What Are Backlinks & Why They Matter in SEO

1. What Are Backlinks?

If you have heard about SEO, then you might have also encountered a very common term “backlink” Used frequently with this word SEO.

Backlinks are basically the link of your website found on the other websites. If taken care properly, then back links can increase your Google search rankings and can improve the visibility of your website.

For example, here is a link that directly points on our website:

Top-Rated B2B Solutions on Clutch.co

This is known as a “backlink”. In this case clutch has a link to Werbooz i.e clutch becomes the referring site and Werbooz is the target site.

Internal vs External Links 

• Internal Links: Links that navigate from one page to another within the same website.

•  Links that point from one website to a different website.
  Image like this

Internal Link Vs External Link

2. Can You Rank in Google Without Backlinks?

There is a possibility that you can rank on Google without worrying about backlinks, but the problem is that every time you will struggle to rank. You’ll be only visible while searching for keywords that have low search volumes and low competition.

And if this stays true, then that points towards two things that the keywords that you are ranking on, they don’t generate much traffic. Secondly, those have low value in them, that is even if they bring traffic to your website it will be hard for you to monetise your visitors.

If your end goal is to target an audience, that is hard to monetise and the competition is really low, then go ahead .

But if you want to compete with your competitors and want the traffic that can be monetised. Then you need to integrate back linking into your SEO strategy.

There is no doubt that back links are a really important aspect in google SEO. But there are several other factors on which your google ranking depends :

• Search intent

• Quality of content

• On-page Experience 

• XML Architecture of the website

• On page & off page SEO optimisations 

• Keywords

 If you want to understand these terms in detail refer to this.

3. Why Are Backlinks Important?

Consider a hypothetical situation in which you want to eat a burger and there are two shops, Shop A and Shop B, in front of you. You are about to go to Shop A, but your friend tells you that he and his six friends often visit Shop B because Shop B’s burgers are really good. Now, where would you go? Would you rather go to Shop A, which you have never visited, or would you select Shop B, where your friend and his friends often visit? Obviously, you will choose Shop B.

Now, let’s relate this to backlinks. Backlinks represent experience, expertise, authority, and trust in the eyes of search engines. So if a website has received backlinks from 50 websites and another website has received backlinks from just one website, then in the eyes of Google, the 50 website links are like votes from other websites, telling Google that this website is valuable, credible, and trustworthy.

So in simple words, the more websites will point towards your website. The More Google will rank your website higher.

And if your website gets backlinks from authoritative sources like Apple & Microsoft, then Google will find your website more trustworthy and credible, and will boost your website visitors, thus increasing your brand awareness and traffic.

To break it down : A site having high authority can pass down authority on your site too, if they have a backlink to your website.

BacklInks : Thus Increases the credibility of your website

The way Google ranks pages and how it indexes them is quite simple, Google has search engine bots also referred to as ‘crawlers’ or ‘spiders’.  In order to index a page the web crawler goes and crawls the web pages, they find hyperlinks to other URLs on those web pages the crawl bot indexes the current page based on the quality of the content, keywords,page speed, backlinks, Technical SEO, website architecture, etc —  and then crawls to the next page.

How Search Engines Work

You can clearly see why backlinks are crucial for web crawlers, backlinks serve as pathways that help crawlers discover new pages and understand the importance of these pages within the web ecosystem.

4. Are All Backlinks Valuable for SEO? (Not All Backlinks Are Equal)

There's a common saying that says “all glitters are not gold”. All backlinks are not equal.  From our previous discussion, it is quite clear that the authority of a site matters too. So if I have to put it bluntly then high quality backlinks are much more valuable for your website compared to low quality backlinks, a single high-quality backlink from an authoritative website could be much more powerful than 1,000 low-quality backlinks.

Although there are many types of backlinks, but they can be broadly classified into 4 types:

• Dofollow Backlinks

• Nofollow Backlinks

• Sponsored Backlinks

• UGC Backlinks

Links that can harm your SEO | Google's Spam Policies :

Google doesn't just blindly follow backlinks, Sometimes Google may ignore back links that appear low in quality or are irrelevant with the content.  If you have paid a website to promote your website, via back link then sometimes things won't go as you expect them to go because Google also ignores backlinks from unestablished or spammy sites And Google doesn't want to influence these websites to show them more in search results.

So in any case, you must avoid following bad practices that do not comply with Google’s link spam policies.  

Some of the common bad practises that you must completely avoid are: 

• Exchanging money, goods, or services for backlinks

• Link exchanges (i.e., “Your wellbeing is my well-being, link me and I promise to link you back”)

• Automating programs that create links to your site

• Forcing keywords (queries you want to rank for) into anchor text in a spammy way

Do Follow Links & No Follow Links : 

There are two types of links, Do follow and No follow And as their name suggests the do follow links are the links that pass on SEO value and no follow do not, SEO value is sometimes also known as link equity or "link juice". By default, all links are Dofollow links unless specified.

Why Use Nofollow Links?

So why would someone want to use a Nofollow link?
Are they plotting something against you?
No, Not at all!

No follow links are used to prevent spammy or low quality websites from gaining SEO benefits,  Google takes these steps to make sure that spammy sites do not unfairly boost their rankings with the help of backlinks.

One more important reason for using no follow links is to comply with Google's policies on paid links. For instance, if there is a website placing a paid advertisement on another site, then the promoting site must use the rel="sponsored" attribute to signal google that the link is paid. This avoids penalties from google and ensures transparency in advertising practices.

Moreover,  There could be one more case where websites might use Nofollow links when they want to link to another site without endorsing or promoting it by passing on SEO value. This allows websites to provide a link for informational purposes without affecting their own credibility and to avoid promoting the linked sites to search engines.

5. How to Check Your Backlinks with Google Search Console

Before learning how to check the backlinks associated with your website with Google Search Console, we must understand the “why” behind our actions.

Why conduct a backlink analysis?

The reason is quite simple: Search engines consider backlinks as an indicator of your site's authority and credibility. Analyzing and optimizing all your backlinks helps you understand which of the links Google considers while indexing. This gives you a better understanding of your site's ranking. Additionally,  proper backlink analysis on Google Search Console will help you identify all the bad links that are associated with your website and you can also locate, if any spammy sites point towards your website.

You need to find and disavow a spammy site, pointing to your website. Because  back links from these websites are considered as toxic links by search engines, failing to do so may result in a penalty from Google. Additionally, you should not only analyze your site but also conduct thorough research to understand your competitors.

Analyzing and reviewing all the backlinks regularly, will help you  maintain a  healthy relationship with search engines. This will also help you build a high quality profile,  Which will ultimately help you in your website ranking.

How to Check Your Backlinks with GSC?

Step 1:  Go to Google Search Console.

Step 2: In the sidebar, click on the “links” option.

Google Search Console dashboard

Step 3: In the “external links” section you can see an overview of your site's backlink profile.

View external links overview GSC

This will provide you with a summary of the top linked pages, top linking sites and top linking text.

Step 4: Click on “Export external links” to download the entire report of your website in a CSV format.

Export backlinks CSV in GSC

6. How to Analyze Backlinks for competitor research

1. Find your competitor site for analysis

Most likely, you are already aware of your competitors. If not, simply Google your top targeted keywords that your audience might type in the search bar and look for the top-ranking sites, make sure to exclude sponsored results. Now apart from sponsored results, the sites that appear on the top are the sites you need to outrank, so thoroughly research them.

2. Choose a tool for backlink analysis

 You have already researched your competitors. Now it's time to analyze them properly,  Some of the famous bat linking analysis tools are

• Google Search Console

• Ahrefs

• Semrush

• Moz Open Site Explorer

You can use these tools to analyze your website as well as your competitors, you can monitor the number of backlinks & backlink profile — to understand your website better.
You can also find out your potential competitors by typing keywords that you want to rank for — this will give you a list of sites that are competing for the same keywords.

Analyze your website as well as your competitors

3. Paste the competitor website in the analysis tool & identify key metrics to analyze backlink

• Authority Score

• Referring domains

• Backlinks

• Monthly visits

• Organic Traffic

• Outbound domains

You can generate an entire report of your competitor. Some competitor tools, like Semrush offer you the privilege to compare up to five sites at a time.

Analyze Competitors with Semrush

You can also have a report of detailed analytics like “Backlink Types,” “Link Attributes,” “Top Categories of Referring Domains,” and many more.  You can also download these reports in the form of a PDF.

View and download detailed backlink reports

7. Best Practices for Building the Best Backlinks in SEO

• Create Content that is worth linking

The best way to get backlinks from different websites is to create content that naturally attracts them. And, By promoting your content to the right publications or platforms, you can not only effectively build quality backlinks for your website but you can also create an audience. In order to attract other sources and get backlinks ensure that the content you create is informational, humorous, and helpful, because people are more likely to link a piece of content that they find useful and that meets these criteria. You can also check the current backlinks associated with your blog.

How to check all the backlinks associated with my blog?

Step 1:  Open a backlinks analytics tool like Semrush and paste the URLof your blog to get a detailed report about your blog. 

Backlink Analytics Tools

Step 2:  Go to the backlinks tab, To know the websites that refer you.

View websites that refer to you.

Step 3:   Here you can see all the backlinks associated with your blog/page. You can also identify some important metrics, like authority score, anchor text, total internal links, total external links and many more.

Backlink details and metrics overview

If you want you can export & download the entire report.

• Start writing Guest Blog Posts

In a healthy business, there's a common saying: "Your well-being is our well-being." Following this principle, one of the most effective ways to get backlinks from different websites could be through a mutual exchange that benefits both.
The strategy is quite simple — your content writer will be writing guest blog posts for other websites and in return you will request them backlinks to your site. 

If you think about it — this approach benefits both parties. You will get a backlink and the other person will receive a quality blog. Isn’t it simple?

However, be cautious about the content that you have provided is high-quality, engaging and informative. As no one would want to settle for low-quality content in exchange for a backlink, because if they don't receive what they want, then chances are that they won’t agree with the terms.

• Become a replacement for broken links & outdated links

To build backlinks for your website, you need to start finding dead links on other websites. And the idea is to convince the website owners to replace those non-working links with your working backlinks.

Now, which links can be termed as broken links or dead links?

If a website redirects the user to a page that isn’t accessible  and shows “404 Not Found” errors then that link can be termed as a broken link.

You can use this opportunity to provide the website owner with an alternative resource link that offers valuable content for the user.

How can I find broken links that are related to my niche?

Step 1: Open any backlink analytics tool  And type the domain that is related to your niche and generate a report.

Step 2: Go to the “Indexed Pages” tab and check the “broken pages” section. To find out all the dead links. These ls will redirect the user to the “404 Not Found” page.

Replace Dead Links with Your Content

Step 3: Click on the number to find out “How many sites are still linked with these dead links?”

Check Sites Linking to Dead Links

And look for the topics, where your content could become an ideal replacement for the dead link.

Step 4: Once you have found a topic where you can offer content from your website, then contact the website owner and offer your page as an alternative for the existing dead link. 

Pitch Your Content as a Link Replacement

This way you can create a win-win situation for both — The website owner has removed the broken link, and you have earned a genuine backlink from the website.

• Use the Skyscraper Technique

This technique is quite simple if you are talented enough, in this method you have to out-do the tallest skyscraper. Didn’t get it?

Skyscraper Technique

Basically what you are trying to do is that you first try to find out the most high ranking content, you can consider it as the tallest skyscraper right now, and then you have to create new content that is more valuable than the existing content.

This process has 3 steps : 

Step 1: Find content that ranks top and has a high number of backlinks

Step 2: Create content on the same topic with comprehensiveness, new information & research, & better visuals that adds more value to the readers than the existing content.

Step 3: Reach out to the website owners through email and offer them better & update content to earn a backlink. Your new content will replace the original content.

• Brand Mentions are Opportunity to Build Backlinks

Search for “Unlinked Brand Mentions”!

Unlinked brand mentions are a lost opportunity for building backlinks. These are the places where websites have mentioned your name but haven’t created any link with your website. You can use monitoring tools like Brand24 or SEO tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush to find unlinked brand mentions.

There is a high possibility that you can convert these mentions into valuable backlinks, since the author has already mentioned you on their webpage(This is a clear indication that they like you), it is quite easy to acquire backlink from these authors to improve search rankings and authority of your website.

Reach out to the site owners by writing a persuasive pitch that emphasizes, How can we benefit together? so that they can ultimately add a back link to their mention. Personalize your pitch and maintain professionalism, Here’s an example template to help you :

Build backlinks from brand mentions

By tracking and converting unlinked mentions into valuable backlinks, you can build a solid “link profile” and can increase the authority of your website in search engine results.

• Leverage authoritative resource pages

A resource page is born to provide you a back link, Resource pages typically consist of a variety of valuable backlinks for a specific topic.  Resource pages are also referred to as pillar pages and they exist to link out to other websites.

 

Sometimes resource pages can be tricky to find,  Because you have to search them on your own What you have to do is that you have to search a resource page, and you have to find that whether they are listing the websites of your competitors or not If they are listing all the websites of your competitor, then the chances are that they will list your website too.

 So reach out to them and ask them politely to add a link to our website along with the others. Here’s a template that might help you, communicate your message : 

Template for requesting link replacement

• Invest time in making “Ultimate Guides”

Long form content performs better when it comes to quality link building, compared to short articles. Here is a graph from hubspot that shows the relation between content length and backlinks : 

Word Count Vs Average Linking Domains

Why do users prefer long content over short articles?

Making long form content that is informative and comprehensive on a given topic, has higher chances of providing all the answers that your user wants.  If all the information that they want is provided to them on a single page then they won't have to perform iterative mini searches to search for what they're looking for. 

No one likes reading long pages of content online, right? Well, columnist John Lincoln disagrees.

• Use the “Backlink Gap Tool”

Seek opportunities where a website is listing many of your competitive websites.  Because if they are listing all of your competitors, then the chances are they will list your website too. You just have to reach out to them and make a request to link your website as well.  Chances are that they will link your website without a problem, since they are already listing your competitors that means you too fall in the same category as the listed websites.

You can use any Backlink Gap Tool to search websites that are linking your competitors. 

Backlink Gap

You can paste your website link as well as the website link of your competitor, to find out the potential websites, from which you can also earn backlinks.

8. Make Sure to Link to Other Sites Besides Your Own

Linking other sites beside your own can often show good will in the blogging world and you can also earn good backlinks for your website overtime. If you attach links that are good and relevant and that fit into the flow of your articles, then your readers will value your articles overtime. And on the same page the links that you have used to link other persons articles might also link you back in the future.

How will website owners know that you have redirected users on their blog post?

You can use “UTM Parameters” to let them know that the source of the redirection is your website. This will encourage them to return the favor by linking and mentioning your website too, in the future.

9. Conclusion

In conclusion, backlinks are an important  element while working on SEO for your website. Proper SEO can significantly impact your website's visibility and authority. 

If you follow the best practices mentioned in the blog then this will definitely lead to building high-quality backlinks, you can exponentially improve your search rankings and can drive more organic traffic towards your site. 

Keep in mind, not all backlinks are equal, so focus on creating valuable content and building relationships with reputable sites as mentioned in the blog, to achieve the best results.