The exponential growth that we see around is mainly due to advancements in technology and the Internet. Today, every business needs to have a website to reach customers and increase their bottom line. But it is seldom easy. According to a 2016 report, there are around 1.7 billion websites and counting. Having a website is not enough; your website needs to appear at the top of the search results page to attract prospective customers.
SEO experts apply different tactics to improve search engine rankings, including quality content, paid search, and backlinking. This article discusses various aspects of backlinking and how it can help your website.
What Is Backlinking?
A backlink means a link to another website. Google and other search engines give importance to backlinks. When your website links to another website, it provides more information to the user about the subject. If you want to improve your websites, your website needs to have a robust backlinking profile.
Many SEO experts that follow black SEO methods coerce webmasters to buy backlinks to build a robust backlinking profile. If you follow black SEO methods, your website will be penalized, resulting in your website blocked by Google.
Types of Backlinks
There are two types of backlinks – follow and nofollow. For average Internet users, both links look the same. However, search engine bots see these links differently. You need to understand the difference between these backlinks to use them effectively.
Follow Links – these links are natural, and search engine bots check the PageRank of these links when indexing your website. These links have a direct effect on your website ranking.
No follow Links– the No Follow links have a small code that tells search engine bots not to follow these links. It would help if you used No Follow links for sponsored content, widgets, and press releases.
Quality of backlinks matter
SEO experts following black hat SEO tactics focus on the number of backlinks instead of quality. Google webmaster guidelines restrict selling and buying backlinks. However, you will still find some websites offering backlinking for money to earn quick bucks. SEO experts buy backlinks from such websites that do not provide any quality information to the user.
Google and other search engines are always updating their algorithms to find websites that follow bad backlinking policies. Sooner or later, all websites following black hat SEO techniques will lose their search engine rankings. The worst may also happen like search engines will remove their websites from the index. Hence, it would help if you always focused on acquiring quality backlinks for your website.
Right Ways to Build Natural Backlink Profiles
Monitor Backlinks
Monitoring backlinks is the first step to building a natural backlink profile. The primary reason to monitor backlinks is to find which marketing strategies are working and which aren’t. It also allows you to give better results to your visitors/customers.
When you monitor backlinks, you can determine whether the link adds value to the customer. It will allow you to repeat these strategies to build a robust backlinking profile. Several tools enable you to monitor backlinks. Just make sure you use the right tool to monitor the backlinking profile of your website.
Monitor Your Competitor’s Backlinks
To help your website achieve a top rank in your business niche, you need to closely monitor your competitor’s backlink profile. It will help you uncover a few secrets of their online success. Monitoring competitor’s backlinking will help you know how your business rivals are getting their backlinks.
Based on the research, your SEO agency can develop a new backlinking strategy to improve website rankings. Backlink monitoring can also reduce trial and errors in your backlinking and improve conversions and ROI.
Remove Old URLs
If your backlink profile includes spammy links or any unnatural links, remove them before the search engine finds them and penalizes your website. You should also remove any paid links that you might have bought earlier. Such links violate Google’s backlinking guidelines and hurt your website ranking.
Domain Authority Monitoring
Domain authority monitoring refers to checking your website’s search engine score. It helps you find out how well your website will rank in search engine result pages. Websites with a domain authority score above 100 have higher chances of appearing at the top of the search results page.
There are several tools available for domain authority monitoring. Some of the elements used to calculate domain authority include link root domains and the number of links to your website.
To sum up, backlinks always have and will continue to play a crucial role in websites’ ranking. There is no reason why you should ignore such a powerful SEO element in your search engine marketing strategy.
