What is Importance of Backlinks for SEO Performance?
Nowadays, competition is getting tough for websites to get a higher rank on the search engine result pages. Thousands of content is uploaded every day by thousands of websites but only a few of them can manage to get top rank. This is because those websites know the importance of backlinks.
Every good website contains backlinks from the top-ranked websites. It gives a ‘vote of confidence’ and helps to increase ranking and to be suggested to the visitors by Google for a search. So, if you have a new website you should focus on backlinks.
Backlinks also help to improve page and domain authorities to boost the search engine ranking of your website. There are so many benefits of backlinks to know. We are exploring more about the real importance of backlinks for SEO.
What is a backlink?
A backlink is a link from one website to promote another website. It is also called ‘’inbound link” or “incoming links”. This is very important for SEO because it gives strength to the page and domain authority of a website. We need to focus on these both authorities because they are crucial in ranking factors.
When anyone searches for a keyword, then Google crawls your website with the help of bots and spiders. It picks those websites which are authoritative and have high-quality backlinks. So, a website should have backlinks from top-rated websites to increase its ranking in SERPs.
Types of Backlinks
There are two types of backlinks:
1. Follow backlinks: These links help to improve the SEO optimization of a website and also contribute to domain and page authority. You have to work hard to follow links because it helps to rank higher on search engines.
2. Nofollow backlinks: These links are used to tell search engines to not pass the site’s SEO and page authority. It contains “rel=nofollow” hyperlinking to a link of a website.
How Backlinks Can be Earned?
Backlinks can be earned in three ways:
1. Natural links: You only need to create good content on your website because this is the best method to get unnatural links. It is given without any intervention on the part of the website owner.
2. Manual links: These links can be obtained by doing link-earning activities. When a person writes content and he/she puts links of other websites on specific words by requesting them, then the other website will get manual links. Guest posting is also effective to get manual links, but make sure to add your links in the content.
3. Self-created links: This is the very easiest way to earn backlinks to contribute site settings. It can be obtained by entering the links in forums, blogs, comments, online directories, etc. Be cautious- self-created links tend toward “blackhat SEO”. These links are generally denoted by “no follow” tags.
Important Backlinks Factors to consider
1. No. of referral domains: It consists of the total no. of quality domains that give links to your website. The more domains will be better to improve page and domain authority.
2. No. of follow backlinks: This is different from referral domains. A website can have more backlinks from a domain, so for Google ranking factor the more follow backlinks will be better. Backlinks should be listed on a page in the desired amount because thousands of links on a single page can decrease the value of the website for the user.
3. Referral IPs: It is not as important as referral domains, but it is necessary to know the total no. of referral IPs for low searched keywords.
4. Anchor Text: These are the highlighted words with different colors hyperlinked in the content. This takes readers or visitors to the other content of a website. These texts make content SEO friendly and increase the strength of a website.
5. Relevancy of Link: The backlinks should be relevant and related to the topic. If any link is created in a post which does not have a connection with the topic then Google will not suggest your website easily.
6. Location of Link: For obtaining backlinks, the positioning of links also matters. It would be located in the header or in the text or paragraph of content.
Benefits of Backlinks
With the importance of backlinks, there are also helpful benefits we can get from creating proper backlinks.
1. Increases awareness of Brand
You can get backlinks from other websites if they think you provide good content and can help their reliable users and readers. So, you have to focus on your content to provide accurate and complete information about a topic.
If visitors come from the other websites to gain knowledge from your content, then you can create a ‘You may also like’ widget to suggest related content and to increase user spending time.
2. It creates relationships between websites
While placing links of other websites in your content, then you are establishing a connection with the website. This will be better if both websites are providing links to each other in their content. Readers will also trust your website more when they will see you trust each other.
3. Improves ranking
If your website has a valuable source of information about those topics which are searched by visitors regularly, then Google can rank your website higher in the SERP. Search engines see your website as an authority, so keep in mind this point to improve your ranking.
4. Raises referral traffic
Backlinks help to raise referral traffic. Google Analytics sees the click on backlinks by the visitors as referral traffic. It is the most relevant and targeted traffic which has a lower bounce rate.
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Conclusion
So this was all about the importance of backlinks for SEO. Backlinks are very necessary to make brand awareness, increase referral traffic, and improve the ranking of your website in the SEERP.
If you are a beginner, then try to get backlinks from high-quality domains because Google sees top-rated websites as an authority and the links which are created there can easily be crawled by Google. It gives the value of confidence when you are getting backlinks from high-rated websites.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do we need to focus on the importance of backlinks for SEO?
Every good website contains backlinks from the top-ranked websites. It gives a ‘vote of confidence’ and helps to increase ranking and to be suggested to the visitors by Google for a search. So, if you have a new website you should focus on backlinks.
How many backlinks are safe in a day?
Getting more than 10 backlinks per day is good and valuable to get traffic to the website. But, too many backlinks can be categorized as spam by Google.
Which type of links is easy to create for backlinks?
Self-created links are the very easiest way to earn backlinks to contribute site’s strength. It can be obtained by entering the links in forums, blogs, comments, online directories, etc.