- What are backlinks in SEO?
- Why are backlinks important for SEO?
- Are there different types of backlinks?
- How do you find out what backlinks you already have?
- How do you get backlinks?
- Conclusion
What are backlinks in SEO?
Sometimes referred to as ‘incoming’ or ‘inbound’ links, backlinks are simply hyperlinks to your website from other websites.
Backlinks are an essential for navigating the internet. From an SEO perspective, search engines use backlinks to build a picture of your website’s authoritativeness.
You can think of backlinks as recommendations or endorsements. Essentially, backlinks are signals telling users and the search engines to consider your website and the content on your website as trustworthy.
Why are backlinks important for SEO?
Backlinks are an important SEO ranking factor. As mentioned above, search engines consider backlinks as a vote of confidence in your website or a particular page of your website. Search engines don’t just consider the number of backlinks a webpage has received, they also consider the quality or authoritativeness of the websites that are giving the backlink.
Backlinks help search engines meet their goal of providing useful results that satisfy user intent. Backlinks are one of a number of data points that allow the search engines to infer the existing level of interest in a webpage, as well as the reliability and overall quality of that page’s content.
Just as a large number of social media followers is indicative of popularity, a good backlink profile (the number of backlinks & authoritativeness of the websites giving the backlinks) is indicative of the usefulness of a webpage.
Earning quality backlinks therefore has a positive impact on the ranking of your web pages in the search engine results pages.
Are there different types of backlinks?
Yes. Backlinks differ in the form they take (on-page SEO) and based on their link attributes (technical SEO).
Don’t rush off trying to get any and all kinds of backlinks though – like other aspects of SEO, not all backlinks are valued equally. There are still a few more things to understand about backlinks before you can confidently answer the key question: what are backlinks in SEO?
Types of backlinks explained
Backlinks can generally be segmented into 4 different types;
- Text – Text hyperlinks make up most of the backlinks across the internet, it’s simply a word (or words) linked to another page or site.
- Image – Images that appear around the web that are linked to another website page.
- Frame – These are hyperlinks that are embedded in HTML frames and are much less common.
- Form – Form backlinks come from hyperlinks sent via a search bar or form that users can modify by entering text.
As text backlinks offer benefits for most websites, we’ll go on to explain their different link attributes and anchor types in a bit more detail.
Link attributes explained
Currently, there are 4 link attributes (Google’s most recent update to link attributes was in 2019). Link attributes are a way of telling search engines why the link is there and are not visible to users.
Link attribute types
- Follow – Follow links are natural links from one page to another and pass on “link juice” to the linked-to site.
- NoFollow – Links tagged with “rel=”nofollow” ” are used when the page does not want to endorse the page they’re linking to. They are much less important to you than Follow links.
- Sponsored – This is one of the newer link attributes introduced by Google in 2019. The sponsored attribute is used to mark a link that has been paid for as part of an advertising or sponsorship campaign.
- UGC – “User Generated Content“ is just that – links from sites where the users can enter their own content. This type of attribute tends to be used on links within comments sections or forum posts.
“Follow” links have the most influence on your rankings but it’s wise (and more common with links gained organically) to have a variety of link attribute types.
Backlink anchor types explained
While backlink attributes aren’t visible to the user; anchor types are. Backlink anchor types relate to the link’s visible text and they can be grouped into these types;
- Money – These are links with anchor text similar to the keywords that the linked-to page is ranking for and would appear to be paid for. An example would be “Web Design York”. You need to be careful with these as they can attract Google penalties.
- Branded – Anchor text including your brand name e.g. “WebHummel”
- Organic – Link anchor text that appears to be written naturally like “this”. Another organic anchor text could also be “click”, “here” or “visit”.
- Naked – This is anchor text that displays the URL it links to, for example: https://beefound.agency/
- Compound – Compound anchor text often includes a brand name and another word. An example would be “WebHummel Digital Marketing”
- Empty – There’s nothing there! This is usually a link from an image with no accompanying anchor text.
A natural distribution of the different anchor types is best for your SEO. You’ll naturally have some that would be considered the “money” anchor type but if it’s a small number of your links you’ll be fine.
Quantity of backlinks isn’t everything
In addition to the number of backlinks it’s equally, if not more important that you consider the website that the link is from.
Domain authority
Domain authority is scored from 0-100 with more trusted or authoritative sites having a higher domain authority (‘DA’) score. Links from domains with a high domain authority score are more influential. You can check the domain authority of a site or page by using a domain authority checker.
TIP: A single link from an authoritative site (like a national newspaper) is likely to be much more valuable to you than multiple links from low-authority websites.
The importance of domain categories & localities
The final thing you need to think about is the type of website the backlink is from. It’s better to have more backlinks from a similar industry, niche or locale. For instance, the majority of our backlinks come from “business & industrial” category websites, websites in the “internet & telecom” category and local news websites.
How do I find out what backlinks I have?
You can do your own backlink audit with tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. These tools can be expensive for a small business so you may seek an SEO specialist to perform a full SEO site audit for you.
How do you gain backlinks?
If you’re a big brand, you’ll organically gain loads of backlinks. For instance, a brand like Apple will get backlinks about the launch of their newest iPhone from almost every news outlet on the planet.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the same level of brand equity that Apple has, so we’ve got to earn our backlinks in different ways!
Blogging & creating good content
You will gain backlinks organically from blogging regularly and creating useful content. As people read your content and find it helpful for their audience; they may link to it from their site. In the same way, I have placed links throughout this content that I think you’ll find handy.
Shout about it!
Creating great content that people can find is a great way of earning backlinks, but getting others to help push your messages is another great way to earn backlinks whilst generating new leads. Post on social media and reach out to industry websites, directories and local newspapers saying you’ve got content that is of interest to their readers.
Outreach
“Outreach” is a pretty broad term but when it comes to SEO it refers to reaching out to other websites to gain backlinks. We’ve previously written about outreach in detail whilst explaining how to build backlinks without paying for them.
You can find potential linking websites by simply Googling the sites you’re looking for such as industry magazines/blogs or local newspapers. You can also use competitor analysis tools to find out which sites link to your competitors.
Guest posting
Having great content on your blog can also be used to demonstrate to other web admins how knowledgeable and proficient you are. Reach out to websites in your niche offering to write content for them that includes a link back to your homepage, your blog, your service, or your product.
Sponsored links
The Term “sponsored links” includes any link you pay for. Google explicitly says that backlinks shouldn’t be bought or sold in their guidelines.
If you pay for an advertisement space on a website this is a little different but the webmaster MUST declare their link appropriately. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use a person or company to improve your backlink profile.
If you sponsor a charity or organisation and they’d like to feature you on their website as a sponsor; ask them to link to your website like this: <a href=“https://www.yourwebsite.com” rel=“sponsored”>link text</a>
Skyscraper content
By spying on your competitors, you can see who’s linking to their content. Find the powerful links and look at the content. If you think you can do it bigger and better, do it (don’t just re-write it though!). Publish the content and then go to the webmaster and say, “You’re linking to this content, but my post is much better”.
Link edits
Link edits are a “cheap” way of getting links. Sites with loads of blog posts will likely have a sentence or a couple of words somewhere relevant to a page on your website. Usually for a fee they will link that text to your site but remember what Google’s guidelines say about buying and selling links?!
TIP: Never commit to buying “x” number of links for £x. These types of backlink acquisition or backlink building services are likely to breach Google’s guidelines. If you pay for shady services, you will more than likely end up with poor quality backlinks and Google may even penalise your website. If you need help with your SEO, opt for a trusted digital marketing agency
User-generated content (UGC)
UGC is content that a user adds to a site such as a comment on a blog, a post on a forum or an entry in a business directory. The impact of commenting on posts or in forums and including a link to your site is negligible and sometimes detrimental.
Helping someone else in a forum by making relevant and useful comments can have some impact on your traffic but this type of link building is no longer a big ranking factor as it is often abused by spammers. Consistent local directory listings, on the other hand, are recognised as good for local SEO.
Link Reclamation
Link reclamation is the process of finding a mention of your brand, product or service online that is not linked to a page on your website. You can contact the website owner and ask them to include a link to your brand, or to a specific page that will help their users.
TIP: Remember what we mentioned about the “money” backlink anchor type? Having lots of backlinks with keyword-rich anchor text can be a sign of suspicious link-building activity and could lead to penalties, so be careful here.
Conclusion
This article set out to answer a common question: What Are Backlinks in SEO?
In explaining the importance of backlinks to effective SEO, we went into detail on how search engines like Google assign value to backlinks and how backlinks are differentiated based on link attributes.
The need for backlinks is understandable, but the process of getting backlinks is far from simple. Unfortunately, there’s no quick-fire way of acquiring high-quality backlinks. If you follow the techniques set out in this article, you should start to see improvements in your backlink profile and consequently, your rankings in the SERPs.
If you don’t have the time or expertise to build your own links, we can help with your Off-Page SEO & Outreach efforts.
Our SEO services are built upon years of professional experience working with brands across multiple industries. Give us a ‘buzz‘ or send a message to get started.
