If you are building a website from scratch, you might be running into an issue with backlinks. Backlinks are links from one website to another. For example, if you have written a blog post and another website inserts a link from one of their posts to your post, that would be a backlink.
In terms of SEO and making sure that your posts, and your website, are very high in search engine rankings, there should be many backlinks to your website. You might wonder how you can check who is backlinking to your posts and how many there are. You can do that through elementary backlink analysis.
Performing backlink analysis can provide you with critical information regarding how well your site and your posts rank. Let’s look at backlinks, what they are, and what you can do to get more of them.
What are Backlinks?
In its most basic form, a backlink is a link from one site to another. As mentioned before, if one of your blog posts has backlinks, it means that another website, particularly in a written post, has linked to your post or site. For this reason, backlinks can also be known as inbound links or incoming links. Simple enough, right?
The Importance of Backlinks
The point is that backlinks are critical for your website. To put it simply, search engines such as Google count these backlinks to your site kind of like a vote − a vote of confidence. It shows that other websites consider your site, or at least as specific piece of writing, to be a reliable authority on a given matter.
For example, if you have a blog about dog grooming, and somebody else also writes a post about dog grooming, they could then backlink to your website, which is kind of like an academic citation.
In terms of how Google and other search engines view things, the person who links to your site views you as the authority, a reliable source of information, and Google likes this very much.
Each quality backlink you have to your site will increase your overall ranking. Therefore, when people search for something on Google about that specific topic, say dog grooming, your site, and related posts will be higher in the search results.
Two Types of Backlinks
Something else to be aware of is that there are two main types of backlinks − NoFollow and DoFollow backlinks. NoFollow is a tag that tells search engines to ignore the link. These are relatively useless because they don’t hold or pass any value. Search engines are told to ignore NoFollow backlinks, so they won’t do anything for your search engine rankings.
The DoFollow variety is what you want. DoFollow backlinks indicate to Google and other search engines that there is value being passed from one site to another; you want plenty of DoFollow backlinks as they will help to improve your SEO ranking.
However, some DoFollow backlinks can be considered toxic. Toxic backlinks occur when malicious or untrusted websites link back to your site (among other things), and this can harm your search engine rankings. When you perform backlink analysis, make sure that your website and your posts have plenty of DoFollow backlinks leading to them and that none of them are toxic.
How do You Get More Backlinks?
One of the major problems that many people face, especially beginners, is getting other sites to backlink. Starting out can be difficult, but there are some things you can do to gain more DoFollow backlinks. Here are some tips to help improve your search engine ranking in terms of backlinks.
- You can go into a search engine, preferably Google, and search for your own site. See if any of your posts are ranking well, and if they are, expand on them.
- Creating popular post types full of relevant info that people like to read will also help generate backlinks. “Why,” “How-to,” and long-guide type posts, long buyer’s guides, and listicles can help achieve this.
- Writing guest posts on other sites with the contingency of backlinking to your site is another option.
- An excellent way to generate more backlinks is to contact other websites and ask them to link to your site.
Conclusion
The process might be a bit long and complicated, but the fact is that backlinks are vital to your website’s success. The more high-quality backlinks you get, the better your SEO will be.
