What are backlinks and what are the advantages of backlinks?

• 21/12/2018
• admin
• 1

The word “backlink” is one of the most used words in the marketing world. Many people who have not long started their own website, struggle to understand what is meant by the term “backlink”. This post is designed to give basic knowledge of backlinks and what the main advantages of them are.

What are backlinks?

In short, backlinks are incoming links to a webpage.

When a website links to any other page, it is called a backlink. Previously, backlinks were one of the largest metrics for the ranking position of any given website. Pages with lots of backlinks tended to rank highest on all of the major search engines, including Google. This is still true today, however, there are some new guidelines to follow.

Before we take a look at the advantages of backlinks, I am going to cover some of the history concerning backlinks over the last few years.

There was a time when low-quality links would help to rank a site highly, but Google quickly realised what was going on a released the Penguin Algorithm update in 2011. This changed the whole landscape of link building.

It is important to have backlinks from high quality sites, and that those backlinks should also be contextual. A great example to use is if you have a site about soft drinks, and you are creating links from sites of other niches about clothing, these links will not benefit your site. Your main goal should be to get links from relevant sites that are of high quality.

Now, we will take a look why it is important for you to be creating backlinks.

1)      Faster indexing

Backlinks to your site help search engine crawlers to find your site easier. This allows for them to crawl your site as soon as they find a link. For new websites, this is very important as the quicker that you site is crawled, the quicker it will appear in organic search results.

2)      Referral traffic

Referral traffic is a great addition to the traffic that you are already getting. This is a great way in which you are able to find new customers and get the most out of the backlinks that you receive. Referral traffic is usually more targeted and has a lower bounce rate, which is a huge benefit for any business.

3)      Improves organic ranking

Ultimately, this is the one thing that springs to mind when talking about backlinks. However, it is 1 of the 3 main reasons for acquiring backlinks. Any content that is getting organic links from other sites, that content will naturally rank higher in all search engines. Your goal here should be to create backlinks to individual posts/pages along with those leading to your homepage.

All of the above points are great reasons why you should be continuously gathering backlinks for your site. With more and more people looking for backlinks they are becoming harder and harder to get. However, if you reach out to the relevant people you are bound to find links that are relevant to you.