For those of you who have just started creating a blog or website, the term backlink may not be familiar. What distinguishes backlinks from other types of links? Why does the term backlink often appear in the discussion of SEO ( Search Engine Optimization )? Why should you understand backlinks and apply them to your website or blog? How to get quality backlinks? Everything will be discussed in this article, starting with what a backlink is.
What are Backlinks?
A backlink is a link posted on a blog/website that points to your blog/website page. Backlink building activities are also known as link building. There are also terms external links and inbound links. So there are backlink givers and backlink recipients. You are the giver of backlinks when placing links to other people’s websites or blogs on your website. Backlink recipients are websites that get links from backlink givers.
Pretty simple, right? Although it looks simple, backlinks also play an important role in the success of your website or blog.
Why Are Backlinks Important?
After understanding what backlinks are, it’s time to learn why backlinks are important. What are the benefits that can be obtained from backlinks and why you should also take advantage of them?
Here are some reasons why backlinks are important:
- Google Finds Your Website Through Backlinks
The easiest explanation behind the question “Why are backlinks important?” that’s how Google finds new pages to show in its search results. The Google search engine will always crawl to find the most relevant pages for certain keywords.
Just like when humans use maps to find new locations, the Google search engine uses backlinks to find new pages, crawls those pages, and then puts them into Google’s index.
Think about this. You will find it easier to find new locations that are connected to other locations, right? Remote locations that are not connected to other locations will be more difficult to find. Likewise with web pages. Website pages that do not get backlinks from other websites will be difficult to find by Google.
The more backlinks you get, the easier it is for Google to find your website pages. However, you should also consider the quality of the backlinks. You can’t be careless in looking for backlinks. Because poor quality backlinks can actually harm your website.
- Useful Backlinks to Maintain Reputation on Google
When people search for a keyword on Google, Google will try to provide the best search results for the searcher. Google will certainly direct the search to popular web pages. How does Google judge a web page is popular or not? Yes, right. Google uses backlinks as an indicator of the popularity of a website page. The more quality backlinks pointing to your website, the better your website’s reputation in Google’s rating.
- Relevant Backlinks Increase Website Credibility
I have previously explained that backlinks are an important indicator in determining the popularity of a website page on Google. However, Google doesn’t only judge backlinks from their quantity. Google also rates the backlinks on your website based on their relevance.
What are relevant backlinks? Relevant backlinks are backlinks obtained from websites or blogs from relevant niches. For example, a smartphone company is said to have relevant backlinks when they get backlinks from websites or blogs whose niche is technology. That way the smartphone company can be considered credible by Google.
What happens when the smartphone company gets a backlink from a beauty, fashion, or even furniture blog or website? Of course, Google will question the credibility of the smartphone company’s website, is the company credible enough for the smartphone and technology industry?
- Backlinks Bring Traffic to Websites
In the previous point it was explained that backlinks can help websites to be more easily found by Google so that they can appear in search results. The more quality backlinks you get, the better Google’s assessment of your website will be. Then your website pages can get a high ranking in search results.
In addition to the traffic you get from Google search results, backlinks also bring in traffic from links planted on websites that provide backlinks. Especially if the backlink giving website already has a good reputation on Google and gets a lot of traffic. The traffic obtained from the backlink giving website will also lead to your website.
6 Strategies to Get Quality Backlinks
Quality backlinks do not come easily. The strategy to build quality backlinks consists of starting with creating complete, unique, and solutive content. Here’s how to get quality backlinks on your website.
- Build Credibility
To be able to get quality backlinks, you must first build the credibility of your website or blog. As I mentioned in the Outbound Link Quality point, usually websites or blogs with quality backlinks are only willing to provide backlinks to quality websites and blogs. Therefore, you need to build credibility first.
- Write Complete and Solution Content
How do build the credibility of a website or blog? Of course, the answer is in the content. Make sure the content on your website is completely content and able to answer the questions of searchers. The content you write must also be the solution. So after reading articles on your blog or website, readers can solve the problems they are experiencing. That way they don’t hesitate to share your articles on social media or even on their website or blog.
- Create Unique Content
In addition to complete and solution content, your content must also be unique. If possible, create content that no one else has created before. A point of view no one else has taken. For example, you could do a case study about your customer or business. The uniqueness of your content will attract others to embed a link to your website or blog.
- Create an Infographic
Sometimes people are lazy to read long paragraphs. To get around this, you can use infographics. Create infographics so that people are interested in reading your articles. Plus, it’s also easier for people to share infographics because they’re more interesting and easier to understand.
- Use the Backlink Tool
The four ways above are ways to get backlinks naturally. Good, unique, complete, and solution-based content will attract people to put a link to your website or blog on their website.
Even so, you also have to pick up the ball in order to get quality backlinks. Because websites and blogs with good quality backlinks need to be approached personally first so that you can plant backlinks there.
To find these quality websites and blogs, you need the help of third parties like Ahrefs. To date, Ahrefs is the best tool for finding quality backlinks. With Ahrefs you can find quality blogs and websites based on keywords that are relevant to your business. In addition, you can also find out the credibility of the website through the Domain Rating (DR) and the amount of traffic generated.
- Content Sharing Platform
Most people share their latest articles or content on social media. It must be done. However, apart from sharing content on social media, you also need to share your content on a content sharing platform.
Content sharing platforms such as Medium, Kompasiana, Hipwee, VIVA Blog , Kaskus , Reddit , and SlideShare can be used to link your website or blog. You can write a new article that is still related to the topic you are discussing and then place a link to the article you want. That way you get backlinks from the content sharing platform. Even though the link is nofollow , this method is still feasible to apply to promote blog or website content.
- Do Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is when you write articles that are not to be published on your own blog but are published on other people’s blogs or websites. In the article, you put a link to your blog or website. However, you need to choose a blog or website with high traffic so that guest blogging can feel the benefits.
Criteria and Examples of Quality Backlinks
You can’t be careless in looking for backlinks. Google does not judge backlinks from quantity alone but also considers quality. Remember, unquality backlinks will only harm you. So you have to select backlinks carefully in order to get quality backlinks. What are the criteria for quality backlinks? Here are six criteria for quality backlinks:
- Relevance
As explained earlier, you must get relevant backlinks in order to get a positive effect from backlinks. How to determine a website that is relevant to your website?
Make a priority scale for websites that have the potential to be planted with backlinks. You can group them into several groups of potential websites. From very relevant, quite relevant, to not relevant.
The most relevant backlink groups are websites whose contents are mostly reviews of certain products. For example, your business is computers and laptops. Look for a review website or blog that specifically reviews computers and laptops.
In the quite relevant backlink group, you can expand the criteria for prospective backlinks. You can look for blogs or websites where most of the posts are about technology, not just laptops and computers.
Finally, can you plant backlinks on websites that are not relevant to your business? The answer is yes and no. Yes, you can plant backlinks on irrelevant websites as long as the website has super high traffic and discusses various content such as news portals. If the website is not relevant to your business and doesn’t have high traffic, it’s best to leave it.
- Have Influence (Authority)
Relevance alone is not enough. You also have to make sure the website that you are going to plant a backlink on really has credibility and is influential. How to ensure the credibility of a website? You can check the credibility of a website using software like Ahrefs. Credibility at Ahrefs is measured using a scale of 1 to 100 called the Domain Rating (DR). Domain Rating measures how many quality backlinks a website gets. The higher the DR value, the more potential for backlinks.
- Traffic
In addition to Domain Rating (DR), you also need to consider the amount of traffic a website generates before turning it into a backlink. To measure how much traffic a website generates per month you can also use Ahrefs. Make sure the website that will be planted with backlinks actually gets traffic.
- Editorial Standard
Also, pay attention to the editorial standards of website content that will be planted with backlinks. Usually, the ones that produce quality backlinks are websites with strict editorial standards such as news portals or credible bloggers.
- Outbound Link Quality
Websites with good quality backlinks will usually only provide backlinks to quality websites. Therefore, pay attention to outbound links from prospective websites that will be planted with backlinks. Is their track record of outbound links good? Do they provide outbound links to quality websites or not?
- Google indexed
Lastly and most importantly it is indexed by Google. The website that you will plant backlinks on must be indexed by Google. If a website is not indexed by Google, it should be abandoned. Because planting backlinks on websites that are not indexed by Google is useless.
How to check whether a website has been indexed by Google or not is quite easy. Go to Google. Then type “site:examplewebsite.com”. If after that nothing appears, leave the website.
Conclusion
Building a website with quality backlinks takes a lot of effort. Keep in mind that before building quality backlinks, you must first build the main foundation, namely content. No matter how many backlinks you get, they will all be in vain without unique, complete, and quality content.
The backlinks you get must also meet certain criteria so that the effect can be felt. So always do your research first before deciding to plant backlinks using the indicators mentioned above. That way your backlinks will produce a positive effect on your website or blog.
Congratulations on building quality backlinks on your website or blog. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Xanderblog so you don’t miss the latest updates on online marketing and tips for managing a website!
