What Are Quality Backlinks And How Can They Be Built?
“Backlink” is a common term to those in the field of SEO (search engine optimization) and it refers to a link placed on a website that leads to your own website. Having more backlinks increases the authority and relevance of your website, which is important where searches made with search engines is concerned and where comparison with websites similar to your own is involved.
Backlinks are used in the search algorithms that search engines function upon. For your website, it is important that it be seen as “valuable” by search engines, so that it is returned among the first pages of results for different search queries. When we refer to quality backlinks, we mainly refer to backlinks that lead to your website using your keywords or keyword phrases and also that are present on websites with content from the same domain as yours.
How can quality backlinks be built?
Backlink building involves using several methods, some of which you can deal with yourself – or you can turn to backlink services for help. Links are very important for SEO, as having good content and posts that are optimized with proper tags and keyword density is sometimes not enough without having the links that can make a difference. Here are a few answers to the question: “How to get backlinks, good backlinks, that is?”:
1. Commenting on other blogs: this method is usually underestimated, but search engines do value comment links; what is important is that they are “dofollow” links (as opposed to “nofollow”, which are links that send users from one site to another, but without the page rank being transmitted, so with no SEO importance). What is also important is that the comment is well written and relevant, so that it is not deleted by administrators. Next to your name, you will add a keyword with a link behind it, method that helps increase your page rank.
2. Guest blogging: Guest blogging for other blogs involves writing for other blogs which allow that your author bio be displayed under your post. In this bio, you can include a link of importance to you. The rank of your link along with the keyword that it is hidden behind can grow.
3. Presence in directories: Getting listed on online directories is a means of obtaining quality backlinks for free and also a means to be easily observed by search engines and possible visitors. You can generally get included in search directories for free, with one drawback to be mentioned: you might have a waiting period of a couple of months before being listed in the categories that are of interest to you.
4. Commenting on forums: Search engines usually index forums, so you might get good backlinks by including links in comments behind the anchor text of choice. The anchor text is basically a text that is clickable, as it has a hyperlink associated. The words in the anchor text should be keyword phrases that are relevant for you, as these words can impact the ranking that will be given to the page by search engines. This actually is a rule wherever you place your links, forums or not. When commenting on forums, be aware of the fact that administrators sometimes only allow the presence of links that are relevant for the forum post.
5. Article marketing: This method resembles that of guest blogging, yet some consider it to be less powerful. Basically you need to write quality articles and submit them to important article directories. If you do not enjoy writing articles, you can outsource this effort. The value of each article can be increased if the posts on the article sites are interlinked to each other.
6. The use of social media networks: Many ranking factors used by search engines now depend on social media networks. If one of your articles receives important engagement from top social media sites, the impact on your rankings can be significant. Here, your focus should be less on link building and more on encouraging social interaction around your site on the social media network. Your posts should be easy to share, tweet, pin, stumble upon and so on.
7. Press release submission: This is an older method, but it still works. Your press release must have attractive content so that it comes to the attention of journalists and bloggers who might want to link to it, so that they have posts that are thus backed up by official information. There are several websites that publish and distribute press releases to relevant media, for free or for a fee. Having backlinks from respected sites definitely boosts your SEO efficiency. The press release should include links leading to your website. The tricky aspect is that you actually need to have something that is newsworthy to write a press release about.
Basically, these are the main ways of getting quality backlinks – make sure to use them wisely.
