As part of a successful SEO strategy, website owners inevitably meet the infamous backlinks. Everyone wants them, but not everyone gets them. At least not without the right know-how. This blog post will show you what the myth around backlinks is all about, how they are defined, and how you can earn them.
“Backlink” Defined
In simple terms, a backlink is a reference to your website. It is a hyperlink that directs visitors from one website to another. For website owners, this means that foreign website links to their website. Therefore, a foreign website recommends your website to its visitors and enables a direct visit – a real accolade in online marketing.
The Purpose of Backlinks
The search engine giant Google recognizes this recommendation on a foreign website and rates it as extraordinarily beneficial. Reason enough for the multi-layered Google algorithm to reward the recommended website with a better place in the Google ranking. Since a single backlink will not cause any giant ranking leaps, several backlinks are beneficial. However, it would be best if you did not build up backlinks excessively, as this, in turn, is considered link spam by Google. In such a case, penalties can show up in the form of a drop in your ranking scale. Instead of relying on quantity, it is therefore essential to create high-quality backlinks.
Google works very precisely when it comes to artificial backlink placements as well as honestly earned backlinks. The goal is to provide the most significant possible value to the user by having informative website content that shows helpful solutions. It is essential to avoid purchased backlinks strictly. Therefore, Google will have a keen eye on the sources from which the links to your website come. If the link profile of the website is unnatural, Google will interpret this as manipulative.
What to Pay Attention to When Building Backlinks
We advise you to check the authority of your link-donating domains to create high-quality backlinks. Furthermore, your link-giving domains should have a high link power, also called link juice. Additionally, the content knitted around the link and the anchor text plays a significant role in high-quality backlink building. Further criteria for backlinks of first-class quality are the place of placement on the link-giving website and the relevance. Thus, the linking domain should fit thematically to your website. The more trust Google places in the link-giving domain, the more positively the backlink placement is evaluated. Pro tip: it is not helpful to set an excessive number of backlinks from one single domain.
What are Link Juice, Do-Follow Links, and No-Follow Links
Link Juice
Link juice refers to the dispersion of backlinks with their respective linking power. Included in the link juice parameter are the quality and number of links. The effect of link juice on the subpages is defined in this manner.
Do-Follow-Links
All links (including backlinks) that a webmaster adds to their website are automatically do-follow links. Thus, they contribute to the link juice from this website.
No-Follow-Links
The webmaster who agrees to implement a backlink on their website can always determine whether to pass on their valuable link power or not. If they do not wish to do so, they can provide the backlink with a no-follow tag. The no-follow tag prevents the passing on of the link power so that the backlink in questions is not helpful for the website ranking of the recommended page.
Generating Backlinks
The most valuable backlinks usually cannot be obtained easily. The process is lengthy and requires consistent, high-quality website content. You can achieve Link-earning success (earning backlinks) by increasing the level of awareness of your website. In this context, content distribution plays a major role. You can contact bloggers, cooperation partners, and online editors and ask them to place links on their sites voluntarily and without payment. Therefore, you should ideally align your website content with the target group of potential partners. With the appropriate marketing skills, you can present the win-win situation to potential partners in a target-oriented manner. Local backlinks (Local SEO) can be helpful for companies that want to increase their awareness on a local level.
Characteristics of Local Backlinks
Local SEO focuses on the location of the company. The website is therefore optimized for the geographical area as well as for the industry. The lynchpin for local backlink building is gaining entries in various online business directories. These can be industry-specific portals and online versions of business directories such as the Yellow Pages or Google My Business. The aim here is to create a comprehensive company entry that provides all the relevant information. You can find additional information about Local SEO here.
Conclusion
Backlinks should be earned and built via unique and outstanding content. It is essential to focus on quality and not on quantity and ensure that the backlinks obtained come from websites relevant to your industry or as similar to your topic as possible.
Building backlinks is costly, and it takes time for them to show up in visibility on search engines like Google. In the end, however, it is worth investing in clean and long-term link building.
