What is a Backlink?

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

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Guide for Creating Backlinks - A Search Engine Optimization Solution

In this guide you will learn the followings

  • Why backlinks are important
  • What makes a good backlink
  • How to check backlinks 
  • How to get more backlinks

Things to Keep In Mind

Why are backlinks important?

 Backlinks assist in three main things.

1) Rankings

Search engines see backlinks as votes of confidence, generally the more votes your webpages have, the more likely they are to rank for the particular search queries.

We have studied the link based ranking factors sometimes and always find the same thing that the number of backlinks from a particular website corresponds strongly with organic search traffic.

2)  Discoverability

Search engines readdress popular pages more often than unpopular ones, they may discover your content faster if you get backlink from popular pages because search engines find new content by revisiting pages they already know about to check for new links.

3) Referral Traffic 

Backlinks are clickable because they refer people to useful resources.

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

What makes a good backlink?

Not all backlinks are created equally here are some features that contribute to a backlink’s quality and capability 

Relevance
As people are more likely to click relevant backlinks therefore search engines like Google places more value on relevant backlinks for example if the plumber has backlinks from two pages, one about dogs and one about installing boilers, chances are the latter is more likely to be clicked on.

This is also applicable at domain level.  Readers of plumbing.com are more likely to click on a link to a plumber’s website than readers of dogs.com 

Authority
Page level authority is connected with organic traffic as backlinks from strong web pages usually transfer more authority than those from weak ones. 
It’s mentioned in Google’s original patent that authority is split equally among all outbound links on a webpage. So if you have backlinks from two pages and the number of outbound links is different, one has more than the other, then all else equal the link from the page with fewer outbound links transfers more authority. 

Google has a fair number of patents describing a number of various methods for assigning value to backlinks. 

Moreover internal* backlinks also contribute to a page’s authority.
*If one page links to another on the same website, that’s known as an internal backlink.

Traffic
It is obvious that backlinks from high-traffic pages will usually send you more referral traffic than those from low-traffic pages. The question is whether the backlinks from high-traffic pages have the same effect than those from low-traffic pages.
Actually there is a small but clear correlation among rankings and backlinks from pages with organic search traffic. However the total number of backlinks from particular websites (domains) and page levels authority seems more important. 

Placements
Some links on web pages likely pass more authority than others because people are more likely to click prominently-placed links. 

Bill Slawski talks about this in his analysis of Google’s updated “reasonable surfer” patent.

“If a link is in the main content area of a page, uses a font and color that might make it stand out, and uses text that may make it something likely that someone might click upon it, then it 

could pass along a fair amount of PageRank. On the other hand, if it combines features that make it less likely to be clicked upon, such as being in the footer of a page, in the same color text as the rest of the text on that page, and the same font type, and uses anchor text that doesn’t interest people, it may not pass along a lot of PageRank.”     

Consider this while pursuing links. If your link will probably end up in the site’s footer, or along with fifty other sites in the sidebar, then put your effort into other opportunities.

Follow vs. nofollow
Although nofollowed backlinks can influence the linked page’s ranking but they usually don’t.

Because link building requires time and effort, it’s good to get do-follow 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 are the clickable words that form a backlink.

It’s mentioned in Google’s original patent that anchor text influences ranking. Google employs a number of techniques to improve search quality including page rank, anchor text, and proximity information. That said, when we scrutinized the relationship between anchor text and rankings across 384,614 pages, the correlations were weak.

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

Break it Down

What Are The Different Types Of SEO?

At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P. 

“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.

Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.

Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.

Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority. 

Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight. 

If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.

Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.

How to Check Backlinks

There are two methods to check a website or web page’s backlinks. The first method only works for sites that you own while the second is used to check backlinks to another website or web page.

Checking backlinks in Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides you data about your website’s organic search traffic and overall performance. It’s free —just sign up for a free account and verify ownership of your website.

Checking backlinks using a third-party backlink checker

To inspect backlinks to a website that you don’t own, use a tool like Ahrefs’ free backlink checker.

Just write a domain or URL, and hit “Check backlinks.”

You’ll see the sheer number of backlinks and referring domains (links from particular websites), plus the top 100 backlinks.

For each backlink, you’ll see details including:

  • Referring page: The page linking to the target.
  • Domain Rating (DR): The strength of the linking website.
  • URL Rating (UR): The strength of the linking web page.
  • Traffic: The total estimated monthly organic search traffic to the linking page.
  • Anchor and backlink: The anchor and surrounding link text.

How to get more backlinks

There are three methods to get more backlinks: make them, earn them, or build them.

Earning backlinks

This is when people find your content via search engines like Google, social media, or word of mouth, and choose to link to your page. In order words, earned backlinks are organic.

You can improve your chances of earning more backlinks by creating impressive and truly useful content that people should want to link to. 

Creating backlinks

This is when you manually add links to your site from other websites. Examples include replying to forum threads, submitting to business directories and leaving blog comments.

Building backlinks

This is when you ask other site owners, editors, or webmasters to link to your page. For this to work, you need to have valued proposals. That’s where link building tactics come in.

Here are a few tried and tested ones:

 

  • Guest blogging: Offer to write a one-off post for another website.
  • Broken link building: Find relevant dead links on other sites, then reach out and suggest your working link as the replacement. (You can use our broken link checker to do this.)
  • The Skyscraper Technique: Find relevant content with lots of links, make something better, and then ask those linking to the original to link to you instead.
  • Unlinked mentions: Find unlinked mentions of your brand, then ask the author to make the mention clickable.

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1033 Demonbreun St, Nashville, TN 37203
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Syndiket is a Nashville based digital marketing agency with a strong emphasis on SEO, PPC, & Web Design. Your potential clients are searching for you. Be there with Syndiket.

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