Backlink Basics: The Beginner’s Guide to Backlinking

Backlink Basics

Wondering whether backlinking can help your overall ranking in Google’s search engine? Don’t know much about link building or where to begin? In this article, you’ll learn the backlink basics and absolute need-to-know of backlinking.

What is backlinking?

In layman terms, a backlink is a hyperlink from a website to your page; however, backlinks are so much more! Backlinking is a search engine optimization tactic that digital marketers can use to improve the Google ranking of their webpage – thus increasing traffic to their site!

The best backlinks that will improve your overall ranking are called dofollow backlinks. Dofollow backlinks tell Google to analyze the backlink and use the information gathered about the site to determine the Google ranking of your page. Whereas, nofollow links instruct search engine bots that the backlink should not influence the search engine’s index of the link’s target. However, no follow backlinks can be useful when increasing overall brand exposure.

How do backlinks improve overall Google ranking? This a question answered later in the article, but for now -to better understand what backlinking is- Google analyzes a backlink that is pointing back to your site. A few factors that determine a backlinks worth are page relevancy, site trustworthiness, and domain rating. A high quality backlink will encompass all of these factors and will help improve overall Google ranking.

Backlinks are an amazing tool to use to increase the overall performance of your webpage, but don’t just take my word on it. Read on to learn why you should backlink.

Why you should backlink?

So, why should you consider backlinking? It has been long speculated what impact backlinks have on a website. It was long speculated until Brian Dean from Backlinko analyzed one million Google search results and found that there is a correlation between the number of backlinks a website has and its ranking on Google search results.

Not convinced yet? Dean also analyzed other SEO factors like site speed and content; nevertheless, found that the number of backlinks correlated with rankings more than any other factor. This is not to say that you should neglect other SEO strategies to backlink full time. But, if you aren’t backlinking yet it’s time to incorporate this into your SEO strategy.

The impact that backlinks have on a site’s search engine optimization should not be marginalized to other tactics. Backlinks are a factor that have a profound effect on Google’s search result ranking. Try experimenting to see how backlinking affects your overall ranking.

How to successfully backlink?

There is no one size fits all backlinking strategy that will be successful for every company. Something else to keep in mind is that not all backlinks carry the same impact. One outgoing backlink from a website with high domain authority will carry a greater impact than one lower quality backlink. Designing a strategy that fits your goals, and schedule to be successful.

It’s already been said that higher quality backlinks carry a greater impact than a lower quality backlink – but why? Google takes into account the page relevancy, site trustworthiness, and domain rating. A lower quality backlink with little domain authority and unestablished reputation has some impact, but is not comparable to the impact of a high quality backlink. You can use tools like Ahrefs or BuzzStream to check a sites domain authority.

When considering which backlink that you should focus on it is important to remember that the website’s policies and responsiveness will impact the results that you receive. Bigger organizations with high domain authorities usually have a review process that can take days or weeks. Because of this, it is important to be realistic about what you can achieve in a given amount of time to create an achievable strategy.

Just like incoming and outgoing backlinks, both high and lower quality backlinks play a dramatic role in increasing your overall rating on Google’s search engine. However, it is ultimately up to the backlink strategy that you’ve applied to your company to decide which will work best for you.

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