A so-called “backlink” – also called an “inbound link” – is an inbound link from another URL. This means that an external link to your website has been placed on another website. It doesn’t matter if this backlink goes to the main domain or a subpage.
Nowadays, you hear again and again that backlinks have no relevance anymore. But this is complete nonsense. Backlinks are still essential when it comes to search engine ranking. Because Google, Bing, and Co. use each website’s backlink profile as an indicator to classify it for ranking.
Simplified you can say about backlinks: The more high-quality backlinks there are to your website, the higher it will be ranked by the search engines and the better it will rank in the search results.
Types of Backlinks
You can remember the following sentence at the beginning: Not all backlinks are the same! Numerous factors make the difference between a good and a bad backlink. In part, the details of how backlinks are evaluated remain a secret from Google.
Important to know: There are two different types of backlinks. On the one hand the internal links and on the other the external links.
Internal links
An internal link is a backlink that points from a subpage of the same or one’s own domain to another subpage of this domain like buy permanent backlinks.
external links
An external link is a backlink that links from a subpage of another domain to a website or subpage of your own domain.
Why are ‘recommendations’ important?
other websites must recommend yours. You can compare this to finding the right primary school for a child. Every primary school can claim that the child receives the best education from them. But you only believe which school is best for you if other parents recommend that school. That’s how it works with websites. As a target group, parents play an important role here. The more other websites refer to a website, the more Google believes it is indeed a good website. The search engine only wants to show users the best websites in its search results. As a result, Google attaches great value to a website that has many backlinks.
Are Backlinks Related to SEO?
At first glance, they may seem like two completely different things. Still, there is a connection between SEO and backlinks. The website that refers to yours says with a backlink, as it were, ‘this is a website that contains relevant and good information. You can therefore see such a recommendation as a positive assessment of the content on your website. This is exactly why Google rewards websites with a lot of backlinks with a higher position in the organic search results of the search engine. Google even counts backlinks for 50% when indexing your website. Because of this, there is not only a relationship between SEO and backlinks. Having good backlinks is an essential SEO technique that every website should apply.
What are good backlinks?
Now that you know that building backlinks are a fundamental SEO technique, you naturally want to get as many backlinks as possible. When getting backlinks, keep in mind that not all links that point to your website are automatically good backlinks. That is why it is important to know what excellent backlinks are.
Backlinks from reputable websites
A good backlink is, in any case, a backlink that comes from a reputable website. Think, for example, of websites such as NOS.nl and NRC.nl. The more Google values the website that points to your website, the more value Google also attaches to the links to which such a website refers.
Websites with a high position in Google
It can be not easy to get a reputable website to point to yours. But other websites with a high position in Google are also excellent candidates for creating good backlinks. These websites already have a high rating from Google themselves. As a result, Google only finds it more credible that your website also deserves a high position if these websites refer to yours. Therefore, try to get a backlink on websites that have a high position in Google.
Websites that are relevant to your website
In addition, a backlink is really good, when there is a high relevancy between the two websites. Is your website about the agricultural sector, for example? Then the relevance between a website that is also about that for your website is high. It is best to try to get backlinks on such websites.
Place backlinks on websites yourself
On some websites, it is possible to edit the content yourself. You can therefore place a reference to your website on these websites. However, this is not always the best way to get backlinks. This is because these types of websites are usually not of the best quality. As a result, they are also not highly regarded by Google. By placing/purchasing a reference on such a website as yours, your link between both websites. As a result, Google can also appreciate your website less well. In that case, placing a backlink is counterproductive.
Ask web admins to post a link to your website
This approach is quite tricky because web admins don’t always want to cooperate. Still, the act itself is quite simple, making it always worth a try. In particular, contact web admins with websites that meet the following criteria:
The website is about the same subject as your website;
The website has a high position in Google search results.A webmaster will probably not cooperate at first. But you can always try. Especially when you publish very good content on your website, a webmaster can see the added value of a referral on his website.
What are the best backlinks?
Now that you know what good backlinks are, you naturally only want to generate the very best backlinks to your website. The best backlinks are referrals that ensure that you have a link profile that looks natural to Google. A link profile is a collection of all links pointing to your website. Google penalizes websites whose search engine notices that they are targeting link building. Read an article about the 17 most common link-building blunders here.
How do you get a natural looking link profile?
There are a number of ways you can build a link profile that looks natural. We are happy to explain them.
Don’t just point big websites to yours
Generate backlinks not only on big websites but also on medium and smaller websites. If you only have backlinks on large websites, you can quickly fall victim to Google.
Let your link profile consist of both follow and nofollow links
There are two types of backlinks: follow links and nofollow links. Follow links are references that count towards Google’s ranking in search engine results. Nofollow links are references that do not count for this. A website owner decides for himself whether he wants a link to follow or nofollow. A nofollow link initially seems to have no added value, but it certainly does. Thanks to a mix of follow and nofollow links, your link profile looks a lot more natural.
Vary anchor texts
An anchor text is the piece of text behind which the hyperlink to your website is placed. When all anchor texts are the same, this comes across as incredibly unbelievable on Google. For Google, it is a sign that you could purposefully do link building. It is important to use various anchor texts to prevent you from falling through the basket at Google.
In various tools, such as Majestic, you can look up which anchor texts websites use to refer to yours. When you notice that a certain anchor text is used often, you can send a few of those websites a different anchor text suggestion. You can come up with different anchor texts by, for example, changing the order of words in the text. But you can also use synonyms, one time take the website URL as anchor text and another time just the company name and so on.
How can you check new backlinks?
When backlinks are added to your link profile, these are also called new backlinks. You can check whether your website has new backlinks with our free backlinks checker.
It is important to check for new backlinks regularly. This allows you to keep an eye on whether any bad neighborhood websites refer to yours and whether the websites that contain the new backlinks are relevant enough for your website.
