Seo Basics| Website Backlinks

With all of the updates and constantly changing algorithms from Google, Bing and Yahoo!, it can be difficult to keep up with SEO basics best practices. Website backlinks in particular have created a lot of confusion in the online community, with harsh penalties being doled out to websites that aren’t keeping up with the rules.

Unfortunately, these rules can be difficult to decipher, so here’s a plain-language look at what website backlinks are, what you need to know about them and the best way to build quality backlinks moving forward.

What are Backlinks?

The short and simple definition of a backlink is any link that a person can click on that will take them from somewhere else on the internet, straight to your site. For example, if someone likes your company and recommends you on their blog with a link back to your site, that’s a backlink. Similarly, if you post links to your website in other areas of the web, they too are backlinks.

A backlink can simply be your website or it can be embedded in the text as an anchor link. Whatever the case may be, the ultimate litmus test for a backlink is “does it lead to your website?” If so, it’s a backlink. Unfortunately, that’s the only simple part of the equation—understanding what a website backlink is.

From here, it gets a little tricky (but I’ll try to simplify it for you!).

SEO Basics |Why are SEO Backlinks Important?

Website backlinks are important because search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo! all use algorithms to rank websites on the result pages. That is to say, certain things you do matter more to a search engine when it comes time to suggest you to a person making a query. Seo backlinks carry a lot of “weight” in these algorithms meaning that they directly influence your ranking on a Search Engine Result Page (SERP) when a person is looking for you or someone/thing like you/your business.

As you know, the higher you rank on the SERPs for relevant searches, the more qualified leads and traffic you have coming into your site, so it stands to reason that if backlinks help you rank higher, you want as many website backlinks as possible, right?

Well, not so fast, this is what tripped me up!

Seo backlinks are all about quality over quantity. That’s because you only rank higher in a search engine’s mind if you have website quality backlinks. That is to say, the more popular and highly rated a website is that posts a backlink to your site, the more positively it is going to affect your ranking. On the other hand, if you have poor or low quality backlinks, they can negatively affect your ranking.

You can think of it like this: if two groups of people are talking about you to someone who is inquiring about your services and one of the groups is well-respected while the other is a known pack of liars, Google only wants to hear from the well-respected group. To do this, search engines “weight” backlinks coming from websites by the site’s PageRank.

The higher the PageRank of the site that is creating the backlink, the better your site will look in the eyes of Google. The search engine will think, “Well, if so and so thinks highly of them to recommend them, they must be a high-quality site. We’ll recommend them as well!” But if you are getting tons of website backlinks from sites with a low PageRank, Google will say, “Hey, these guys get no respect from the good pages. We’re not going to respect them either.”

SEO Basics| What’s the Best Way to Build Quality Website Backlinks?

So, what’s the best way to ensure that your website backlinks are all coming from quality sites? It used to be that you could do things like guest blog or ask for backlinks, but now, the best SEO practice is to focus on your own website and let the backlinks come naturally—tend to your own garden first, as the saying goes. By creating a quality site with insightful, helpful and original blogs, you will organically generate website backlinks.

These are also called “no ask website backlinks,” but whatever you want to call them (inbound links, inlinks, etc.), just know that quality begets quality. When your product or service is good and the material you are putting out there is good, the links flow naturally.

Focus on answering the burning questions your customers have, not just ” how can I get backlinks for my website”.

Provide insight into the industry and become an authority in your niche. Put your opinion out there or provide your own take on situations and hot topics. When you do this, people will not only want to share your content, they will want to link to it because they want to be linked to you.

Trying to build backlinks and getting your page ranked on the first page of Google can be exhausting which is why I have someone do it for me and my clients. It’s the cheapest most effective service I’ve found.

CLICK HERE to see for yourself.

Til’ Next Time

April =)

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