What are backlinks? How to increase Backlink that affects SEO?

Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites to your website. For search engines, backlinks are a vote of confidence, indicating that other websites think your content is worth recommending to more people. High-quality backlinks, such as from influential media or websites, help increase the authority and credibility of the website.

For example, if your website is often cited by well-known media or professional blogs, to Google it is like an academic senior writing a recommendation letter for you, which can greatly increase the trust of your website. Therefore, understanding how backlinks work and their importance in SEO is something that website operators cannot ignore.

Backlinks have a huge impact on SEO. High-quality backlinks can enhance the authority and credibility of the website. Just like a gifted student with many letters of recommendation, Google will trust these websites with many high-quality backlinks more.

In addition, backlinks can help search engines index website content more effectively, further increasing the chance of being searched. If it is a backlink from a popular website, it can also direct traffic to your website to increase exposure and clicks. The following is a summary of the impact of backlinks on SEO.

• Improve website authority and ranking: High-quality backlinks can increase the authority of your website and make search engines trust your content more.
• Increase website exposure and traffic: Links from popular websites can bring more visitors and click-through rates.
• Speed ​​up search engine indexing: Backlinks help search engines discover and index new content faster.
• Build brand trust: Being cited by authoritative websites can enhance brand credibility.
• Strengthen content relevance and weight: By establishing content-related backlinks, users and search engines can better understand the content of the website.

Before you start making backlinks, you need to understand a very important concept, which is the difference between dofollow and nofollow. These two are different things in the eyes of search engines, and the effects they bring are also different.

What is Dofollow?

Dofollow is the default attribute of a link, which means "I agree with search engines to refer to this link." It is conceptually similar to I am willing to write a recommendation letter for this link. If website A has a dofollow link to website B today, it means that it is willing to endorse website B so that search engines can go to website B through the link. For website B, it will be an effective back link. It is usually presented in the following way.

< a href="Backlink-recommended website">

What is Nofollow?

Because the practice of adding backlinks is too simple and can easily be abused, Google has introduced the Nofollow attribute to combat these malicious links. As long as the Nofollow attribute is added, it is equivalent to telling the search engine that I do not recommend this link, and it will ignore it. Although Nofollow means that the website does not endorse you, it is no different from ordinary links in the eyes of users. Therefore, although it cannot increase the weight of the website, it is still helpful for exposure and traffic. It is usually presented in the following way.

< a href="Website link" rel="nofollow">

After understanding what Dofollow and Nofollow are, you can judge the quality of backlinks. The following is a reference for the quality of backlinks.

• Source website authoritativeness: Links from high-authority websites are more valuable.
• Content relevance: Whether the link source website is relevant to the content of your own website, the more relevant the better the quality.
• Link location: Links in the body text carry more weight than links in the footer or sidebar.
• Link type: Dofollow links are better for SEO.

So what is the first step to increase backlinks? A successful backlink strategy starts with a deep understanding of your own website and other websites. Next, we’ll tell you how to analyze links to your own and other people’s websites.

Understand the existing backlinks to your website

It is very important to know what backlinks your website currently has. In addition to knowing whether someone recommends you, you can also find out whether there are any malicious backlinks. The following is throughGoogle Search ConsoleAnalyze the way your own website is linked.

1. Open Google Search Console
2. Click on the link option in the menu on the left
3. External links are the location of backlinks

The top linked pages are those pages that receive the most backlinks. Most linked sites refer to which sites provide the most backlinks. Top link text refers to the text that is most commonly used as a backlink.

Analyze links from other websites

There are many tools on the market for analyzing backlinks. Among them, Moz provides a free link analysis tool. As long as you paste the URL, it will provide analysis data.

If you find that there are malicious backlinks to your website, you can useGoogle disavow toolPrevent others from connecting to your website. Here are the prohibited steps.

1. Create a no-link form
2. Submit a form to Google

The last step is to increase high-quality backlinks to your website. Here are a few good ways to build backlinks.

• Actively submit content to high-authority websites : You can actively submit your website to high-authority websites to gain opportunities.
• Cooperate with industry websites : You can cooperate with other people in the field of your own website to exchange links. Be careful not to buy them.
• social media promotion : Submit articles to social media to increase exposure opportunities.

Because backlinks can effectively improve website rankings, some opportunistic people will think of buying a large number of backlinks to increase the weight of the website. However, purchasing backlinks violates Google's regulations. Once discovered by search engines, it may cause a ranking drop or even be punished. In the worst case, it may cause the website to be removed from the shelves. Therefore, it is recommended to add it in a safe and natural way to avoid unnecessary risks.