For those of you who are just starting to create a blog or website, the term backlink may not be familiar. What differentiates backlinks from other types of links?
Why does the term backlink appear frequently in SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) discussions?
Why do you have to understand backlinks and apply them to your website or blog? How do I get quality backlinks?
Everything will be discussed in this article, starting from what a backlink is.
Table of Contents
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is a link that is placed on a blog/website that leads to your blog/website page. The activity of building backlinks is also called link building.
There are also terms external links and inbound links. So there are backlink providers and backlink recipients.
You are the backlinker when you put other people’s websites or blog links on your website. Backlink recipients are websites that get links from backlinks.
Simple enough, right? Even though it looks simple, backlinks also play an important role in the success of your website or blog.
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Why Are Backlinks Important?
After understanding what backlinks are, now is the time to learn why backlinks are important. What benefits can be obtained from backlinks and why you should take advantage of them too.
Here are some reasons why backlinks are important:
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Google Finds Your Website Through Backlinks
The easiest explanation behind the question “Why are backlinks important?” is how Google finds new pages to appear in its search results.
The Google search engine will always crawl to find the most relevant pages with certain keywords.
Like when humans use maps to find new locations, the Google search engine uses backlinks to find new pages, crawls them, and then includes them in 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 website pages.
Website pages that don’t get backlinks from other websites will be difficult for Google to find.
The more backlinks you get, the easier it will be for Google to find your website pages.
However, you also have to consider the quality of the backlinks. You cannot carelessly look for backlinks. Because backlinks are not quality, it could actually harm your website.
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Backlinks Are Useful 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 searches to popular website pages. How does Google rate a web page as popular or not?
Yes, right. Google uses backlinks as an indicator of the popularity of a website page. The more quality backlinks that lead to your website, the better your website’s reputation is in Google’s assessment.
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Relevant Backlinks Increase Website Credibility
I previously explained that backlinks are an important indicator in determining the popularity of a website page on Google.
However, Google doesn’t just judge backlinks by quantity. Google also assesses the backlinks on your website based on their relevance.
What is meant by a relevant backlink? 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 a backlink from a website or blog 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 website or blog, or even a furniture blog?
Of course, Google will question the credibility of the smartphone company’s website, is the company credible enough for the smartphone and technology industry?
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Backlinks Bring Traffic to the Website
In the previous point, it was explained that backlinks can help websites to be found more easily 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 high rankings in search results.
In addition to the traffic that you get from Google search results, backlinks also bring traffic from links that are planted on the backlink giver’s website.
Especially if the website that provides backlinks already has a good reputation on Google and gets a lot of traffic. The traffic you get from the backlinking website will also lead to your website.
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6 Strategies to Get Quality Backlinks [2024]
Quality backlinks are not obtained easily. The strategy of building quality backlinks consists of starting with creating complete, unique, and solution content. Here’s how to get quality backlinks on your website.
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Build Credibility
To be able to get quality backlinks, you must first build the credibility of your website or blog.
As I have mentioned in the Outbound Link Quality points, 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.
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Write Complete and Solutive Content
How to build the credibility of your website or blog? Of course, the answer is in the content. Make sure the content on your website is complete and able to answer searchers’ questions.
The content you write must also be a solution. So after reading the 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 their website or blog.
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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.
A point of view that 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 other people to embed a link to your website or blog.
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Create Infographics
Sometimes people are lazy to read long paragraphs. To get around this, you can take advantage of infographics.
Create an infographic to get people interested in reading your article. Also, it is easier for people to share infographics because they are more interesting and easier to understand.
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Use the Backlink Tools
The four ways above are ways to get backlinks naturally. Good, unique, complete, and solution content will attract people to put your website or blog link on their website.
Even so, you also have to pick up the ball so you can get quality backlinks. Because websites and blogs with good quality backlinks need to be approached personally first so that they can plant backlinks there.
To find these quality websites and blogs, you need the help of third parties like Ahrefs. Until recently, Ahrefs was the best tool for finding quality backlinks.
With Ahrefs you can find quality blogs and websites based on keywords 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 it generates.
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Use a 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, Reddit, and SlideShare can be used to place links on your website or blog.
You can write new articles that are still related to the topic you are discussing and then place the link to the article you want.
That way you get a backlink from the content sharing platform. Even though the link is nofollow, this method is still feasible to apply to promote blog or website content.
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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 cannot carelessly look for backlinks. Google does not judge backlinks by quantity alone but also considers quality.
Remember, unqualified backlinks will only hurt 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:
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Relevance
As previously explained, you must get relevant backlinks in order to get a positive effect from backlinks. How to determine which website is relevant to your website?
Make a priority scale for potential websites for planting backlinks. You can group them into several groups of potential websites. From highly relevant, moderately relevant, to irrelevant.
Very relevant backlink groups are websites where most of the content is reviews of certain products.
For example, say your business is computers and laptops. Look for website or blog reviews that specifically review computers and laptops.
In the group of backlinks relevant enough, you can expand the criteria for potential 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 provided that the website has super high traffic and discusses various content such as news portals.
If the website is irrelevant to the business and doesn’t have high traffic, it’s best to leave it.
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Have Influence (Authority)
Relevance is not enough. You also have to make sure the website you are going to plant backlinks really has credibility and influence.
How do you 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 known as the Domain Rating (DR).
Domain Rating measures how many quality backlinks a website gets. The higher the DR value, the more potential for backlinks.
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Traffic
Apart from 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 really gets traffic.
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Editorial Standards
Also, pay attention to the editorial standards of website content that will be planted with backlinks.
Usually, those that produce quality backlinks are websites with strict editorial standards such as news portals or credible bloggers.
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Quality of Outbound Links
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?
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Google indexed
Last and most importantly Google indexed. The website that you will be planting backlinks 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 futile.
How to check whether a website has been indexed by Google or not is easy enough. Open Google. Then type “site: examplewebsite.com”. If nothing appears after that, 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, everything will be in vain without unique, complete, and quality content.
The backlinks that you get must also meet certain criteria so that the effect can be felt. So always do research first before deciding to plant backlinks using the indicators mentioned above. That way your backlinks will have a positive effect on your website or blog.
Congratulations on building quality backlinks on your website or blog. Don’t forget to subscribe to Tech Maina so you don’t miss the latest updates on online marketing and tips on managing websites!
