What Is A Backlink
A backlink is a hyperlink to your site from another. Having a backlink allows Google to better identify what the rest of the web thinks about you and your site.
What happens when a backlink is provided, is that the site providing the link is recommending your site. This is commonly referred to as providing juice to your site. By receiving this recommendation or ’juice’, Google can get a better picture of how the world views your site.
Think about it like this, when your friend Michael recommends a company to you – you gain a bit more information about that company. When 20 of your friends recommends a company to you, now you can be 99% sure you already know who that company is… without ever interacting with them.
Follow vs No-Follow
There are two kinds of links that you can receive: Follow and No-Follow. When we speak to businesses who have started trying to do SEO, there is almost always major confusion around these two competing links, so let’s simplify them:
Imagine the link from your site as a road from the site you are linking from (Site A) to the site receiving the link (Site B). Now think of users as 4WD offroader – no matter the road they will get there. Google doesn’t use an offroader, they use a big 16 wheel truck.
Now the road of a follow link, is a paved six-lane highway. Both Users and Google’s Ranking Trucks can get from Site A to Site B. The road of a No-Follow link is a one lane dirt road – no Google Truck is getting on that road, only users.
If the Google Truck can get on that road, than any ranking value that the backlink might have had is lost. Therefore, you can only get ranking value from a Follow Backlink.
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Anchor Text
Anchor Text has a whole set of it’s own theory that surrounds it, so we won’t cover that here. Instead here is a quick definition of anchor text;
Anchor text are the words that are actually hyperlinked to create the backlink. What that anchor text says, adds significantly more strength to your recommendation. There are three main types of anchor text:
- Branded – the words related to your company’s name
- Keyword – specific terms you wish to rank for in Google
- General – broad terms like “click here” or “see more”
What Makes A Good Backlink?
Strategies To Get Backlinks For Your Site
There are more strategies out there for getting backlinks than you can count. Some could be considered “spammy”, while others are just fine.
Instead of providing the definitive list on how to get backlinks, here are three of the most common strategies being used in 2016:
Get It Fully Natural
Every post on backlinks loves to use the line, “don’t worry about backlinks, make good content and they will come”. As much as I hate that at times for implying all good content goes viral – it is kinda right.
If you create engaging content that people care about, or do your job in an interesting or different way – the links will come. Aim to create awesome content that people want, or that will make them laugh – anything to gain their ATTENTION – and you will receive backlinks from places you never expected.
Guest-Posting
Guest-Posting is another tactic that became extremely popular, yet did so on merit. Guest-posting is perhaps the best strategy to get more backlinks while also getting valuable traffic. The very best thing about guest-posting is that you do get traffic at the same time as a backlink.
Although this is one of the more challenging tactics due to the time required to write or create good content to post on someone else’s site – it’s ROI (return on investment) is so high that there is no reason not to do it. The key though is when you have limited time to do it, learning how to identify the best site will save you hours.
Purchase Links
Purchasing links is a strategy employed by a lot of businesses, and they do so because it provides so much of a return in terms of search result improvement. That said, Google’s terms of service HATES link buying and can attack you for having bought them.
YET, it works and if done properly doesn’t have negative effects. So although there is some risk with this tactic – you can still use it. The key here is to be smart with who you are buying from and how many you buy at any one time.
Final Thought
Backlinks are the currency of SEO, and now that you know what they are, why some backlinks are better than others, and how to get them – go get them! The earlier you can begin building backlinks the better, as the value they return is as good as it gets.
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