A backlink is considered as one of the most used words in the world of SEO. Bloggers who have recently started a blog or a website often struggle in order to understand what the term backlink means. Backlinks are also called incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links to the other page, it’s called a backlink. Backlinks were known as one of the significant metrics for the ranking of a webpage. A page with highquality backlinks tended to rank higher on all major search engines, and it is still valid to a large extent.
Before moving towards some of the best benefits of backlinks, there is a great need to know that much has changed concerning backlinks from the past couple of years. There was also a time when low-quality links helped rank a site. However, ever since Google rolled out its Penguin algorithm, bear in mind that the backlinking landscape has changed.
It is essential now to have backlinks from quality sites as well as those backlinks should be contextual. Just take an example, if you have a site about monkeys and create links from other niche sites about dogs, these links will be of no use. The goal should be to get links from authoritative as well as relevant sites.
Now let’s have a look at why you need to create backlinks to your sits:
It is essential to keep in mind that the search engine bots discover new webpages by following backlinks from existing webpages. When they have discovered you, they will crawl your site effectively. In this way, it will be more challenging for search engine bots in order to find the site if you do not have any backlinks. For a new website, it is crucial now to get backlinks. They play a significant role in the faster discovery and indexing of your site.
It is fascinating to know that backlinks help in getting better search engine rankings. If you enter the search term for SERP analysis, you will see that most high-ranking pages have tons of backlinks.
However, if your content is getting links from other websites, the content will naturally start to rank higher in the search results. Otherwise, there is a need to get proactive and build them. Along with this, the goal should be to create links to individual posts/pages with leading to your homepage.
One of the most significant benefits of backlinks is, they help get referral traffic. A person who reads a post may click on links in the post to find out more about the topic at hand. Keep in mind that referral traffic is targeted and has a low bounce rate.
One primary fact that you need to keep in your mind regarding backlink SEO is, it is not the number of backlinks the matters, but the quality of backlinks. If you are using some paid services to get links to your site, you will be penalized by Google Penguin’s algorithm.
Ways to get quality backlinks for your blog
Guest blogging is considered as an effective strategy where you write a post for other people’s blogs rather than of your own. In a nutshell, the exchange for a free article, the blog owner, usually allows 1-2 links back to your website within the post.
However, a big challenge that comes with guest blogging is to find a site to guest blog for. In order to increase the chances of being accepted, you have to look for sites that are accepting guest posts.
Another route that you can take is to look for guest blogging opportunities because if a website has written about your topic before, they have an interest in it. In this way, they may be willing in order to accept a guest post about that topic. However, an effective way for finding good topics to pitch is, note common themes or topics that are already popular on the blog.