Studies show that job applicants with referrals are 15 times more likely to get hired than applicants who don’t.
Crazy right?
It is always good to have someone on the inside to put in a good word for you.
This rule applies in the SEO world too.
If you are a beginner in the game trying to find your place in the Google search results, you will need referrals. Websites that are already in, who can recommend you to Google, so Google will know you are good enough to be ranked.
This can be done through inbound links.
What are inbound links in SEO?
Inbound links are clickable links on other websites that point to your websites. Inlinks, backlinks, linkbacks, incoming links, and inward links are some of the other terms used for inbound links.
An inbound link is made up of two components:
- The link – is the hyperlink with the URL to a web page on your site.
- The anchor text – is the text used to describe the link that users would click on to reach your website.
Other types of links, FYI
1) Outbound links: They are the links you add to the content on your websites that link out to other websites with different domain names.
It is like using citations in a research paper. It shows that you are leaning on the established website to add value to your content. You are using them for reference or additional information.
2) Internal links: They are the links you use in your content to other pages or sections of pages on your own website. It helps users and search engines to interact with more content on your website and also users can engage with the content on our website for a longer time.
You are directing traffic to older content through relevant recently published content on your website and giving it a chance to rank again.
What are the benefits of inbound links?
Having an inbound link to your website means another website is referring to it, which in turn means that the content on your website is valuable and ‘referrable,’ and search engines will consider it to be trustworthy, especially if those inbound links are from established websites.
How do you know that another website is established?
Earlier the term used was Page Rank which determined the quality of a page. Now the term used are Domain Authority and Page authority which are rated with domain rating and URL rating.
The inbound links are valued as link authority which is the overall authority of a website based on how many trusted websites link to the whole domain as well as the page that links directly. Web pages with high link authority pass on some of their authority to you when they link to your content. You gain authority by association!
Backlinks are the most important and biggest ranking factor in SEO. It is a vote of authority and credibility from one website to another. The more quality votes your website gets, the better results you have. Here are some of the benefits you will reap with inbound links.
A higher position in search engine results
When you have a number of high-quality backlinks, your authority rises in value for search engines. When search engines know you are trustworthy, your ranking increases in the search results.
What are high-quality backlinks?
High-quality backlinks are those links coming from high-authority sites, they make use of anchor text that best describes your page/site, and there is diversity. The backlinks must be from multiple diverse domains.
Increase in traffic
When you rank in a higher position in the search results, there is an automatic increase in traffic. An increase in organic traffic boosts improved conversions
Brand recognition
When authoritative and respectable sites link to yours, their credibility transfers to you, and users will come to recognize and value your brand too.
Opens up opportunities for collaboration and commercial partnerships.
When other credible sites link to your site, you have the opportunity to connect to them and build your business. You will earn important connections to your network and these connections may lead to consumer referrals.
How to build backlinks?
There are four ways you can build backlinks to your website. You can
- Earn them
- Create them
- Buy them
- Make them
How to earn inbound links?
According to Google, the best way to build backlinks is to earn them naturally without interference from the webmaster. As everything else with SEO, you need patience. But luckily for you, you don’t have to sit idle and wait, as you have the solid groundwork to do.
- Do your keyword research in such a way that you are addressing informational keywords in your niche.
- Write valuable content that is in-depth and educational.
- Link out to other blogs on your blog. Make use of outbound links to other credible websites and at some point, those favors will be returned.
- See what your competitors are doing and work on how you can provide more than what others are.
How to create backlinks?
While you wait to earn backlinks with your valuable content, you can also get proactive and create backlinks for yourself.
- Create your social profile on different sites and share your website there.
- Comment on other blogs that receive comments and allow adding your website. Write valuable contents that invoke interaction and build connections with other sites.
- Reach out to other blogs/websites to be a guest author in exchange for backlinks.
- Create infographics and offer to do it for other sites too. (you can use Canva or easel.ly)
- Make your website user-friendly and improve user experience.
- Try to syndicate your content by publishing your content on other sites like medium and linking back to your website with “originally published on”.
- Repurpose pieces of content and share them on different media platforms like Quora and LinkedIn to reach a wider audience.
Buy backlinks (only if you must)
It is not wrong, but it is something that you need to follow wisely to not get into Google’s bad books. While you can stick to the first two methods of building backlinks, you can, if you can afford to, buy some high-profile backlinks.
Remember that if you have too many backlinks at once, Google will know what you are doing and why you are doing it. You can buy backlinks sometimes on SEO Butler, Rank Club, or Digpu. But don’t buy cheap links, as they will not do any good for your website.
Make Backlinks (as a last resort)
This is another method that you can “resort” to when you can afford to and all else fails.
- Buy authoritative expired domains (Dynacoaster, Dynadot, expired domains, Godaddy auction)
- Set up a WordPress website on fresh hosting.
- Create the content on it.
- Link back to yourself on the other site. This is called Private Blog Network (PBN)
How to check the inbound links of a website?
I use the Backlink Checker by Ahrefs and here is what the result looks like. It give you the number of backlinks and referring domains, and also the list of site linking to the site.
How to remove inbound links?
Inbound links may be good for you, but spammy links leading to your site are bad for your site’s reputation. You don’t want them!
- Identify spammy links
You need to avoid links from
- Penalized domains
- Link directories
- Bad sites (porn, pharma, make money, and gambling sites)
- Sites of foreign language
- Unrelated and irrelevant sites
- Links that are exact match anchor texts and in large numbers.
- Locate where they are coming from using tools for backlink checkers from Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush which will also tell you if they are spam.
- Request them to be removed from the websites. This may prove to be difficult but it is a necessary step. You can use Whois domain Lookup to identify the website if you cannot directly find the contact to the website.
- Create and submit a disavow file to Google.
Your final go-to option is Google itself which offers the Disavow links tool to trouble shoot backlink spam. You need to use Google Search Console to import a file that contains all links you wish Google to ignore where you can maintain a record of URLs and ask Google to ignore them all.
Use the tool carefully so you don’t disavow high-quality backlinks to your website.
Conclusion
Inbound links or backlinks hold high importance in your ranking. It is a must-have in your SEO strategy and it is not an easy task. Getting good inbound links is hard-work but better if they are earned naturally than not.
Search engines are getting smarter and using ‘tactics’ to get backlinks may last only for a short term, before they start failing or before the search engine itself penalizes you for overdoing something.
My advice is to focus on your audience, focus on providing high value content for them and high-quality links will eventually find their way into your website.
I have shared what I know can be done to build backlinks. What do you do to build backlinks?
Let me know in the comments.
