SEO – Backlinks
A backlink is a link from another website to your website. Search engines see a link like a vote or a recommendation. When many trusted websites link to you, your site looks more important and trusted, and it can rank better. Backlinks are the main part of off-page SEO.
Quality is more important than quantity
One link from a respected website of your topic is worth more than hundreds of links from low quality sites. A good backlink has these things:
- It comes from a relevant website (same topic or industry).
- The website is trusted, and real people visit it.
- The link is in the main content, where people can click it, not hidden in a footer full of links.
- The link is natural and the anchor text is natural.
Dofollow and nofollow
A normal link can pass ranking signals. Links with rel="nofollow", sponsored or ugc are signals to search engines that the link is not an editorial recommendation. They can still bring visitors and a more natural link profile. See Anchor Tag and Links.
Safe ways to get backlinks
- Create content people want to link to: original research, free tools, complete guides, useful templates, clear pictures and charts.
- Write guest posts on good websites of your topic, for real readers, not just for a link.
- Digital PR: share news, data or stories with journalists and bloggers.
- Fix broken link opportunities: find a broken link on another site and suggest your page as the replacement, if it is really a good match.
- Unlinked mentions: if a site mentions your brand without a link, politely ask to add a link.
- Business listings and citations: real directories, partners, suppliers and local organisations. See Local SEO.
- Be useful in communities (forums, Q and A sites, social media) and share your content when it really answers a question. Many of those links are nofollow, but they bring real traffic.
Methods to avoid
- Buying links or exchanging links in a big scale. Google’s spam policies call them link spam.
- Link farms, private blog networks (PBN), and automatic comment or forum spam.
- Using the exact keyword as the anchor text everywhere.
- Hidden links and paid directory submissions with no real value.
Such methods may give a short result, and then a ranking drop or a manual action. See Black Hat SEO.
How to check your backlinks
- The Links report in Google Search Console is free and shows top linking sites and anchor texts.
- Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz have bigger backlink databases (most are paid).
What about the disavow tool?
It lets you ask Google to ignore some links. Google says that most sites never need it, because it can ignore spammy links by itself. Use it only if you have a manual action or a big problem of paid or spam links that you cannot remove.
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