Select Page

Have you ever heard or a backlink? Do you know what it means? Maybe you’ve heard the term over and over again, but you don’t know the meaning. This is a link from one site to another. Search engines normally use backlinks as ranking signals when one site links to another, as this is an indication that the site has valuable content. High-quality backlinks normally play a major role when it comes to boosting the ranking of a site, as well as visibility in SERPs.

How do backlinks work?

As we highlighted earlier, backlinks play a major role in SEO, search engine algorithm, as well as your strategies to grow your site. The best way to understand how backlinks work is by thinking of conversation between sites.

For instance, if you are a blogger, and you write an interesting article about SEO. Then, another blogger links to your article when sharing their perspective. Since the blogger writes about the topic in their own site, the process of linking to your site creates a backlink to your post.

If the blogger’s site is popular, many websites will link back to their post, and this boosts the authority of the website, and you get a valuable backlink for a website with good domain authority. This is a win-win situation.

Different types of backlinks

There are two types of backlinks, but one has more value than the other. Let’s look at these two backlinks and their effect on your website.

  • Nofollow link – this commands search engines to ignore the link, and they don’t give value to the linking sites. So, nofollow links cannot assist in improving the visibility or ranking of a website.
  • Dofollow link – may people like these backlinks. However, you should understand that these backlinks come from reputable websites, and can assist in improving your SERP rankings.

But, you also need to understand that certain dofollow links are considered bad. These are the links that come from suspicious websites or backlinks that are earned through manipulation or dubious ways. Such links can make Google to de-index or penalize your website. When searching for backlinks, it is important to note that it’s not all about the number of backlinks that you get, but the quality of the links.

How do you get backlinks?

It requires both effort and time to build quality backlinks to your website. The following are 7 easy ways that you can use to build quality backlinks for your site.

  • Google search a post with top rankings and then go ahead to expand and improve it
  • Add links to your website on your various social media profiles
  • Create different posts, infographics, “how-to,” “why” posts, or posts with video
  • Create guest posts on other websites and blogs
  • Write guide articles—these are generally long-form articles and cover every detail of the topic
  • Contact different influencers in your industry or niche, and then tell them the article on your website that you’d like them to link to
  • Interview influencers in your niche or industry, and then send them a link, and they will also link back to your website

Also, you can do competitive backlink research. For you to successfully do this, you’ll have to research your competitor’s backlinks with the best rankings. You can opt to use a tool like SEMrush that can assist you in finding such links and then start to target the domains as part of your link building campaigns.

Checking for your backlinks

You can use different backlink checking tools to check for the backlinks on your website. The most common tools include Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and SEMrush.

It is important to monitor your backlinks. As a requirement of Google Webmaster Guidelines, you should ask toxic site owners to delete their links from your website. Failing to do that can make Google penalize your site, an action that can make your site to start losing its SERP rankings.

When checking for your backlinks, you need to answer the following questions:

  • Where can you find your backlinks?
  • How do you know whether they are toxic?
  • What’s the best way to contact toxic backlink website owners?

You can easily get the answers so long as you the right tools

Google Search Console can assist you in growing your site and monitoring all your backlinks. However, it needs a lot of time, and you’ll also be limited to what you can get.

Other tools, like SEMrush, are better and faster and can assist you in answering these three questions, and also give additional options. This tool has to primary areas that specifically deal with backlinks. The first section is Backlink Analytics, which allows you to monitor all your competitors, and then the second is Backlink Audit.

The SEMrush Backlink Audit tool allows you to see all the backlinks to your website. In addition, this tool checks each backlink in your site and then sorts out all the toxic backlinks. With this tool, you can easily find all the toxic backlinks before Google finds them and then penalizes your site. One interesting thing about SEMrush is that you can email all the toxic site owners from your screen.

SEMrush can also assist you to do keyword research, see all the backlinks being used by your competitors, and also manage your backlinks. Maintaining track of your backlinks allows you to the value of your website, which is a critical step when it comes to your SEO strategy.