What are the benefits of backlinks to a website?

What is a backlink? How to build them? And what does it do to your website? That’s what we will find out in this article.

What are the benefits of backlinks to a website?

What are backlinks and how it works?

Before we understand how to build backlinks let’s first understand what is it.

What do backlinks mean in SEO?

Backlinks mean to have links to other websites referring to a page or content on your website. Let’s say you mentioned another website on one of your pages, that means that they have a backlink from you, and if another website added your website link to their website, then you have a backlink from them.

Backlinks are also known as inbound links, why? because through backlinks, the traffic of another website is driven to yours. Based on the quality and the number of backlinks you have you will get a higher rank in search engines like Google. But why is that? Having backlinks are like having testimonials that your website is valuable and helps users.  And that’s why backlinks are good for SEO.

How to build backlinks?

Gaining backlinks is the second step after finishing the on-page optimization, it will increase your traffic and help you rank higher in search engines. However, it’s not an easy task, it’s rather the hardest task is SEO. To get backlinks you must communicate with other website owners, and convince them that your website will improve theirs, no one will give you something for free, and we all know that. If you want backlinks then offer them something they can’t refuse.

However, don’t go and send emails to random website owners to link back to your website, what you want to rank higher is quality more than quantity. If an unknown websites backlink to your website it will be meaningless to search engines.

How to gain backlinks? There are two ways this could happen:

1-     Someone found your content and decide that it will add to their website so they link to you.

2-     Showing your content to others to make them a link to you.

Both ways need you to reach people with the content you have, and there are many techniques and approaches to do so. Some will work for you and some want you should choose what is best based on the type of content you provide. You must start reaching for other website owners, webmasters, and editors to ask them to link to your website.  

This is when you reach out to other site owners, editors, or webmasters and ask them to link to your page. For this to work, you need to have a clear value proposition. That’s where link-building tactics come in.

Here are some approaches that you could use:

Guest blogging: Offer to write a one-off post for another website.

Broken link building: Find relevant dead links on other sites, then reach out and suggest your working link as the replacement.

The Skyscraper Technique: Find relevant content with lots of links, make something better, then ask those linking to the original to link to you instead.

Unlinked mentions: Find unlinked mentions of your brand, then ask the author to make the mention clickable.

What types of backlinks are important in SEO?

There are high-quality and low-quality backlinks, and they are not equal to each other, which one do you think is better for search engines? That’s right, high-quality backlinks will help you rank higher and get more traffic.

To make it clear, having one high-quality link is equal to having 1,000 low-quality backlinks. Here are the traits that you should search for to know it is a high-quality backlink.

1-     Trusted websites: let’s say your website writes scientific research, will it be better to have a backlink from Harvard for example, or an unknown website? Of course, the answer is Harvard, not just to us humans but that’s also how search engines work. This is known as “Domain Authority”. If the site has a high authority, then it will pass higher authority to your site.

2-     Your targeted keyword should be in their Link’s Anchor Text: what is anchor text? It’s the visible text part of a link. To rank higher your link should include your targeted keyword, and there’s a study that has proven that recently.

3-     The website linking back to you should be related to the content of your website: for example, you can’t write scientific research and have a site that sells clothing linking back to you. you should reach for websites that are related to yours. We said above that backlinks are like testimonials; then how will an unrelated website know that your content is worthy? That’s how search engines see it.

What is the purpose of backlinks?

Backlinks have many benefits to websites, but here are the three main benefits:

1-     Higher ranking. Backlinks are like having testimonials of another website that your site is worthy and valuable to the users. It’s like having many people voting on your site, and the more votes you have the more you will rank in search engines. However, don’t forget what we said about high-quality and low-quality backlinks. Having high-quality backlinks are much better and will increase your authority.  

2-      Discoverability. Search engines start searching for new links on popular pages, then start to see the unpopular pages. If your site link is found on one of the popular pages, you are more likely to be discovered faster.

 3-      Referral traffic. How will people find your website? Through backlinks, links are there to guide the user to the useful resources that they need. And if your site is mentioned in one of the popular websites users will click on it and you will get referral traffic.  

Why backlinks are important?

Backlinks are like having testimonials of another website that your site is worthy and valuable to the users. It’s like having many people voting on your site, and the more votes you have the more you will rank in search engines. However, don’t forget what we said about high-quality and low-quality backlinks. Having high-quality backlinks are much better and will increase your authority.  

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