For those of you who are just starting to create a blog or website, what terms are backlinks may still be less familiar. What distinguishes backlinks from other types of links? Why does the term backlink often appear in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) discussions? Why do you have to understand backlinks and apply them on your website or blog? How do you get quality backlinks? Everything will be discussed in this article, starting from what is a backlink.
WHAT IS BACKLINK?
Backlink is a link that is placed on a blog / website that leads to your blog / website page. The activity of building backlinks is also called link building. There are also terms external links and inbound links. So there are backlink givers and backlink recipients. You are a giver of backlinks when you put someone else's website or blog link on your website. Backlink recipients are websites that get links from backlink providers.
Simple enough, right? Although it looks simple, backlinks also play an important role in the success of your website or blog.
WHY IS BACKLINK IMPORTANT?
After understanding what backlinks are, it's time to learn why backlinks are important. What are the benefits that can be obtained from backlinks and why you should also use them.
Here are some reasons why backlinks are important:
- Google Finds Your Website Through Backlinks
The easiest explanation behind the question "Why are backlinks important?" This is how Google finds new pages to display in its search results. The Google search engine will always crawl to find pages that are most relevant to certain keywords.
Like when humans use maps to find new locations, Google's search engine uses backlinks to find new pages, crawl on those pages, and then put them in Google's index.
- Backlinks Are Useful for Maintaining a Reputation on Google
When people search for a keyword on Google, Google will try to provide the best search results for the searcher. Google will of course redirect searches to popular website pages. How does Google rate a popular website page or not? Yes, right. Google uses backlinks as an indicator of the popularity of a website page. The more quality backlinks pointing to your website, the better your website's reputation will be judged by Google.
- Relevant Backlinks Increase Website Credibility
Previously I explained earlier that backlinks are an important indicator in determining the popularity of a web page on Google. However, Google doesn't only value backlinks in terms of quantity. Google also evaluates backlinks on your website based on their relevance.
What is meant by relevant backlinks? Relevant backlinks are backlinks obtained from websites or blogs from relevant niches. For example, a smartphone company is said to have relevant backlinks when they get backlinks from websites or blogs whose niche is technology. That way the smartphone company can be considered credible by Google.
- Backlinks Bring Traffic to the Website
In the previous points already explained that backlinks can help websites to be more easily found by Google so that they can appear in search results. The more quality backlinks you get, the better Google's assessment of your website. Then your website pages can get a high ranking in search results.
In addition to the traffic that you get from Google search results, backlinks also bring traffic from links that are planted on the backlink provider website. Especially if the backlinker website already has a good reputation on Google and gets a lot of traffic. Traffic obtained from the backlink provider website will also lead to your website.
STRATEGIES TO GET QUALITY BACKLINKS
Quality backlinks are not easily obtained. The strategy of building quality backlinks consists in starting with creating complete, unique, and solutive content. Here is how to get quality backlinks on your website.
- Build Credibility
To be able to get quality backlinks, you must first build the credibility of your website or blog. As I have already mentioned in the Outbound Link Quality points, usually websites or blogs with quality backlinks are only willing to provide quality backlinks to websites and blogs. Therefore, you need to build credibility first.
- Write Complete and Solutive Content
How to build the credibility of your website or blog? Of course the answer is in the content. Make sure the content on your website is complete and able to answer the searcher's questions. The content you write must also be solutive. So after reading the article on your blog or website, readers can solve the problems they are experiencing. That way they don't hesitate to share your article on social media or even their website or blog.
- Create Unique Content
In addition to complete and solutive content, your content must also be unique. If possible, create content that has not been created by others. A point of view that no one else has taken before. For example, you can do a case study about your customer or business. The uniqueness of your content will attract others to embed links to your website or blog.
- Create infographics
Sometimes people are lazy to read long paragraphs. To get around this, you can use infographics. Make an infographic so people are interested in reading your article. In addition, it is easier for people to share infographics because they are more interesting and easier to understand.
- Use Backlink Tools
The four ways above are ways to get backlinks naturally. Good, unique, complete, and solutive content will attract people to put your website or blog link on their website.
- Use Content Sharing Platform
Most people share their latest articles or content on social media. It is indeed mandatory. However, besides sharing content on social media, you also need to share your content content sharing platform.
Content sharing platforms such as Medium, Kompasiana, Hipwee, VIVA Blog, Kaskus, Reddit, and SlideShare can be used to place your website or blog link. You can write a new article that is still related to the topic you are discussing and then place the article link you want. That way you get a backlink from the content sharing platform. Even though the link is nofollow, this method is still feasible to be used to promote blog or website content.
- Perform Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is when you write articles that are not to be published on your own blog, but are published on other people's blogs or websites. In the article you put a link to your blog or website. However, you need to choose a blog or website with high traffic so that guest blogging can feel the benefits.
CRITERIA AND EXAMPLES OF QUALITY BACKLINKS
You can't be careless in looking for backlinks. Google does not judge backlinks by quantity alone, but also considers quality. Remember, quality backlinks will only hurt you. So you have to carefully select backlinks in order to get quality backlinks. What are the quality backlink criteria? Here are six quality backlink criteria:
- Relevance
As explained earlier, you must get relevant backlinks in order to get positive effects from backlinks. How to determine the website that is relevant to your website?
Make a priority website potential for backlinks to be planted. You can group them into groups of potential websites. From very relevant, quite relevant, to not relevant.
- Have Authority (Authority)
Relevance alone is not enough. You also have to make sure the website that you are going to plant backlinks really has credibility and influence. How do you ensure the credibility of a website? You can check the credibility of the website using software such as Ahrefs. Credibility at Ahrefs is measured using a scale of 1 to 100 called the Domain Rating (DR). Domain Rating measures how many quality backlinks a website gets. The higher the DR value, the more potential for backlinks.
- Traffic
Besides Domain Rating (DR), you also need to consider the amount of traffic generated by a website before making it a backlink. To measure how much traffic a website produces per month you can also use Ahrefs. Make sure the website that will be planted with backlinks actually gets traffic.
- Editorial Standards
Also pay attention to the website content editorial standards that will be planted with backlinks. Usually those that produce quality backlinks are websites with strict editorial standards such as news portals or credible bloggers.
- Outbound Link Quality
Websites with good quality backlinks will usually only provide quality backlinks to websites. Therefore, pay attention to outbound links from prospective websites that will be planted with backlinks. Is their outbound link track record good? Do they provide quality outbound links to websites?
- Google indexed
Last and most important is Google indexed. The website that you will be planting backlinks must be indexed by Google. If a website is not indexed by Google, it should be abandoned. Because planting backlinks on websites that are not indexed by Google is useless.
How to check whether a website has been indexed by Google or not easy enough. Open Google. Then type "site: examplewebsite.com". If after that nothing appears, leave the website
Finally, can you plant backlinks on websites that are not relevant to your business? The answer is yes and no. Yes, you can plant backlinks on websites that are not relevant to the requirements of the website has super high traffic and discuss diverse content such as news portals. If the website is not relevant to the business and does not have high traffic, you should leave it.
Feel free to ask any questions, Happy Learning!?