Backlinks are links connected externally to your website from other web pages, websites or directories. Backlinks are like votes for your website.
Why is having backlinks important?
In layman’s terms, backlinks are important because they tell Google and other search engines that people like your website and that’s why they want to be connected to it and want to share it with others.
People generally like a website because of 3 main things;
- it offers something unique
- it’s useful
- and it can be shared
How to get backlinks?
Getting backlinks is something that happens over time.
Here are a few tips for getting backlinks
- write amazing unique content
- write about topics you love
- never copy content from other websites
- make sure your spelling and grammar is correct
- make content easy to read
- include bullets, images and video
- make sure your images are optimised for web
- write for your target audience (not the search engines)
- make it easy for users to find these topics you talk about
- NEVER pay for backlinks
Submit your website
Another way to get backlinks is to submit your website profile or pages to industry related websites and directories.
- join a couple a month, to build this up naturally
- add your website link or page to the sites
- only join reputable directories and websites
Social Media
A great way to share your articles or web pages is via Social Media. This is a great way to create natural backlinks over time as your articles can be shared across the Internet via Social Media.
How can I check how many backlinks I have?
It’s not necessarily important to have 100’s or even 1000’s of backlinks back to your site. It’s more about the quality of the sites the links are coming from.
Obviously, you can’t help get backlinks from low-quality sites, but if you get a good handful from high-quality sites that can really boost your website authority with the search engines.
For example;
- True Local – is a local directory for Australia that has a high authority with Google.
- High authority or PageRank meaning that Google (and other SE’s) thinks its a great website because it is beneficial/useful to its target audience.
- So always try to add your profile to big powerful sites rather than smaller ones that no-one has heard of.
Check out Google ‘s Matt Cutts discussion on PageRank and backlinks
Google Webmaster Tools can help you see what backlinks you have. I’m not totally convinced that it gives an exact reading of how many backlinks you have, but it still gives you a good indication.
You can also try https://moz.com/researchtools/ose to check your backlinks as well.
Lastly to get backlinks make sure you write amazing content that is useful and shareable, and this is the best way to get people to share your content.
Written by Jodi Allbon Jan. 2015
