One of the most important search ranking elements is website and page authority, which is determined by the amount and quality of backlinks. It’s also one of the areas of search engine optimization where you may outperform your competition. There’s also technical and on-page SEO, keyword research, web development, and content optimization, but you can only enhance so much in these areas. In the eyes of search engines, backlinks are a bit like votes for your site. The more links you have, the higher your site is likely to rank in search engines.
What are backlinks?
A backlink in SEO is a link from one website to another. They’re also called inbound links, one-way links, or incoming links. If someone links their web page to your website, that means you have a backlink from them. And if you link other pages to your website, then they have a backlink from you.
Major search engines consider backlinks as ‘votes’ for a specific page. The higher the number of backlinks you have, the higher you’d rank in the search engines organically. In a way, backlinks tell search engines a page/website is relevant, helpful, and credible. There are several types of backlinks, a few of them are:
- Guest blogging links
- Press release links
- Editorial links
- Comment links
- Free tool links
How to improve your backlink quality
Not all backlinks are created equal, though. The best backlinks are ones from big, respected websites. Backlinks from spammy or suspicious websites can be actively harmful to your site. So, how can you ensure you are only adding valuable backlinks to your site?
1. High quality backlinks
Search engine algorithm has changed over time. Nevertheless, backlinks have remained a key factor in ranking high/relevant on search engine results pages (SERPs). Take note, however, that you’d benefit more if you have high-quality links. Just having one strong backlink is much better than having a thousand low-quality links. Think about it this way: people would rather read a website linking World Health Organization than a website linking to a random guy’s website.
Basically, the more authority a website has, the more impact it can provide your website. This concept is called “domain authority”. So, when adding outbound links, it’s always best to use authority domains. When investing in search engine optimization (SEO), you’d want to do a good amount of link building.
2. Keywords and anchor texts
Anchor texts refer to the clickable words used to create website backlinks. Typically, anchor texts provide link context. There are several types of anchor text links, including:
- Exact match: The anchor text use the exact words, keywords, or phrase for which you want to rank.
- Phrase match: The anchor text contains the keyword for which you want to rank.
- Branded: The anchor text is the brand’s name.
- Naked: The anchor text is the raw URL.
In general, it’s always a best practice to add links by keyword. Hence, keyword research may also play a part in doing this.
3. Do-follow links vs No-follow links
You may have encountered the words dofollow and nofollow before. What are they exactly? When a link is a dofollow, it passes the authority of website A to website B. This concept is called “link juice”. Adding do-follow links to your website will help improve its domain rating. New links added to your site are dofollow in default.
No-follow links, on the other hand, do not pass the authority to the website it is linking to. That said, they do not help in ranking in terms of SEO. You can use no-follow links if you do not want to endorse the linked site or when you do not want to pass its authority. To turn a link into a nofollow, simply add the tag rel=”no follow” to the code when linking to a webpage.
4. Traffic
You’d want your webpage to be linked to high-traffic websites as they typically send more referral traffic than low-traffic sites. The best way to do this is to go with authority sites. Some would say that guest posting is dead, but it’s still one of the most effective ways to build new backlinks. Remember, low-quality backlinks usually come from websites with low traffic and low levels of engagement.
If you don’t know already, guest posting (a.k.a guest blogging) is the practice of offering to write a one-off post (blog post, guest posts, etc.) for another website. Other link building efforts include:
- Repurposing content
- Infographics
- Blog comment links
- Broken link building campaign
You’d also want a link from a domain that has not linked you before. Simply put, it’s way better to get 50 links from 50 different websites than 1000 links from the same domain.
What is a backlink checker tool?
A backlink checker tool is a program designed to provide you with a backlink report. This report can help you when building backlinks. You can also use them to analyze your competitor’s website so you can make modifications to your site and improve its ranking. This tool can perform multiple things, including:
- Monitor backlinks, internal links, and external backlinks.
- Determine the total number of backlinks.
- Build link profile.
- Identify active links and spammy links.
- Provide SEO metric.
You can leverage from these metrics when you’re creating link campaigns. A backlink checker can help propel your website’s SEO to the next level. Growing your business online is more than just having a great-looking website and high-sounding marketing. You must also understand the factors that influence your site’s search ranking, and this includes backlinks. Here is a guide to creating free backlinks.
How to check backlinks
Gladly, you do not have to crawl your site manually just to check, count, or monitor your website links. There are several ways to check backlinks and perform backlink analysis to your website. From paid SEO tools to free backlink checkers, they can help you determine your site’s metrics, as well as your competitor’s backlink profiles. With a backlink report, you get a detailed backlink analysis, which can help you assess your site-wide links. Some link analyzers also include features to export backlink.
What are the best backlink checkers?
While there is no one answer to this question, there are a number of excellent backlink checker tools out there that deliver fast and accurate backlink reports. Here are some of the best backlink checker tools for both beginners and experts. Take note, that each of these tools uses its own crawlers, so the backlink reports may vary.
Backlink checkers for webmasters
There are backlink analyzers designed for webmasters to check and optimize their websites. These tools are a great way to scour your website and look for toxic links and unverified links. It will also help you utilize strong links better and ensure the quality of backlinks you have are always topnotch.
1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a web service that allows webmasters to check, monitor, and improve their website’s performance. Anyone can use the Search Console tool, including business owners, SEO specialists, marketers, site administrators, and web developers. Setting up your website with Google Search Console is fast and easy. This web service offers tools and reports for the following actions:
- Show you which web pages link to your website.
- Provide backlink overview.
- Receive alerts when Google encounters spam, indexing, or other issues with your website.
- Fix indexing problems and request re-indexing when there are new and added content.
- View Google Search traffic data (i.e., how often your site appears in Google Search, which search queries show your website, how often searchers click through for those queries, and more).
2. Bing Webmaster
Bing Webmaster is another tool to check out. With this web service, you can get a comprehensive report of your site’s performance data. Such insightful reports can help you make modifications and optimizations to improve your page rankings on Bing search results. The interactive, user-friendly dashboard, a wide range of free SEO tools, reporting tools, diagnostic tools, keyword research, and site scan are within your reach so you can rank higher and reach more potential customers.
Conclusion
Backlinks are critical factors in ranking high on SERPs. When improving your site’s SEO, always remember how adding external backlinks can go a long way. Plus, always look for link building opportunities to grow your site’s ‘votes’. Guest posting, shareable content like infographics, and broken link building are great ways to grow your backlinking profile. By using backlink checker (link analysis) tools, you can perform backlink audit and perform in-depth backlink analysis strategy. You can add stronger backlink to your site and get rid of unverified links that may hurt your site’s performance.
