Also known as one-way or inbound links, backlinks are vital components of SEO that can significantly impact your website’s ranking on Google and search engines. These links provide critical connections that allow you to move from one website to another and establish your website’s credibility and authority.
Since acquiring backlinks from renowned and authoritative websites plays a vital role in Google algorithms, they can determine whether your website rises or falls in search results. According to studies, over 60% of marketers believe building backlinks can significantly impact their search engine rankings. The more backlinks you have on your website pages, the more likely you’ll get good organic search engine rankings and traffic.
Understanding Backlinks Types
Since backlinks act as a vote of confidence for your website or brand, the more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your website can rank in the search engines. By including credible and high-quality backlinks types, Google and other search engines will perceive your website as authoritative, valuable, and credible.
While the original Google algorithm, the PageRank, focused on using backlinks, Google has since made several changes. However, backlinks are still considered a crucial search engine ranking factor. Backlinks are generally not the same. For instance, high-quality backlinks can help you rank higher in SERPs and boost your website’s visibility.
Different Types of Backlinks:Dofollow and Nofollow Backlinks?
Dofollow are different types of backlinks that move the link authority or link juice from one webpage to another. These links tell the search engines to follow the links as they act as a vote of confidence for the linked website. As one of the most valuable backlinks in SEO, dofollow backlinks can improve your website’s authority and increase its ranking. By linking your website using do-follow links, you can boost your website’s credibility, increase your domain authority, and improve its position in search engine results.
Unlike dofollow links, nofollow links do not pass any link juice from one website to another. They typically tell search engines not to follow or count them as a vote of confidence for the linked website. While these links do not directly contribute to your website’s SEO, they can still attract traffic and improve your website’s visibility. This is why Google’s number one ranked web pages have approximately 20%-40% nofollow links pointing to that page.
Importance of The Best Types of Backlinks
The best types of backlinks are vital because they tell the search engines that your website has quality and relevant content. Since websites with more backlinks are perceived as trustworthy and authoritative, they tend to rank higher in the search results. Using backlinks is not a new concept, as it has existed since the foundation of Google’s PageRank and its original algorithm. Including backlinks makes it easy for your website to be seen online, boosting visibility. When you start including backlinks, search engines may discover your content more accessible.
Backlinks can also help you attract more visitors via referral traffic, as individuals who access the websites you are linked to may click on the backlinks and get directed to relevant pages on your website where they can find more information about a specific topic. Additionally, backlinks can boost your domain authority and help you identify ways to improve your strategy by comparing you to the competition. Ultimately, the higher your domain authority, the higher your rank on SERPs. Alongside these, backlinks can improve your brand awareness online and attract new customers by exposing your latest products and services. Although acquiring backlinks isn’t easy, if you are patient and strategize well, you can obtain high-quality links for your website.
Different SEO Backlinks Types
There are different SEO backlinks types that you can use to benefit your campaigns significantly. Here are some of the most common types of backlinks:
Editorial Backlinks
Editorial backlinks are formed when your website content is mentioned as an essential information source or featured in a link round-up about a specific topic. To earn editorial backlinks, you must create original content that establishes you as an expert or go-to destination for interviews and important information. Creating easy-to-share and captivating content can make it go viral within no time. You can use various SEO tools to identify your rivals’ main keywords and subjects. You can then embed links from articles or infographics that mention your website as an essential source of information.
Guest Blogging Backlinks
Acquiring guest blogging backlinks involves reaching out to other websites relevant to your business and offering high-quality and valuable content that’s helpful to their target audience. As an integral part of a link-building strategy, these links benefit SEO and can also help you get referral traffic. While guest post contextual links are found in the bio section of a page, they can sometimes appear within the pillar content.
Ensuring your backlinks bring value to the website without necessarily promoting it is essential when creating guest posts. By contributing articles to other websites and social media, you can include links to your site, enhancing its visibility and credibility.
Business Profile Backlinks
Business profile backlinks are acquired when you set up digital profiles for your business on social networks, business listing websites, and industry directories. With these links, your website can be perceived as having been around for a long time. Once you list your business on these platforms, you can acquire high-quality backlinks, thus establishing your website as credible and authoritative.
Badge Backlinks
Creating a badge to be awarded to other companies as an acknowledgement is also a practical approach for building backlinks. Whenever such websites display the badge, you will earn a link back to your website. You can use different SEO tools to identify your program’s websites and potential targets so you can review them.
Free-Tool Backlinks
Providing free tools can also be a brilliant approach to gaining attention and backlinks, which have a long-term impact on SEO. These tools may include simple items such as cost calculators that would be helpful to people who visit the sites. You can generate backlinks by marketing the tools with sites that use the same tools as yours.
Acknowledgment Backlinks
Acknowledgment backlinks are the type of links obtained when you frequently display acknowledgments. Once you determine the source of your rival’s backlinks, you can devise a strategy to help your website get recognition using these acknowledgment backlinks. Making contributions or sponsoring events can also lead to website acknowledgment, thus allowing you to generate backlinks.
Guest Post Bio Links
If a site that welcomes guest blogging does not allow backlinks inside the article, it will likely enable them in the author’s bio section. While these links are not included in the editorial content, they can still impact your website’s SEO.
Types of Backlinks to Avoid
Now that we’ve discussed some of the best types of backlinks you can use on your site, it’s essential to know which ones to avoid. Compared to effective backlinks, bad backlinks may offer your site short-term gains, eventually harming it in the long run and ruining your efforts. Since most of them do nothing to your website, they waste time and money. Here are some of the backlinks you need to avoid:
Link Schemes
Links schemes involve unnatural link acquisition strategies that can affect your rankings in Google Search results. Links schemes include both outbound and inbound links to your websites. The best examples of link schemes include:
- Overdoing link exchanges.
- Buying and selling of links.
- Templates or footers that are massively distributed.
- Followed” links on ads.
- Over-optimized, keyword guest posts and comments.
Private Blog Network (PBN)
A private blog network is also one of the most common links to avoid. It involves getting links from a collection of websites created majorly to link one another and boost search engines’ organic search. While they give an impression that they’ve earned backlinks, they are artificially created by linking your site from all the other sites so that Google can consider them real sites. Using PBNs clearly normally violates Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines and hence can result in harsh penalties.
Automated Links
This involves using automated link-building software to send links at scale to one site. It entails packaging these links as link-building services and selling them cheaply. This can be dangerous if you are not in control of the process. Like PBNs, automated links are meant to manipulate your rankings on the SERPs; hence, do not follow the guidelines.
Low-Quality Forum Backlinks
While spamming your website with forum’s low-quality links is an old link-building tactic, it doesn’t do much to your website. If you place links in a forum, they should appear natural for them to be valuable.
Non-Newsworthy Press Release Links
A press release in an official statement often announces something noteworthy a business has done. Press releases often cover things such as;
- Launch of a business or a primary product.
- Major updates such as rebranding, restructuring, or acquisitions.
- A significant crisis.
Although press releases are significant when done well, they are only effective if the story you are putting across is newsworthy. You should only create press releases if your business or company has achieved something worth sharing with the press.
What to Look for in the Best Backlinks Types
So, what should you look for in the best backlinks types or regular backlinks?
First, great backlinks should originate from authoritative and trusted websites. If a website boasts a strong backlink profile, it is considered an authority in its industry. These links also promote trust with search engines, signaling that your site is worth mentioning.
Links with anchor text, including your target keywords, are also considered high quality because they are appropriate for better rankings. But even if you intend to include keywords, it’s important to avoid overusing them within anchor text, as this can be seen as spammy. An excellent backlink should also be relevant sitewide and help Google understand your site.
For instance, if your website is about hiking, you need to obtain a link from another hiking site pointing to your website to be considered relevant and credible. The more similar the website is to your niche, the better. In addition, an excellent backlink should also pass as much link equity as possible to your page. This is because it’s linked to PageRank, which Google has had for a long time.
Final Thoughts
Since backlinks signal to the search engines that your website is credible and relevant, they are essential for the success of your SEO. Knowing different types of backlinks and applying the best practices can boost your website’s visibility and rank well on search engines. When building backlinks, always consider your goals by placing the link on a specific resource. Remember to have a diverse link profile comprising organic backlinks earned through high-quality content. Otherwise, you need to know that gaining links is a process that takes time. You should also avoid link schemes or irrelevant links that can make Google penalize your website.
