If you want to buy a new coffee maker for yourself, you are sure to read what other customers have written about the different products. The more people recommend a particular product, the more likely you are to trust it and order it.
Broadly speaking, backlinks also work on this principle in the eyes of search engines. If Google sees a lot of reputable sites linking to your domain, it’s like giving it a positive rating, so Google will trust it too. So backlinks help a site gain a positive reputation on the internet so that search engines and users can see it as a credible resource within a given topic.
So what are these backlinks and how do they work in more detail? This will be discussed below.
WHAT ARE BACKLINKS?
When another site places a link to your own site on one of its pages, that link is called a backlink. For example, suppose your brand manufactures and sells coffee machines.
If another site publishes an article on your blog (such as “Top 10 Coffee Makers”) and includes a link to your site in that article, that link will be considered a backlink from your perspective.
WHAT ARE BACKLINKS GOOD FOR?
The primary benefit of backlinks is to strengthen your site’s SEO, i.e. search engine optimization. The goal of SEO is to get your site ranked higher in the results whenever a user searches for something that you do.
When Google sees more and more relevant sites linking to you (so you’re getting more and more high-quality backlinks), you’ll be more likely to show your content in the first search position – so backlinks strengthen your SEO.
In addition, each backlink is a new path for users to get to your brand’s site. So backlinks help you get more online traffic, both directly and indirectly.
TYPES OF BACKLINKS
We distinguish two main types of backlinks: “dofollow” and “nofollow” backlinks. From the users’ point of view, there is no difference between them – they click on them and go to the page that the links point to. However, from an SEO perspective, they are not considered equivalent at all.
The value of dofollow links is much higher in terms of SEO , because search engines use this to determine, among other things, whether an authentic website is referring to yours. Dofollow links can help your rankings a lot.
However, if a site links to you with a nofollow link, search engines will ignore that link and not include it in the rankings. Of course, users can still get to your site by following the link, but in SEO, you won’t be ahead.
DOES EVERY BACKLINK HAVE VALUE?
Google knows that webmasters prefer to use various tricks to get as many backlinks to their site as possible. That’s why Google’s algorithm doesn’t consider the number of links, but the quality of the referring sites, when evaluating backlinks. This means that few but good quality backlinks are worth more than many, less relevant / authentic sites linking to you.
So it’s not worth trying to post backlinks in posts or forums, as Google knows these are just cheap tactics to try to circumvent its algorithm.
WHAT IF A LESS AUTHENTIC SITE LINKS TO MY DOMAIN?
Many guides recommend that you remove these links or refuse them so as not to damage your site’s reputation. For security reasons, you may want to contact the site operators and ask them to remove the link. If this is not an option, you can also use the Google Link Rejection Tool to block links to your site.
It’s important to note, however, that Google has repeatedly claimed that these links are automatically ignored and will not lower your site’s ranking.
The free Google Search Console and several paid link analytics tools help you gather sites that link to your own domain so you can search for potentially malicious linkers.
HOW CAN I GET VALUABLE FEEDBACK?
The best way is to visit other sites related to your area and ask them if they would be willing to publish some completely original content on your blog. You can then add links to this content, of course by prior arrangement.
Another option is to draw the attention of sites with such relevant topics to your own content on your site and mention to them that this content could be a good resource for their readers. If you are lucky, they will agree with you and will be happy to refer to them from their own website.
You can also conduct interviews with influential people whose audience would be an ideal clientele for you. In these cases, these people will usually announce which site they will be interviewing with and will link to your own domain to get their followers’ attention.
Whatever link-building tactics you choose, make sure the topic of the sites that link to you is related to yours, and that you always create valuable content, as more reputable domains prefer to link to them.
