Backlinks: What are they and how to get quality links

The Link Building It is an SEO strategy, which consists of generating links from other domains to our website, to increase the level of authority. These links are known as backlinks and they play a fundamental role in SEO positioning. In this article we will explain in detail why they are so important and how to get backlinks quality to climb positions in Google.

First steps in Link Building: Why are they important? backlinks?

At our SEO positioning guide for beginnerswe explain that the backlinks constitute one of the most important factors of the SEO Off Page (external optimizations that influence the positioning of a web page).

According to a study cited by Neilpatel, domain authority accounts for 23.87% importance to Google’s algorithm. Also, the acquisition of backlinks to specific pages (22.33%) and the anchor text of links (20.26%) are more relevant during result ranking than optimizations SEO On Page con keywords (15,04%).

For Google the backlinks they are important because they reflect the popularity of a website. The better the links, the more our authority will grow.

How do I measure the quality of a backlink?

Not all backlinks are good.

For example, some companies incur bad SEO practices and buy links, an action that is a reason for a penalty for Google.

In fact, there is Google Penguinan algorithm that detects artificial links and values ​​quality more than quantity of backlinks.

At Articalo.net we recommend developing a scalable strategy of Link Building, with 100% transparent techniques.

If you want to know the other causes of penalty that Google considers, we recommend you read our list with the 20 Confirmed Black Hat SEO Techniques in 2020.

The factors that we must take into account so that a link is well weighted by search engines are the following.

The link must be relevant

Considering that the backlinks they are votes of confidence, in the eyes of Google, we must ensure that the domain of origin is related to our area of ​​action.

For example, for us a link from other pages dedicated to digital marketing does not have the same weight as a link from a pet store. Logically, if we have a hundred links from institutions and agencies dedicated to Inbound, Google will begin to look at us as authorities on the matter.

The higher the authority of the source domain, the more link juice

In simple terms, if the page that refers us has a very high authority index, it transmits us more strength than other domains. For example, links from the media, official institutions or highly relevant sites on the Internet.

This transfer of authority is known as link juiceand also applies to internal links. But we will explain those later.

The Link Juice of a web page is divided among its outgoing links. So we will receive more strength from those domains with fewer external links.

Traffic vs Authority

If a website has a lot of traffic, but little authority: will it help us climb positions in Google?

It is indisputable that backlinks from high traffic pages will bring us more visits. But an Ahrefs experiment showed that links from unique domains and authority are more important in terms of rankings.

Both links are favorable, but in different ways.

If we want to increase our visits, we should develop a strategy of Link Building to focus on domains with high traffic.

But if our mission is to reach the first places of Google, then we concentrate efforts on obtaining backlinks domains with more authority.

The more visible the link, the more authority it transfers

Los backlinks located in important places, they are of better quality than those that are barely noticed.

For example, a link in the body of the content, highlighted with bold and another color, transfers more authority than a link hidden in the footer.

Follow vs no follow

A backlink no follow is one that does not transfer link juice, by decision of the administrator. It is activated with an html tag and serves to indicate to Google that this link does not provide authority to the receiving domain.

You are probably wondering, what are they for? Well, no follow links are very functional for those who have a network of blogs and link to each other.

Generally, it is frowned upon by Google that the same hosting has several domains and link to each other. Let us remember that the backlinks They are votes of confidence. For Google it is not correct that we vote for ourselves.

Strategically, they are also good at SEO. A backlink no follow, but coming from a domain with high traffic, can help us increase our visits.

On our website, we should also consider the nofollow tag when we need to link to sites outside our area of ​​action.

The anchor text (anchor text) is also important

The anchor text or anchor text, is the visible term or phrase in a link.

Many SEO professionals say that the words used influence the quality of the backlinks. And they are correct. A good strategy Link Building, it must contain several types of anchor text. For example:

Generics: “Click here”, “this blog”, “read more on this page” and the like.

Keyword: which includes the keyword that we want to position (being careful not to abuse).

Name: Which is used to link to a brand or a website.

How do I check the backlinks What am I receiving on my website?

There are many tools to check this information, but one of the most complete is Google Search Console.

With it we can analyze the number of external links that link to our website. You can find this information in the left side menu, where it says “Links”.

There you can check which are the most linked pages, which domains frequently link with us and which are the anchor texts they use.

strategy Link building: How do I see the backlinks of the competition?

You can’t do this from Google Search Console, you need a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, MOZ  Ubersuggest (to mention a few).

We use Ahrefs which shows us the total number of backlinks the number of unique domains, which page they link to, link juice the traffic it attracts and the anchor text.

How to get backlinks quality?

There are three ways to get backlinks without cheating.

Gain backlinks organic creating content that people actually want to share.

Crear backlinks adding our link in forums, responding to other blogs and joining business directories.

Crear backlinks through techniques such as Guest Blogging finding broken links and proposing our content in replacement and detecting mentions to our site without a link, to request the administrator to add the link.

Another idea that works very well is to identify which domains link to our competition. We review the content, improve it and send an email recommending our update on that topic, to earn a mention. This is known as the Skyscraper technique.

Summarizing…

The internal optimizations of a web page are very important to index and rank in Google. But SEO goes beyond that: it is about achieving greater visibility to gain as many clicks as possible.

This is only possible with a solid marketing strategy. Linkbuilding.

In another article we will discuss how to get backlinks of quality and what steps to follow to build a solid and scalable strategy.