What are Backlinks and why are they important for SEO?

By Charbel Aoun
what are backlinks

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Let’s check out today the Backlinks!
When you are talking about search engine optimization (SEO), it is important to look at
all the factors that establish a successful strategy (contents, Keywords, Meta tags, and
backlinks). While they may sound straightforward, backlinks are essential to SEO.

What are the Backlinks?


Backlinks also known as inbound or one-way links are simply links that point to your
website from another website. The best part of backlinks is that they help promote
your blog or site just by being hyperlinked to you from another source. When it
comes to backlinks, quality matters. The total number of backlinks can often include
several links from the same referring domain or multiple referring domains. It’s
common for referring domains to link back to your content if it is relevant, authoritative,

or useful in some way to their own domain. In an ideal world, that’s how backlinks are
accumulated; unique content that other websites want to be associated with.


Backlinks and SEO

Backlinks affect your SEO and your SERP (search engine results page) ranking.
Search engines use algorithms to gather information and rank pages, and they use
bots and spiders to crawl your site for content and backlinks. Search engines
aggregate the volume and relevance of all of the pages linking to your site which
impacts your page rank. So the better the backlinks, the better your SERP.


Backlink Highs and Lows


When someone is searching Google, for example, the search engine
uses its rankings to deliver the best possible results. When it comes to backlinks,

you want links from high-ranking pages as opposed to low-ranking sites. Think of
it as a reference: you want a reference from a respected source, not a
questionable character since it affects how you are perceived


Getting the Right Links


Since there are several types of backlinks and various ways to get them, it is
important to have a plan in place. Acquiring backlinks doesn’t need any technical
skills, it is more about networking and relationship building.
The best way to get organic backlinks is through quality content since another site
will only ever link to you if you give them a compelling reason to.

Here are some ways you can improve your chances:


 Write articles, press releases, case studies, blog posts, images, and other
shareable content.
 Stay active on social media and always link back to relevant content on your
site.
 Make it easy for people to share what you create with social share tools and
links.


In addition, considering the importance of backlinks, companies are often want to cut corners in
their SEO campaigns to acquire links. Some link building techniques are legitimate,
others violate Google’s rules and can lead to a website being delisted from Google (a
marketing death sentence), and many link building techniques are in a grey area,
pushing the limits of what is acceptable and unacceptable.


On one hand, if links are acquired by marketing high-quality content, then it’s
OK. There’s nothing wrong with, creating an infographic on your website and
having an SEO company let others know about it in hope of getting them to link
to it. 

On the other hand, if the SEO Company promises a reciprocal link in exchange
for linking to the infographic, or offers money or free goods in exchange for a
link, then you are engaging in a link building “scheme” that clearly violates
Google policy.

Speed building of Backlinks

Furthermore, the issue of speed in building SEO backlinks is worth elaboration. You might
think that an enterprising SEO campaign would try to get quickly as many links
as possible. From a mathematical standpoint, this makes sense, but Google
interprets rapid growth in link building as a sign of a scheme; an effort that is
based not on marketing high-quality content.


Also, Google is very suspicious of link-building schemes for good reason. If it allows
companies to manipulate its algorithm to acquire high rankings for inferior
content, then its search engine users will be unhappy with the results of their
searches and start using other search engines.

To conclude, although the definition of what does a backlink means will not change, the best
practices for building SEO backlinks will continue to change. It’s extremely
important to use SEO techniques for link building that conform to current
standards at all times.