What is a Backlink?
You've probably heard the term backlinks mentioned somewhere - but what does it actually mean? Backlinks are a link to your page from another page; simply put, they are incoming links to a webpage. In the past, backlinks were used to rank webpages; pages with lots of backlinks tend to rank higher, and this is still somewhat true today.
Backlinks & SEO
In the past, it didn't matter what quality the link was; backlinks improved SEO regardless. A low quality link can be defined as having little to no relevance to the content of the page - for example, you could have a blog about dogs, and you are creating links about how to build walls, these are completely unrelated. Nowadays, links have to be relevant.
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Backlinks are great for several reasons. Firstly, they help in getting better search engine rankings. Backlinks help search bots discover links to your site and "crawl" your site ("crawling" means when Google visits your website for tracking purposes; afterwards, the site will be indexed). And another, quite obvious, reason that backlinks are important is that they create referral links for people to visit your site, increasing traffic. Generally, referral traffic is targeted and therefore has a lower bounce rate.
How to Get Backlinks
So how should you utilise this useful tool?
It's not the quantity of backlinks that's important, but the quality. Don;t use paid services - you'll likely be discovered and penalised by Google's algorithm.
The best ways to get backlinks are as follows:
- Write great content. People will naturally link to articles they like.
- Create 'pillar' articles. These are the 'cornerstones' of content - basically, it's important or relevant information in a comprehensive way to provide the most detailed, interesting way on how to do something. If you've written the best way to, for example, make a grilled cheese sandwich, more people are going to link to it.
- Guest blog. Guest blog on blogs in your expertise to help you get one-way backlinks.
You can also sign your blog up to a web directory, but it's becoming much more difficult to find authentic ones. The best way to create and use backlinks is via the 3 points above.
And that's it! Pretty simple if you know how. Get yourself some backlinks and watch your content traffic start to climb.
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