A “backlink” is the most used word in search engine optimization (SEO) world. Most of the bloggers who have recently started a blog or website often struggle to understand what the word “backlink” means.

1. WHAT ARE BACKLINKS? | ADVANTAGES OF BACLINKS
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A “backlink” is the most used word in search engine optimization (SEO) world. Most
of the bloggers who have recently started a blog or website often struggle to
understand what the word “backlink” means.
In this article, I'm offering you an understanding of what actually backlinks are, why
they are important for your online success. You’ll also learn about how to analyze
backlinks of your competitors, and how to include them for your site.
Let’s get started…
Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links add to any other
page, it’s called a backlink. In the past, backlinks were the major reason for the
ranking of a webpage. A page with more backlinks ranks higher on all major search
engines, including Google. This is still true to a large extent.
Here are some of the common terms related to backlinks that you should know:
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2. Link Juice: When a webpage links add to any of your articles or website’s
homepage, it's called “link juice”. This link helps with the ranking of the
post/article and improves the domain authority. As a blogger, you should stop
passing link juice by using a no-follow tag.
No-Follow Link: When a website links add to another website, but the link has a
no-follow tag, that's no-follow. No-follow links are not useful for the ranking of
a page as they do not contribute anything. In a simple way, a webmaster uses
the no-follow tag when he/she is linking out to an unreliable site.
Do-Follow Link: All the links that you add to a blog post are do-follow links and
these pass link juice.
Linking Root Domains: This describes the number of backlinks that coming
into your website from a unique domain.
Low-Quality Links: Low-quality links are links that come from harvest sites,
automated sites, spam sites. Such links do far more harm than good. This is an
important reason you should be careful when adding backlinks.
Internal Links: Links that are adding from one page to another within the same
domain are called internal links. This process is called internal linking or
interlinking.
Anchor Text: That is used for hyperlinks which are called anchor text. Anchor
text backlinks work well when you are trying to rank for particular keywords.
Advantages of Backlinks in SEO:
Before I tell you about the advantages of backlinks, you really know changed
concerning backlinks in the past couple of years. There was a time when low-quality
links helped ranking a website. But even Google rolled out its Penguin algorithm, the
whole backlinking has changed.
It is important to get backlinks from quality websites, and those backlinks should be
contextual. If you have a site about fish, and you are creating backlinks from other
niche sites these links will be of no use. Your goal should be to get backlinks from
relevant websites.
Now take a look at why it is important for you to create backlinks for your website:
Improve Organic Ranking
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3. Backlinks help in getting better search engine rankings.
Important note: “SERP” means the search engine results page. This screenshot is
merely reflecting what people see in Google.
Here’s an example.
Take the topic “SEO Backlinks”.
If I enter this search term into Ahrefs’ Keywords site, I can see that most of the high-
ranking pages have tons of backlinks:
If your content is getting links from other sites, that content will start rank higher in
the search results. If it isn’t, then you need to get proactive and build them. Your goal
should be to create backlinks to individual posts or pages along with those leading to
your homepage.
Faster Indexing
Search engine bots discover new webpages by following backlinks from webpages.
Only when they have discovered your website could they crawl your website
effectively.
It will be more critical for search engine bots to find your website if you do not have
any backlinks. Especially for a new website, it is important to get backlinks which
help faster discovery and indexing of your site.
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4. Referral Traffic
The major benefits of backlinks are they help get referral traffic. Basically, a person
who is reading a post may click on links in the post to find more about the topic.
Since people click on links, they are usually more targeted and are less likely to leave
the page fast. Basically, referral traffic is targeted and has a low bounce rate.
How to Start Getting Backlinks:
Now you understand that the term “backlink” means as it relates to SEO and why
they are important. Let’s now learn a few simple techniques for creating new
backlinks:
One important thing that you need to keep in mind about backlink SEO which is that
it is not the number of backlinks which matters, but rather the quality of backlinks. If
you are using some paid services to get links to your website, you are likely going to
Google Penguin’s algorithm.
Some of the ways to get quality backlinks for your website or blog
Write awesome articles
Use Broken link building method
Replicating your competitors’ backlinks
Create cornerstone articles (Piller articles)
Start guest blogging
Submit to web directories
Write Awesome Articles
If you want people to link to you, you need to give them a reason. And the best reason
is an awesome article. If your content is helpful and enjoyable, people will be happy
to link to it.
Here are some tips to get you started:
Solve the problem. Most people read the content because they are looking for a
solution. Make sure you articulate the exact problem and teach them how to fix
it.
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5. Make your content easy to read. Write it in short, simple sentences. Make the
article less by adding formatting, headings, images, and other multimedia.
Have a unique angle. There’s so much content on the Internet today. How will
your article stand out?
Build authority into the article. People want to learn from people with authority
on that topic. If you are not one, you should always interview and quote experts.
Over the years, we’ve published plenty of articles on this blog that will help you to
create great articles in no time:
SEO Copywriting Tips (Write SEO Optimized content)
On-Page SEO Techniques (This is highly recommended)
Five Writing Tips To Connect With Readers at a deep level
Once you’ve published your awesome post, it’s time to send some outreach emails. A
good group of people to reach out to are those who have published articles on the
same topic. Since they have written on that topic before, there is a higher possibility
that they will be interested in seeing your post or page.
To find these people, simply enter the keyword of your article into Google. Collect the
list of articles that appear in the SERPs.
Alternatively, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo.
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6. Enter the topic into Content Analyzer, do some filtration, and export the list.
Important note: Most of the articles are based on proper research and practical
examples.
Broken Link Building
The Web is constantly evolving. Pages can change, move, and delete all the time.
Broken links are links of pages that do not exist. Nobody likes that. Webmasters and
search engines hate broken links because they contribute to low user experience.
But, they still exist because webmasters are busy. It takes a lot of effort to rid your
website of broken links.
This strategy takes advantage of that. The concept is simple:
You find a broken link
You recreate the dead content
You reach out to people linking that dead content and ask to link to your
recreated version.
The most important part of this strategy is finding the right “broken” content to
recreate and pitch. Through this, you will need a tool that allows you to analyze
backlinks.
Enter the domain of an authoritative, competing site into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. Then,
go to the Best by links report, and filter by “HTTP 404 not found”.
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7. As you can see, the second page of this screenshot is dead, but previously had 113 do-
follow backlinks linking to it. That’s a great opportunity!
The Wayback Machine tells me it used to be a post about the differences among
metaphors, similes, and analogies.
Now all you have to do is to recreate this content and tell all 113 people to link to you
instead.
Start Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a strategy where you write a post or article for other people’s blogs.
How does this work in keywords of link building?
In a nutshell: in exchange for an article, the blog owner will allow 1or 2 links back to
your site in the post.
One of the most challenges with guest blogging is finding websites for the guest blog.
To increase your chances of being accepted, you can look for sites that are already
accepting guest posts. These websites have a page calling for contributors, like a
“Write For Us”. To find these sites, you can use Google’s advanced search operators.
Some search operators you can use:
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8. [your_topic] “write for us”
[your_topic] “become an author”
[your_topic] “guest post”
[your_topic] “guest article”
[your_topic] inurl:contribute
Another way- you can take a look for guest blogging opportunities in Ahrefs’ Content
Explorer.
The reason that: if a website has written about a topic before, they have an interest in
it. They may be willing to accept a guest post about that topic if they do not have a
“write for us” page.
To begin, enter any keyword/phrase in your niche.
Check the “one article per domain” to get a list of unique domains you can easily write
for. You can also add a few more filters so you can pitch blogs you are comfortable
writing for.
Some of these websites may not have a “Write for us” page. Most blogs will accept a
guest post if your topic is good enough. One way to find good topics to note common
themes or topics that are already popular on their blog.
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9. To do this, you’ll have to use a tool in Ahrefs called Link Intersect. This tool tells you
who’s linking to multiple competitors, but not to you.
In the below image, you can see there are about 48,000 domains that are linking to
my closest competitors. What I’ll do is to analyze the results and figure out why they
linked to my competitors, but not to me.
Add your competitors to the tool, and click “Show link opportunities”.
Submit to Web Directories
Submit your website to web directories is another easy way to create backlinks. This
trick is not very popular these days because finding a legal web directory is not easy.
You must avoid those web directories that ask you to create a backlink to their
website to get your website into their directory.
Read: Exclusive List of Websites & Directories To Submit Your Blog
131+ Verified Free Blog Directories To Submit Your Blog
If you are using any direct submission tactics, stop doing so right away. Automatic
website submissions can cause your blog to shows as spam, and it can cost you a lot in
terms of your domain authority.
I hope this topic will help you understand the basics of backlinks in SEO, and why
you can start working on getting backlinks for your blog.
Do you work on getting backlinks for your blog? Tell us about your experiences in the
comments section below. Here are some guides for you to read next:
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10. Best Backlink Checker tools
Best Google position checker tools
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