SEO: What is a Backlink?

Backlinks are important when it comes to ranking in search engines like Google. That said, not all backlinks are created equal. Relevance, placement, and other attributes all contribute to a link’s quality and utility.

Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you have a backlink from them. If you link to another website, then they have a backlink from you.

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet. Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website, and they will crawl the links between entire websites. There are many techniques for building links, and while they vary in difficulty, SEOs tend to agree that link building is one of the hardest parts of their jobs. Many SEOs spend the majority of their time trying to do it well. For that reason, if you can master the art of building high-quality links, it can truly put you ahead of both other SEOs and your competition.

Backlinks help with three main things.

1. Rankings

Search engines like Google see backlinks as votes of confidence. Generally speaking, the more votes your web pages have, the more likely they are to rank for relevant search queries.

2. Discoverability

Search engines find new content by revisiting pages they already know about to check for new links.

Because search engines revisit popular pages more often than unpopular ones, they may discover your content faster if you get backlinks from popular pages.

3. Referral traffic

Backlinks exist to point people to useful resources. That’s why they’re clickable.

When someone clicks on a link to your website, you get referral traffic.

Not all backlinks are created equal. Here are some of the many attributes that contribute to a backlink’s quality and utility.

Relevance

Google places more value on relevant backlinks because people are more likely to click on them. This is something they talk about in their “reasonable surfer” patent.

What does this mean in real terms? If a plumber has backlinks from two pages, one about cats and one about installing boilers, chances are the latter is most valuable.

This idea also plays out at the domain level.

Readers of plumbing.com are more likely to click on a link to a plumber’s website than readers of cats.com.

Authority

Backlinks from strong web pages usually transfer more “authority” than those from weak ones.

Page-level authority is something we’ve studied a few times, and we’ve found a clear relationship between it and organic traffic.

Traffic

Backlinks from high-traffic pages will usually send you more referral traffic than those from low-traffic pages. That’s obvious. The real question is whether backlinks from high-traffic pages positively affect rankings more than those from low-traffic pages?

Placement

Because people are more likely to click prominently-placed links, some links on web pages likely pass more authority than others.

Followed vs. nofollowed

Nofollowed backlinks don’t usually influence the linked page’s rankings—although they can.

Because link building takes time and effort, it’s best to prioritize getting followed links. Just don’t kick up a fuss if you get a nofollowed link. It may still have some SEO value.

Anchor text

Anchor text refers to the clickable words that form a backlink.

Google says that anchor text influences rankings in their original patent.

Google employs a number of techniques to improve search quality including page rank, anchor text, and proximity information.

So while anchor text does matter, it’s not as important as other things.

Below this are three reports.

  • Top linked pages: The most linked pages on your website.
  • Top linking sites: The sites with the most backlinks to your website.
  • Top linking text: The most frequently used anchors when linking to your website.

Final thoughts

Backlinks are important when it comes to ranking in search engines like Google. That said, not all backlinks are created equal. Relevance, placement, and other attributes all contribute to a link’s quality and utility.

As a general rule of thumb, the easier it is to get a link, the less valuable it’ll be.

Read more:

8 REASONS YOUR COMPANY NEEDS A WEBSITE!

WORDPRESS.COM VS WORDPRESS.ORG – WHICH IS BETTER?

Our clients with backlinks:

EC M&A

Fit&Sweet

Elusive Rentals

IMJUS