SEO strategies ensure that your website is easier to find on search engines. Backlinks, one of the many SEO strategies, play a vital role if you want better traffic results.
What is a Backlink?
The hyperlink on a website that links to another website is a backlink because it points back to another website. Other names for backlinks are inbound links or incoming links. On the opposite end of a backlink, you have outbound links that point from your website to another. In SEO and search engine rankings, an inbound link is more valuable than an outbound link.
Therefore, backlinks aren’t the only factor affecting your website rank, but one of the largest. Remember, a perfect SEO strategy includes several other ranking factors like on-page relevance, local signals like a presence on Google My Business, website speed, and more.
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How Does a Backlink Work?
A URL does not essentially constitute a backlink. Therefore, just adding a website’s URL does not mean you have added a valuable backlink. The word or phrase you use must have HTML or Javascript to become beneficial to search engines because it carries more weight. Some argue that Javascript is less valuable than HTML when added to a post.
The visible portion of the link is known as the anchor text, providing the link’s destination content to users and search engines.
There are several types of anchor texts you can use to provide the context about the page to search engines:
Exact Match – This is when the keyword mirrors the page’s topic.
Branded – If we link the anchor text to our brand, Bold Solutionz, then we have used a branded anchor text.
Naked Link – When using the entire URL as the anchor text link, it is called a naked link.
ALT Text – This is when the image’s ALT text serves as anchor text.
What is the Importance of Backlinking for SEO?
Search engines see backlinks as a measure of authority because they act like an endorsement. Essentially, they tell search engines that they vouch for the content on your website. Therefore, the more websites linking to yours, the more authoritative and credible your website appears to search engines and the better its chances of ranking highly.
However, backlinks need to be natural instead of paid to ensure they aren’t considered spam. To get natural backlinks, you must provide valuable information like infographics, list posts, use original research, participate in events, etc.
Therefore, creating backlinks requires the most relevant response provided in the best way possible, making it easier for those searching to find it quickly.
Understanding How Search Engines Evaluate Backlinks
Search engines evaluate backlinks by scrutinizing the referring site’s authority, relevance, and trustworthiness. Google, in particular, looks at the referring site’s dominance on the subject, so it should be from a recognized source rather than a blog of someone with lesser authority. In addition, the site doesn’t have to be from the same industry but should have topical relevance.
Finally, search engines look for links coming from trustworthy sites and will ignore anything that looks like spam. Some of the signals Google’s algorithm is known to look at when measuring trustworthiness is E-A-T, the acronym for expertise, authority, and trust, something that backlinks can affect.
How Can You Track and Measure Backlinks?
Tracking and measuring your backlinks can help you identify your website’s performance. The measurements can also help identify issues affecting its search engine ranking and how it’s performing against competitors.
Once you have all these metrics, you can better identify strategies you should implement and find growth opportunities.
You need to analyze your website, but sometimes you want to review those of your closest competitors or those outranking your target keywords.
There are several backlink checkers. Some are free, while others offer free trials, allowing you to see if they are suitable. Some SEO tools to check include Google Search Console (free), SEMrush (free trial), Ahrefs (paid trial), and Linkminer (free).
Things to check include:
- Total backlinks pointing to your site
- Total number of referring domains
- Pages getting the most backlinks
Details Analysis
Now analyze the results by looking at anchor texts and the words used for hyperlinks to your website. You want to ensure that the anchor texts used do relate to your content so that you can exclude spam domains.
You can ask websites to remove spam links, but disavowing them is usually more effective. Furthermore, you need to know your country code top-level distribution (ccTLD), which refers to the country links originating from a check run on the last portion of URLs to prevent spam.
Additionally, identify any broken or lost links because they can affect your rankings from backlinks and make your website harder to crawl. These are easy to fix by reaching out to the referring domain and asking them to fix the link. You can also redirect the broken page to another page on your website, especially with similar content.
Competitor Analysis
It would help if you also compared your findings with your competitors. For example, if a website is outranking you, look at the referring domains to see if you can aim for any of them.
Finally, compare their backlink acquisition with yours to give you a better idea of their growth when compared with yours. These insights can help your strategy immensely.
Build a backlink strategy with Bold Solutionz
Building an effective backlink strategy with links that carry weight requires knowledge, hard work, time, and analysis to create the required momentum.
These include creating relationships with link-building opportunities, guest blogging, and pitching your content to people linking to outdated sites. There are countless link-building strategies to try, and some work better in one industry than another. However, correct backlink building starts at the beginning, with worthy and unique content that proves valuable to people and gets shared.
If you are at a loss to get the backlink ball rolling for your industry and follow the metrics, reach out to Bold Solutionz, where we can help you with strategies that create the backlinking impetus desired and measurable results.
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