Backlinks are an integral component of your overall SEO strategy. Fostering a backlink strategy enables you to build robust page authority, drive referral traffic, and rank higher.
However, the significance of link building goes beyond these benefits to help you stand out and boost sales. Learn the gravity of link building by understanding the different types and importance of backlinks:
A Quick Glance at Backlinks
Backlinks, inbound, or incoming links refer to links placed within another website that points back to your web pages.
These links may be placed on the anchor text, characters, or images and direct users to your website or blogs.
What are The Different Types of Backlinks?
Let’s discuss the different types of backlinks:
DoFollow Links
DoFollow links are trustworthy websites and do not include the Nofollow attribute. By default, all links added to a blog post are DoFollow links.
NoFollow Links
NoFollow links fail to pass the link juice and contain the ‘nofollow’ attribute. This way, they tell search engines that these links do not pass PageRank.
UGC Links
User-generated content links refer to links derived from blogs and forum comments.
Its attributes notify search engines like Google that a user rather than a webmaster generated the selected link.
Sponsored or Paid Links
Sometimes, businesses pay influencers or bloggers to create product reviews or promote content/brand.
In these cases, backlinks include a ‘sponsored’ attribute.
High Authority Links
These links root in reliable sources, such as research papers, newspapers, famous websites, etc.
Unnatural Links
Remember that the wrong links can downgrade your Google search engine ranking.
Unnatural links derive from an unreliable website and exist only to maneuver search engine rankings.
How Do You Earn Backlinks?
There are three main ways of earning a backlink:
Natural Links
Natural backlinks exist without any interventions from the website’s owner. Developing high-quality and valuable content is an excellent way of earning natural links.
Manual Links
Manual links derive from link earning activities—for instance, guest posting for a relevant website, contacting a relevant seller, etc.
Self Created Links
Self-created links involve site managers including backlinks within an online directory, forum, or blog comments.
Remember not to overdo self-created links since it may harm your search engine reputation.
What are the Benefits of Backlinks
Here we discuss the advantages of backlinks:
Improves Organic Ranking
Once search engines recognize your website as an authority, your web pages will start appearing higher in the SERP.
Remember that Google prioritizes websites that experience higher click rates and lower bounce rates. Thus, if you have multiple high-quality backlinks, Google believes that your website is a credible, relevant, and valuable source of information.
Boost Brand Awareness
When trustworthy and reliable websites link to your web pages, it reveals that they assume readers will gain insight from you.
Receiving high-quality backlinks also signifies that reliable websites recommend your blogs and websites to their readers. It leads to fascinated and already engaged visitors clicking on your website.
Consider adding a ‘Related Content’ widget at the bottom of your blogs to link readers to relevant and captivating content. This way, your audience will spend more time on your website, which helps boost your brand discoverability.
Increases Credibility
Quality links from reliable and authoritative sources help you enhance your credibility, reliability, and trustworthiness.
If your content receives links from other reliable websites, your content will naturally start to rank higher.
Ensures Faster Indexing
Search engine bots uncover new blogs and websites by following existing web pages’ backlinks. Once they discover your website, bots can crawl it effectively.
Remember that search engine bots will find it challenging to identify your website if it lacks backlinks. Thus, if you want to increase brand credibility and discoverability, you must get backlinks to help faster index your website.
Attracts Referral Traffic
Another significant advantage of backlink is that it helps you gather referral traffic. For instance, a viewer reading your post may click on relevant links to learn more about a particular topic.
Since users click on these links voluntarily, they’re less likely to leave the page fast. This way, you can ensure targeted traffic and low bounce rates.
Long Term Directory
It’s no secret: the internet is the most significant source of continuously growing data. Obtaining quality links from reputable directories can help drive traffic to your website for years to come.
Establishes Relationships between Websites
Linking or promoting other websites leads people to perceive it as a connection with other websites.
This way, you can develop more trust when viewers know two websites share an open, online relationship.
Attracts More Backlinks
An underappreciated benefit of backlinks is that they naturally attract more backlinks. If your website includes quality backlinks, a fraction of those will automatically link to you without being asked.
Backlink Factors to Improve SEO
Here we’ve listed backlink factors that help improve your search engine rankings:
- Total Backlinks- The number of backlinks, regardless of whether they’re from the same domain, can help improve your web page ranking
- Total Referring Domains- High-quality domains linking back to your website helps boost brand credibility and reliability
- Referring IPs- The more referring IPs, the better your search engine ranking
- Follow Backlinks- Total follow links help establish brand authority and improve Google ranking
- Anchors- Anchor tags make it easy for users to navigate specific sections of a page
- Presence of Keywords- Including target keywords within your anchor tag can influence domain rankings
The Bottom Line
Despite the clear benefits of backlinks, more than 55.24% of web pages lack backlinks. Remember, adding backlinks to your page helps drive traffic and build brand authority.
Integrate backlinks within your existing SEO strategy to boost your search engine ranking. If you don’t have an effective SEO strategy, connect with our experts at Firestarter SEO to get started today!
Our highly trained and experienced industry leaders drive organic traffic and boost brand discoverability by creating SEO strategies that foster link building.
Help us help you increase search engine rankings, brand discoverability, and revenue through our proven and excellent SEO practices by reaching out today!
