What are Backlinks in SEO? How to Build them in 2023- How to get quality backlinks? Talking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will definitely relate to backlinks. If likened to, SEO without backlinks is like vegetables without salt, the results are less stable.
Many online businesses prefer to use backlinks services to improve the performance of their websites in search engines. But there are also those who take care of their own website SEO optimization, including link building.
So, what exactly are backlinks? How to get backlinks from other websites?
Let’s read this article to the end, to understand better
Table of Contents
What are Backlinks in SEO
Basically, a backlink is a link (link) from a website to another website. The term backlink is also often referred to as inbound links or incoming links .
Backlinks are an off-page SEO technique , namely optimization of website rankings in search engines which is done by building links from other websites to your website.
The process of building backlinks is called link building . This is one of the most common SEO techniques used by web optimization practitioners in search engines.
A backlink can be considered as a recommendation from one website to another. In other words, a website directs its users to visit other websites that have credibility to get certain information.
There are backlinks that are obtained naturally, for example, other websites link to your website without being asked. Website backlinks can also be obtained by asking other website owners to post your link on their website.
In practice, most website SEO for business is done by building backlinks, that is, asking other websites to link to their websites.
What is the purpose of Building Backlinks?
As mentioned earlier, the main purpose of building backlinks is for the benefit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Backlinks can signal to Google that a website has been recommended by another website for a particular topic.
If a website or web page gets a lot of backlinks from other sites, Google can conclude that the website deserves an important position in its search results.
Websites that have lots of quality backlinks will usually get special attention from search engines and will place the website on the main page of search results for certain keywords.
That is, backlinks can increase the credibility of a website in the eyes of Google which ultimately prioritizes the content of the website in search engines.
But of course not all types of backlinks can have a positive impact on optimization. There are types of inbound links that are not considered important or can even be bad for the credibility of a website.
How to Get Quality Backlinks
Building backlinks is like building the credibility of a website. If the website is still new, there is no need to rush to build backlinks.
If your website is ready, here’s how to create quality backlinks:
1. Backlinks From Relevant Content
The source of the backlink should still be relevant to the website given the link. For example, if your website plays in the web hosting service niche, the backlink source must be from relevant content.
Quality backlinks are not obtained from just any web page. If the web hosting service website gets a backlink from content that discusses ornamental plants, of course it is irrelevant and useless.
2. Pay attention to the type of backlink
In the world of SEO, backlinks can be divided into two types, namely; dofollow backlinks and nofollow backlinks .
To ordinary internet users, the two links look the same. However, the nofollow link contains the rel=”nofollow” attribute code which instructs search engine robots not to follow the link.
Search engine bots crawl the web via dofollow links, storing data on who is linking to whom. These relationships pass through the kind of authority that SEO experts call “Link juice” from one site to another.
According to SEO practitioners, dofollow links will give a positive value to the SEO of a website. While nofollow links tend to be low in value or may not be considered by search engines.
So, the practice of creating backlinks usually prioritizes dofollow links rather than nofollow links.
3. Placement of Backlinks in Strategic Places
In addition to relevance, the position of the backlink can actually affect the strength of the link itself. Links in the content have better power than links in the footer or sidebar.
By placing a link in relevant content, search engine bots know that the link is actually relevant to your website.
In addition, links in articles also have the opportunity to get clicks from readers which also has a positive impact on SEO.
4. Using the Right Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text in the article embedded links to other web pages. So, it looks like plain text instead of a URL.
According to many SEO practitioners, anchor text should match the targeted keywords. For example, you want to optimize your website with the keyword “web hosting services” then the anchor text on the backlink must contain these keywords or other relevant words.
5. Pay attention to Domain Authority
The term Domain Authority (DA) is actually not from Google, but from the MOZ.com site. The domain authority of a website describes its relevance for a particular subject area or industry.
The DA value starts from 0 to 100. The higher the DA of a website, the higher the authority.
In other words, websites with high authority are considered trustworthy and credible on a particular subject or industry.
Several things can affect the DA of a website, namely; domain age, website structure, content quality, amount of content, and backlinks .
According to Moz.com, backlinks from websites with high DA have better strength than websites with low DA. The DA value of a website can be seen through websiteseochecker.com.
6. Pay attention to Page Authority
Page Authority (PA) is a score that predicts how well a particular page will rank in Google search results. This PA is also made by the MOZ.com site with a range from 1 – 100.
The higher the PA score of a website page, the page is considered to have a better chance of getting a good ranking on Google. Page authority is created based on various factors, such as; DA, the level of relevance of website content, website speed backlinks, social signals , responsive & mobile friendly websites , and others.
Backlinks from websites that have a high PA score are considered to have better power than websites with low PA. The PA value of a website can be seen through websiteseochecker.com.
Backlink Source for SEO
Ok, you already know how. Then, what sites can be used as a source of backlinks for your website? Here are some recommendations that you can follow:
Links on Social Bookmarking Sites
The initial idea of social bookmarking sites is to make it easier for users to save URLs or links from sites they like so that they are easy to find when they want to reopen. In its development, social bookmarking sites are widely used by SEO actors to help popularize a website page in search engines.
Search engines such as Google also explore these social bookmarking pages to find out which web pages are often saved by internet users. And of course this will affect the search results on these search engines.
However, recently this method is considered less effective. Why? Because this social bookmarking site tends to contain spam, so the score or quality of backlinks from there is less attractive or even less attractive .
Links From Directory Articles
Article directories are often used for marketing activities and building backlinks. We can build backlinks from article directory sites by creating quality articles and then submitting them to article directory sites.
More or less the same as social bookmarking . The score or quality of links from article directory sites has also been reduced due to a lot of spam articles.
However, there are still overseas SEO practitioners who apply it because the content on article directory sites (eg Ezinearticles.com) turns out to still often get fairly good rankings in search engines.
Link From Walking Blog
Blog walking is the activity of visiting other blogs and then leaving comments and we can leave our website URL on the comments page.
There are 2 advantages of blogwalking activities, the first is that we get backlinks, and the second is direct visits from blog owners and other people who comment on the blog.
The important thing that we must remember is to provide good comments and not carelessly so as not to be considered spam by blog owners. Before leaving a comment, you should read the article on the blog, then provide comments that are related to the article.
Don’t give random comments, such as “Good article, thank you”, “first bro”, “Wow, I just found out”, and other comments that are too short.
Link From Guest Post
Being a guest blogger on an established blog is one very powerful way to make our blog popular quickly. We can become writers on other people’s blogs, of course with the permission of the blog owner, then we post good articles and according to the topics on the blog.
In the author’s biography section, we can introduce ourselves and also put a link to our web / blog, 2 advantages at once; backlinks and visitors.
In addition, many blogs are willing to put guest posting links in the body of the article. But usually the blog owner will ask for compensation for the installation of these links, be it in the form of backlinks or money.
Forum Signature Link
Currently, there are many forums that we can find on the internet, ranging from forums for gamers, publishers, to forums for entrepreneurs.
In the forum, verified members and donors are given the facility to install a signature where the signature will be seen in every post that we send in the forum. Installing a link to our web / blog in the signature section will certainly provide benefits for us, namely quality backlinks and visitors from the forum.
Links on Social Media
Backlinks from social media sites are high quality backlinks, for example backlinks from Twitter, Google plus, and Facebook. Although usually backlinks from these social media sites are Nofollow, search engines like Google still take it into account.
In addition to backlinks, of course, we will also get visitors from our friends or followers on social media. Therefore, every web/blog that we build should have its own social media account, such as a Facebook fan page and a twitter account.
By having many friends or followers on social media sites, of course, it will be very easy to make our web/blog popular, of course, we must also be active on social media.
Via Web 2.0
In addition to creating a blog for free, Web 2.0 is also often used for activities to create backlinks. Backlinks from Web 2.0 are actually quite effective in SEO activities if the content published there is good and regularly updated.
However, most SEO practitioners think that links from web 2.0 are not effective because too many people use them for spam activities.
Some Web 2.0 that are often used for backlinks building activities are; Blogger.com. WordPress.com, Blog.com, Blurty.com, Webs.com, Livejournal.com, Gather.com, and many more. For more details, you can see the list here .
If you have a different method or have input on a backlink building strategy, please provide feedback via the comments below.
Conclusion
As explained above, there are many ways to create quality backlinks for your website. Choose the most effective method because not all backlink methods will have a positive impact on website ranking in search engines.
In addition, there are other factors that actually hinder your website from entering the main page of Google. For example, mistakes in choosing keywords, your website is slow, the website structure is messy, there are too many competitors, the competitor’s authority is very strong, your website is still new, and so on. So, website ranking is not only about backlinks, guys