The internet is basically a massive popularity contest, run and judged by search engines. Search engines like Google and Bing use trust and expertise as guidelines for how they rank webpages, and one of the most important criteria for determining trust and expertise is the backlink.
Simply put, a backlink is a link that points from one website to another. For instance, if we were to reference the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data on the fastest growing industries in the U.S., that link we just used is a backlink. A backlink is basically an endorsement or a vote of confidence. When a trusted website links to yours (or vice versa), it’s telling visitors (and Google) that the content is worth checking out.
The importance of backlinks goes all the way back to the dawn of Google. One of the earliest algorithms, PageRank, treated every link as a vote, so websites with more votes from high-quality sources were deemed more important and, therefore, ranked higher in search results. Google’s algorithm is much more complex today, but backlinks are still a crucial component in any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. So, if you want to build a comprehensive marketing strategy, you’ll need to understand backlinks.
The Anatomy and Terminology of a Link
To understand how Google sees a backlink, you need to know what makes up the link itself. A link is composed of three key parts:
Referring domain: The website that places the link. The link from the referring domain passes authority to your site. A link from a major news organization or a well-known industry leader is worth more than one from a brand-new or unknown blog.
Anchor text: Anchor text is the visible, clickable word or phrase of the hyperlink. It gives search engines context to tell what the destination page is about. Using natural, descriptive anchor text is key.
Link destination: The specific page on your website that the backlink points to. Many links may go to homepages, but it’s more powerful when links point to deep, specific pages on your site, such as a how-to guide or a product page.
These three components work together to make the foundation of any backlinking strategy.
Why Backlinks Are the Foundation of SEO
Search engines’ primary goal is to show the most reliable, trustworthy, and authoritative answers to a user’s search query. Backlinks help Google measure three things:
Authority and trust signal: If 50 different, highly respected websites link to your article on “The History of Jazz Music,” a search engine assumes your article must be a comprehensive and authoritative source on that topic. This trust signals boost your entire site’s authority, helping all your other pages rank better, too.
Relevance and context: If you’re writing about music, a link from another music website to your history page is more valuable than a link from a car repair website. Why? Because the music site is relevant to your topic.
Discovery for search engine bots: Search engines use automated programs called “crawlers” or “bots” to explore the web and find new content. Backlinks act as roads or pathways for these bots. When an established website links to your brand-new article, it helps search engines discover and index that article much faster than if the bot had to find it on its own.
Backlinks are the best way to tell search engines about your content and build authority around that content so that the algorithm understands what your content is all about.
Quality vs. Quantity in Backlinks
In the early days of SEO, people just tried to get as many links as possible. Today, quality is much more important than quantity.
A good link is one from a highly relevant, authoritative website that’s placed naturally within the main text of an article. A bad link is from low-quality directories, private blog networks (PBNs), or unrelated, non-indexed foreign sites.
Too many low-quality links can trigger a negative ranking impact or a manual penalty from search engines. Link building is about earning traffic, not buying or manipulating users to land on your pages. Search engines are very good at spotting manipulation, so if you’re getting too many spammy links quickly, you might see your entire site’s rankings tank until the spam links are removed.
Types of Links
Not all links are created equal. Some pass on authority, and others are just traffic signals. A “DoFollow” link is the standard, default type of hyperlink. These are the “votes” that pass link juice (ranking authority) to your website. When you’re doing link building, you want to earn these DoFollow endorsements.
A link with the “nofollow” attribute tells Google “I’m linking here, but please do not pass any authority to this website.” These are generally used for links placed in comment sections, or links in sponsored posts or ads. Even though they don’t pass authority, they’re still useful for generating traffic and looking natural to Google.
In recent years, Google has introduced two newer attributes for even clearer link categorization:
rel=”sponsored”: Used for links created as part of an advertisement or paid placement.
rel=”ugc”: Stands for “user-generated content,” typically used for links placed in forum posts or blog comments.
Each of these link types can help you create a more tailored backlinking strategy for your business.
Simple Strategies for Acquiring Quality Backlinks
High-quality link building is all about creating value that others naturally want to reference. Some strategies for acquiring quality backlinks include:
Create link-worthy content: Nobody wants to share bad content, so work on creating link-worthy pages, such as original research, comprehensive guides on topics, or unique statistics or infographics that are easy for others to share and reference.
Broken link building: This strategy involves finding old websites in your industry that have broken links, and then creating a new, better piece of content on your site that covers the same topic that you can offer to the website owner to replace the broken link.
Guest posting: This involves writing a helpful, original, and high-quality article for another reputable website in your industry. In return for your content, you are usually allowed to include a DoFollow link back to your own website in your author bio or within the body of the article.
Each of these strategies are easy ways to build authority for your website and grow your brand’s recognition.
FAQs
“Link Juice” is a casual SEO term for the authority, trust, or ranking power that a DoFollow backlink passes from the referring website to the destination website. The more “link juice” a backlink carries, the more positive its impact on your search rankings will be.
While you can do it, buying links violates Google’s core Webmaster Guidelines. The risk is significant, and it can lead to severe penalties. Always focus on earning links organically through great content or strategies like broken link building and guest posting.
It’s hard to say. Search engines first need to crawl the referring page, recognize the link, and then assess its quality. A high-quality, reputable link may take anywhere from four weeks to four months to have a positive effect on your rankings.
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