What is a backlink?
As mentioned in the previous post, over ninety-five percent of Google’s penalties are related to the backlink profile of your website. If you have too many poor quality backlinks, you will lose your ranking in Google.
The backlink is an important SEO tool. So important that even relative beginners now know how crucial they can be in trying to get a website to the top of search engine rankings. But not all backlinks are the same. Some of them can not only “not help” a website, but be harmful to it. Too many backlinks of this kind can even result in penalties. So how do you recognize harmful backlinks? And above all: How can you prevent them from damaging a website.
For your natural SEO, it is important to choose a good publishing system (CMS). WordPress is recognized as performing in terms of natural referencing (SEO). It’s a good start. Then, even if there is no magic wand to improve the ranking of your site, you must both publish high quality content and collect powerful backlinks.
Backlink definition:
The backlink is an “incoming link from one website to another”. In other words: Website A linked to website B, so you simply click on the linked text to switch between the two pages. Links are set to provide cross-references or point to related topics. However, these links are not only used to refer to a source or to share information but are also being used by search engine optimizers to move a website up the search engine rankings.
In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology a backlink is a hyperlink that links from a Web page, back to your own Web page or Web site. Also called an Inbound Link (IBL) these links are important in determining the popularity (or importance) of your Web site. Some search engines, including Google will consider Web sites with more backlinks more relevant in search results pages. May also be written as two separate words, back link.
Criteria of quality backlink
Since late 1990, the major search engines have considered links to a site as an indicator of popularity. In the old days, webmasters would use all kinds of strategies to get links to their site. They would beg, borrow, steal, or trade just to increase the number of backlinks in hopes of getting ranked on the first page.
Today, these techniques don’t work. They will get your site blackballed and delisted, which is difficult, if not impossible, to recover from.
Backlink quality is a concept that is not clearly defined. Backlink quality is backlink natural, useful to users and has many real clicks.
For the convenience of link building, we would like to list the most important technical criteria of a high-quality backlink:
- Backlink in content
- Backlink content is toxic
- Backlink in the article with related content
- Backlink has many links
- High Page-rank
- High PA
- Do follow backlink
- Backlink brings a lot of traffic
- Backlink has few links out
- Backlink has many social interactions (Like, share, G +, Tweet …)
- Backlink tail GOV, EDU (Bonus)
How to get backlink?
The process of getting backlinks is called Netlinking. To start your Netlinking, make a list of websites that are potential candidates.
To do this, search on Google for the websites in your industry that appear at the top of the search pages. At the risk of repeating myself, keep in mind that if you develop solutions for health professionals, there is no point in getting a backlink from an e-commerce shoe site even if it is an act of your cousin.
The sites ranked well by Google have strong authority.
Stay in your industry. Although, as I have already mentioned, getting a link from the site of one of your competitors is not a good idea.
Focus your energy on identifying quality sites that have a significant impact on your Google rankings. Get a free backlink from a university or government website. Indeed, search engines tend to no longer trust sites that end with:
- .gov or .gouv – governments,
- .edu – universities,
- or .org – non-profit organizations.
The fundamental process of getting a backlink is as follows:
- Create something worthy of a link.
- Find people who might be interested in linking to you.
- Persuade those people to do precisely that.
The tools for tracking backlinks
The Google Webmaster Tools give you a list of the wrong URLs on your site. Anyone who has been a little bit in the SEO knows it: the hardest task is that of winning inbound links (backlinks) to raise its site popularity in the eyes of Google. However, there is a fairly simple way, and often not used, to gain links, often of quality: correct his mistakes 404!
the Google Webmaster Tools is the best tool for this case and you can go to the “Exploration> Exploration Errors”. At this level, the “URL errors” graph will show you the number of 404 errors Google has seen on your site and how it has changed over the last few months:
Below, Google tells you the wrong URLs it found on your site (meaning that an internal or external link points to them):
And if you click on one of the proposed links, a window opens, giving some generic information
The tab “Referenced on” is even more interesting, since it provides some guidance on pages that contain the wrong link. We quickly realize that it can be internal links, but also external links, from other sites, and therefore very interesting in SEO:
Several options are available to you:
– Unindex these pages (via the robots.txt file, the Google Webmaster Tools – heading “URL to delete” – or the X-robots-tag directive) but it is certainly here to the worst of solutions.
– Correct the links in the source pages that Google gives you the addresses (see illustration above). The recommended solution for internal links, but much more difficult to manage for external links!
– For external links, the best solution will certainly be to list all the erroneous URLs (remember that it is possible to download their titles from the Webmaster Tools) and to redirect them to 301 (definitive redirection) to coherent pages relative to their respective content on your site.
This work (correction of internal links, redirection of external links), admittedly tedious and sometimes time-consuming, will have only beneficial repercussions:
– Your site will be better crawled by Google’s robots that will encounter fewer obstacles in their exploration.
– Less than 404 = more confidence on the part of the search engine.
– You win valuable backlinks that were lost by the 404 and will increase your popularity, so your SEO. Far from being negligible!
– Your visitors will fall less into a “404 deadlock” when viewing your pages and this will improve their user experience.
By doing this job of checking and fixing 404 errors every month or every quarter, for example, you will allow your site to be better managed, more enjoyable to consult while improving your SEO.
five Benefits of Backlinks in Addition to SEO( Link Building)
A good backlink has three characteristics:
- It is relevant.
- Google trusts the page in which the link is embedded.
- It differs from other backlinks that a website already has. Diversity is important.
High-quality backlinks are a major piece of Google’s algorithm and they will continue to be, as they can be the deciding factor that pushes a website to the top of the search results. While link building efforts are done solely for search engine optimization purposes, they are beneficial for several other reasons.
The top five benefits backlink is as below:
1-Build Your Brand Authority
Sure, getting links on popular websites is great for your SEO efforts, but they also help to build the authority of your brand. The same way Google looks like these links as a good indication that your website provides useful information, consumers see it as a good indication that your brand is one that they should take an interest in.
2-Drive Steady Referral Traffic on Autopilot
Not all website traffic originates from a search on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or another search engine. Referral traffic is also a large percentage of all traffic, meaning that people are clicking on links within the content and being taken to the linked content.
3-Long Term Directory & Resource Links
The internet is one big source of data that will continue to grow and always be there to access information from. If you obtain high-quality links from reputable directories and other resource websites it can help to drive traffic to your website for years to come.
4-Create New Relationships
When someone reads good content and sees a backlink pointing to the source or creator, there is a very good chance that they will click on the link to learn more about who or what is responsible for what they just enjoyed.
5-Brand Name Exposure & Recognition
When someone is reading content online they can quickly identify the visible links within the content. When a consumer sees your brand name linked throughout great content they begin to associate your company with the particular topic(s) that they are seeing your brand name linked to.
How harmful are irrelevant backlinks in SEO?
A few years ago, Google did something against spammy backlinks being used for SEO. They introduced the Google Penguin update, which no longer rates all backlinks equally. Google now requires backlinks to provide added value to the readers of its websites.
For example: If a link stands alone (is not embedded in text), it’s an indicator for Google that it could be spam. Even if the link was placed on a page that Google does not consider to be of very high quality, this can be harmful. For example, links in publicly accessible forums are not rated very positively. As a rule of thumb, it can be said: If the user of a web page would not click on a link, it’s considered out of place and Google regards it as spam.
How harmful are irrelevant backlinks in SEO:
- Not all backlinks are good
- Too many backlinks can be problematic
- Anchor text is important
- Site quality and content is paramount
- Spammy backlink tactics cause harm
Google usually classifies backlinks as spam if they are
- exchanged with other websites
- located on external websites
- appear in payable directories
- posted on forums
- in press reports that do not contain any real news
- appear somewhere through illegal tactics such as hacking
Most SEO companies have never questioned the status quo of backlinks. Today we would estimate that 90% of SEO companies have not changed their Netlinking tactics. If you are working with a company that has not kept up with the changes in Google, you will be surprised to find your site plummeting in the search results.
Conclusion:
Creating a network of backlinks is not an easy feat. It takes a lot of strategic planning, time, and effort. So, if you are serious about using a backlink strategy to increase your site’s ranking and getting more traffic, then make it worth your while by ensuring the links you get truly count and will make a difference in the long-run.
Earning quality backlinks can sometimes be challenging, but you can easily find link-building opportunities by using the right resources and methods. Finally, remember that keeping your backlinks is as important as building them. So, keep track of the backlinks your website is getting, by using tools like Monitor Backlinks, Ahrefsor Majestic.
Link building isn’t as hard as most people think. Most businesses can build some great links without having to invest in new content.
Give these tactics a shot and see which works best for your site. Even if you only have an hour or so per day, you should still be able to make some progress and build some decent links. Of course, you can outsource some of the workloads to a VA or another member of your team if you want to move faster.
