those podcasts and introduce yourself as a guest. This takes work. But at least you know where to start.)
After all the trouble and hard work in building strong backlinks, you must commit to the content for which these links were built.
Conclusion:
The significance of backlinks in enhancing a blog’s ranking cannot be overstated. They act as endorsements from other websites, signaling to search engines that the content is valuable, credible, and useful. High-quality backlinks, especially those from authoritative domains with relevant content and proper anchor text, can dramatically improve a blog’s visibility and ranking on search engine results pages. By focusing on building a diverse backlink profile from reputable sources, bloggers can unlock their site’s potential and achieve greater online success.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links from external websites that point to your blog or website, serving as “votes” for the quality of your content.
Why are backlinks crucial for SEO?
Backlinks are a major ranking factor for search engines, indicating the trustworthiness and authority of your content.
What types of backlinks are most valuable?
The most valuable backlinks come from trusted, authoritative sites, contain relevant keywords, and are from a variety of unique domains.
How can I acquire high-quality backlinks?
Create linkable assets, engage in guest blogging, leverage broken link building, and participate in relevant online communities to earn high-quality backlinks.
