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What are backlinks in SEO? And how to get more backlinks? [2021 Guide]

A “Backlink” is the most important part of SEO strategy. Backlinks can determine your website’s authority and can also get you additional relevant traffic to your website.

In this blog post, you will learn what is a backlink? Why is it important? And how do you get backlinks? I will also share how can you get backlinks similar to your competitors.

Let’s dive right into it.

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are nothing but an anchor that links other websites to your website. In general terms, link from one website to another website. Search engines such as Google or Bing contemplate backlinks to determine your website’s authority and use it as one of the search engine ranking factors. The more backlinks you have from unique and authoritative domains, the more search engines will send organic traffic towards your website.

Why are backlinks important?

Backlinks show authority. If website A is giving a link to website B, Website B has some really good and valuable content that Website A’s users want to read. It builds authority for Website B.

We have already understood that the more backlinks you have, the higher the organic traffic.

Backlinks are one of the initial parameters of search engines that are used to decide the ranking of websites. Today, SEO comes too fat but still, backlinks are one of the major factors in SEO.

Additionally, if you have more backlinks, you can also get more referral traffic from the linked website. And is also beneficial in generating more targeted traffic that will convert faster.

How can you get backlinks to your website?

There are a few best practices in the industry that you can follow to get backlinks.

Before I talk about how to get backlinks, I would like to share what type of backlinks are important.

First things first, you must focus on high-quality backlinks and don’t ever buy backlinks from others. Google is very smart and if you opt for shady blackhat SEO, you will not see the results.

Here are the different types of backlinks you should get.

  • From trusted and authoritative websites.
  • From websites that are from similar industries or share similar website topics.
  • Do follow links. No-Follow links are also fine but Do-follow links offer more authority.
  • Links from unique domains.
  • Links with a keyword as anchor text

These are the preferred way of getting backlinks.

Most importantly, you must not get backlinks from spam domains. You must disavow those links from Google Search Console if any discredited domain is trying to link with your website.

Let’s have a look at how can you get such backlinks.

Write a great article

Understand this, valuable content on your website will automatically attract quality backlinks. Writing and publishing what your ideal audience would like to read will help you create a great article that your audience will like to read. Try solving your user’s problems to create a great piece of content that adds value to their life.

Don’t complicate things, create a simple and easy to read the article. And uniquely present your topic.

Additionally, write articles that instigate your subject authority as you must build authority for your website to get backlinks from a great article.

Get links via Guest blogging

Guest blogging is one of the most effective strategies for building backlinks.

Find authoritative websites in your niche. Make a list of such sites and prioritize where you want to publish your blog as a guest. Approach them for an opportunity for guest blogging.

Let’s see how can you do it step by step.

You can find out such websites by searching on Google:

  • [Website Topic] + “Write for us”
  • [Website Topic] + “Guest post”
  • [Website Topic] + “inurl:guestpost”

Once you finalize on the website, submit your article to them. All websites have their own set of rules and instructions, follow the ones given to you for submitting your blog. You can also use tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs to find your competitor’s guest blogs approach them as well. With these websites, the chances of getting approval are higher for you. 

Get links from Roundup Posts

Roundup posts are an easy way to get backlinks as well. However, they don’t guarantee backlinks but you will have higher chances of getting backlinks.

First, find out roundup posts or link roundups.

In Google, Search for “Your Keyword” + “Roundup post” or “Your Keyword” + “Link Roundup”

Once you find out resources in your niche, you can approach them to add your article in their posts. If your article is valuable and with good content, you will surely get the backlink.

Broken Link Building

Imagine searching for something significant, only to land on a page with a large 404 error page not found displayed to disappoint you. The Internet has come a long way since it’s beginning and it continues to evolve every day.

With that, a lot of content when updated or when businesses change or shut down or various other reasons results in web pages that are moved or deleted. The anchor links that are linked to these pages which are no longer there.Everybody hates these broken links including webmasters and they desperately want to get rid of these broken links too. But the process of removing broken links is time-consuming and webmasters are not very free people. 

You can use these broken links to gain backlinks for you. What you have to do is

  • Find a broken link
  • Recreate the former content
  • Convince the people linking to that dead content to link to your recreated content instead.

One thing to focus on in this strategy is to find the dead content that is most relevant to your business. You can do this using tools like Ahref that can analyze backlinks. Search for your competitor’s website and filter the result for “HTTP 404 not found”. 

Once you find a dead page with a high number of do-follow backlinks, you have found what you were looking for. Contact all the people who are linking to this dead page to redirect that backlink to your page instead.

Create resources that people will links

As I established earlier great content will automatically get you quality backlinks. This is especially true if your visitors can get actual data from your blog and they can quote you on it. Content articles like infographics, research-based blogs, academic studies, white papers, etc get the most amount of backlinks considering the amount of useful data that their readers can use.

While creating these data-backed content, once again you have to see what your audience is actually searching for. Follow the current trends and understand what your readers need and how can your data rich content can help them. With that in mind, represent the data in an interesting way that will engage the users.  

Once your infographic or research paper is ready, you can promote is by distributing it on numerous directories who can link your content to your website. 

Submit reviews or testimonial

Another easy way to get quality backlink is writing reviews for popular products and famous companies. When you publish reviews for these companies and products of your industry it can also build your image as subject expert. Additionally, chances are that these organizations might even give you a backlink on your testimonial for reviewing them. 

Submit to web directories in your industry

Even though submitting your blog to web directories is a super easy way to source backlinks, this method is losing its popularity these days. This is because of the lack of quality directories and sudden surge of free spam directories. While opting for this strategy to source backlinks avoid web directories that work on a quid pro quo method that means they ask you to give them a backlink in return of a backlink from them. 

Additionally, don’t use any automated website submission tools as they result in your blog to in the list with other spam content, which is not where you don’t want your blog to be. 

Use Link Building Tools

There are several backlinks tools available for you to optimize and automating the process of finding and sourcing backlinks. You can use tools like Ahref, SEMrush, and cognitiveSEO. These tools are brimming with features that help you reduce the time and effort taken to source backlinks.

The automated tools offer you a simplified way for you to view your backlinks along with real-time data, past information, latest growth trends and more. Additionally, they also offer features like the alert system that creates a trigger and send you a notification about your website as well as your competitors. 

It’s pretty obvious that getting backlinks to your website is not a one-time quick solution. Each link building strategy is a long drawn out and never-ending process and you need to keep at it if you want any results. Having said that, it’s not rocket science either, follow this guide one strategy at a time and sooner or later you will surely get results. 

Let me know in the comments what did you think of this backlink building guide? And what tactic will you start for building your backlinks?



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