What are backlinks and how do they work in SEO?

One of the most important factors when it comes to ranking on search engines is links. Backlinks, to be precise. When you have a good number of relevant and good quality backlinks pointing towards your site, the search engines will consider you as a highly authoritative source for that particular topic. In this article we are going to explain why backlinks matter so much when it comes to SEO, how you can get them and what types of backlinks are the best for your business.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is when someone links to your website from their website.

How do I get backlinks?
The best way to get backlinks is to create great content. People will link to your website if they like your content and think it’s valuable.

How do backlinks help me?

Backlinks help you attract more targeted traffic to your website.

Where are the best places to get backlinks?
The top blogs authoritative in your niche or a website that generates a lot of new backlinks like Ahrefs or SEMrush.

What is a well done backlink?
An SEO best practice is to have one or two backlinks pointing to your website.

How do I know which words are the best to emphasize in my body of work?
SEO can be very complicated. Best practices differ between niches and it is best to speak with an SEO expert.

When should I use a backlink?
Choose the right backlinks when you compose your website content and when you are promoting.

Why do you need backlinks?

Backlinks are the number one search engine ranking signal, and as a result, the most important ranking factor. The more backlinks you have, the more trustworthy you are in the eyes of search engines.

In 2014, Google alone accounts for about 90% of all internet search query volume. Digital strategy, SEO, and content marketing all revolve around the needs of increasing traffic and ranking highly for the types of search queries people use. As can be seen from the graph below, backlinks are comparatively more important than other factors like website speed or design. The second most important ranking factor is domain authority, which refers to the expertise of a website. People generally prefer to read webpages with high domain authority, because they are more likely to trust a website. A high domain authority allows the site to rank highly in search results. According to Google, the category with the highest expected search results is “helpful and credible websites”.

It is often more difficult for a new website to rank well when there are few backlinks available to serve as a backlink. Therefore, more sites will create content around an established topic and ask other sites, like guest bloggers, to link back to their content. These are known as anchor sites. Anchor sites are one of the most effective ways to build webpages with high domain authority.

Most new webpages start their rankings naturally by being viewed by people browsing the internet. How effectively an anchor site is ranking depends on how engaged the backlinks are on the site from other trustworthy sites. Additionally, if you ever decide to delete an anchor, it will effectively remove that link without any repercussions to rankings as the site has no links to take down.
Backlinks are key in increasing traffic to a site.

How do you generate links?

There are a few ways to get links to your website. The first is to have them on your own website, on your homepage, your sidebars, your footer, etc. The second way is to get them on other websites.
The most common way people get a link from a web site is through a backlink, which is referring a page back to the original. Google ranks websites according to the authority of the links on their site. These links give the search engine more power, which improves how it predicts the success of web pages. For more on SEO, check out this article. Most web sites have not created terrific backlinks, which results in them being ranked lower in the search results than more popular websites, which lower the website’s rankings. An expert told BizBoard that it takes six to 12 months for backlinks to have an impact. He also stated that a website could have as few as ten to thirty backlinks, which may or may not create a positive impact on SEO. Basically, good backlinks are a plus.

However, inherent links, as you may or may not be aware of, are direct links that do not go back to your original webpage. The quality of the link can be attributed to the domain credibility, as the authority behind the link is attributed by the search engines to the original website, not the site the link links to. Top SEO websites use intrinsic links, especially for domains with low domain authority. There are two primary sources of intrinsic links: domains with a brand presence, and pages within websites.

What are the different types of links?

A click-bait title tags out words that are similar to a search query. It could be your website’s name, a flywheel or any other worthwhile topic. If you are missing out on content, here is one way to create it. I have packaged several ideas here which you can place anywhere on your site to grab the attention of your visitors. The best examples include the topics of health and fitness, engines, productivity, and safety.

Positive psychology is one of the hottest topics that this decade. And the best way to spice up your content by using it to your advantage is by focusing on content titles.
Positive psychology helps you expose and solve problems related to happiness, wellbeing, confidence, success, and productivity. What I have pulled together to start off is a guest post of Charlie Mullins. He has written two articles that I have changed to make them more positive. The first is on why we should venture out for adventures, the second is about irrational reasons you shouldn’t limit your running career.
You can use this idea as many times as you want to as long as you do not go overboard. No one is going to read the entire article but many visitors will continue to read the title. Each headline I have made will have a slice of typed text that looks something like this:
“A piece of self-love from the #1 running writer in the world.”

And these will be the featured headlines for each article.

The headings of an article can be the most important part of your article. It gives the reader a sense of direction and there are more types you can include.

How important are anchor texts in backlinks?

Anchor text is the clickable text in a link. For example, if you were to type in your browser “greatwebsite.com”, the “great website” would be the anchor text. Anchor text is important because it’s the first thing Google will see when they crawl the page. It’s also used by Google to understand what the page is about since GoogleBot normally generates answers to questions it may have about a given page. Anchor text occurs more commonly on interactive web pages because it helps users navigate. When HubSpot explains how to create a backlink with their “how to produce a better backlink shortcode example” on that very page, all they did was include the clear headings and the anchor text.

It is simpler for a human to click on the text than a line of text. The text is much less distracting and the link to the website works.

You can put up as many attachments as you want, but only 1 will show on the page (more on that in the next point). There is no specific limit on how many you can have.

Why would I want to do that? Well one, it allows you to customize your ratio to the content you put on a page and two, any image(s) will show — not just images; there is nothing such as an attachment-only image on a HubSpot blog.

The first thing to understand is that you can have as many images as you want, however, HubSpot only displays 1 image on each blog. Whenever you use multiple images, HubSpot will either compress them as one file or include them in an additional file.

Anchor text will vary greatly based on the nature of a given page. For example, on Facebook, most of their content is photos. On LinkedIn, the same, however, applies.

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