Backlinks: The Complete Guide (Plus 7 Ways to Earn the Right Ones)

Since the early days of Google, backlinks have always been a significant ranking factor.

Search engines consider links as votes of confidence from one website to another, expressing that the page is worth noticing.

But before you send thousands of spammy link requests on LinkedIn (or worse yet, buy them on Fiverr), you must have a good understanding of:

• What backlinks are and how they improve your SEO
• How to create an actionable SEO strategy
• How to build high-quality links
• Which backlinks you should go after
• Which backlinks you should avoid like the plague

… and that’s exactly what we’ll be covering in this post. Let’s start with the basics.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks in SEO are hyperlinks from a third-party site pointing to a page on your website.

There are two types of backlinks:

1. Inbound links: The links coming through to your website
2. Outbound links: The links referring to another website from yours

These links play a crucial role in your SEO, and high-quality SEO backlinks will enhance your website’s credibility and visibility on search engine results pages.

Here, we have an example of a backlink from an Entrepreneur blog to Mashable.

Here is a short video guide we prepared for you, with our own Gerald Murphy explaining backlink basics

Why are backlinks important?

Google and other search engines consider links from trustworthy sites to yours as recommendations. The more backlinks you have, the more search engines will view your site as trustworthy and relevant. The more trustworthy and relevant your site is, the more likely it will rank in search results to answer user queries.

On top of higher rankings, backlinks can also bring your site high-quality direct traffic. If the content that visitors come from is topically relevant to yours, they are likely to engage with your content.

Follow vs. nofollow backlinks: What’s the difference?

Not all links are created equal in the SEO world -some pass link equity, while others don’t. In other words, we’ve got:

• Follow or dofollow links
• Nofollow links

Nofollow links do not pass link equity and do not directly affect your rankings. If you are linking to a page that you don’t want to recommend, you can avoid recommending it by adding a ‘nofollow’ directive.

Say you’re writing a blog post about a controversial topic and want to reference a source that presents a different perspective or opinion, however, you want to make it clear you are not endorsing or promoting that particular viewpoint. This is where a nofollow link steps in.

To signal to search engines that a link is nofollow, simply add the rel=nofollow attribute to your HTML code. Something like:

<a href=”https://www.example.com” rel=”nofollow”>Visit Example</a>

Dofollow links do pass link equity to your site and are considered a ranking factor. You don’t need to specify a link as dofollow, and any link without an attribute will be considered a dofollow link.

Both link types have their place. While dofollow links will improve your authority, nofollow links make your content more discoverable. A healthy backlink profile generally includes a mix of both.

How do you recognize a quality backlink?

If you want to see your content rising through the ranks, you should focus on quality over quantity when it comes to your backlinks.

In truth, no one (aside from Google’s masterminds) knows the value Google assigns to links, but we do know that several factors contribute to link quality, including:

1. Topical relevance

Links earned from a page that is topically relevant to your page will pass a lot more link equity than an unrelated page.

Here’s a prime example: If a marketing agency in London writes an article on buyer personas and then links to a fast-food restaurant in Singapore, it’s painfully obvious that the link is irrelevant and will pass on very little (if any) link equity.

2. Trust and authority

Links that come from authoritative pages carry more weight than links from weaker pages. You can see if a page is authoritative with the Similarweb Backlinks report by looking at the Page Trust Score (PTS). The PTS is based on the page’s link profile.

3. Anchor text includes target keywords

Anchor text refers to the clickable text of a link (which is usually blue and underlined). When Google crawls a web page and finds a link, it uses the anchor text to determine if the destination URL is relevant to the linking page.

Anchor text is one of the strongest link signals for ranking websites, and if a link points to a page and contains the right keywords or phrases, there’s a high chance that the page will rank for those words.

It’s common to find ‘Click here’ as link anchor text, but if you have any influence, you should try to have contextually relevant anchor texts where possible, for example:

• Read on to find out more about [keyword]
• You can download the full [keyword] report
• Head over to our complete guide on [keyword]

You can see the anchor text of any link with the Similarweb Backlinks report.

How to check backlinks

Auditing your SEO backlinks is a crucial part of your SEO, and by auditing them, you might find some SEO opportunities that you didn’t know existed.

There are two ways to audit your links:

1. Google Search Console Links report

Google Search Console is a favorite in the SEO community and presents a large amount of data for free. SEOs love Search Console because it gives you a peek into how Google views your site without having to track specific keywords.

The Search Console Links report is made up of four pages:

• External links
• Internal links
• Top linking sites
• Top linking text

If you click the More button on External links, you’ll be redirected to the Top Linked Pages report. This report shows you the pages that get the most links on your site. You can see the amount of links each page has earned as well as the sites that link to those pages.

Use this data in two ways.

Firstly, try to understand what types of content get the most links. You might notice that specific content types get the most links, for instance:

• Data posts
• Free tools
• Complete guides

By understanding the types of content that get the most links, you can double down on that content type and create more link bait.

Secondly, you can see the very sites that link to your content. You’ll find that if you create great content, some sites will link out to your site multiple times.

Sites that link to you multiple times are low-hanging fruit. Use this data to figure out what types of content they generally link out to and reach out to them. If you do this in the right way, you are likely to build a relationship with them, which could lead to opportunities down the road.

We’ll cover how to create a data-driven backlink strategy shortly.

2. Similarweb Backlink Analysis

The second way to audit your links is to use a tool like Similarweb Backlink Analysis, which provides you with quick and actionable backlink data for any site.

Let’s take the URL theecohub.com/ as an example. Straight away, you can see some top-level metrics, like Referring Domains and Backlinks.

If you dig further, you’ll find New vs. Lost backlinks.

New backlinks show you if your link outreach is working. Lost backlinks, on the other hand, are important to keep an eye on, as there are a number of reasons you might lose a link. For instance, the site might have updated a page. This is often unintentional, and if you act quickly and reach out to the site owner, you might save the link.

You can also see top-level metrics like Top Countries and TLD Distribution.

Compare these metrics to those of your competitors to see where your potential links come from. This will help you prioritize your link building efforts.

Referring Domains report

Looking at the Referring Domains report, you’ll see all the domains that are linking to a site. What’s more, it will give you a Domain Trust Score (DTS.) This score represents the strength of a domain’s backlink profile. The higher the score, the better.

You can also see how many times each domain links out to your site and whether the links are follow or no-follow.

This is super actionable data when it comes to creating a link-building strategy.

For instance, if you’re analyzing your own site, you want to look for the sites that link out to your site multiple times. This indicates that they find your content to be link-worthy, making them a great prospect and someone you should consider building a relationship with from a link-building perspective.

You should also build a relationship with sites that link out multiple times to your direct competitors. While they might not link out to you  (yet), they will probably be open to linking to content like yours.

But don’t forget, it’s quality over quantity. Prioritize domains that have a high DTS and use dofollow links.

Backlinks report

Then there’s the Backlinks report; here you can look at the actual links pointing to your site, and even analyze links to a specific page using the Target URL filter.

Let’s say you are looking at a competitor’s site, filter the data to show lost links and assess them. If those links are recently lost, this could be your opportunity. Perhaps the page that they were originally linking to is out of date – this is where you can swoop in and earn a link by presenting up-to-date content.

When you do this, you should prioritize high-quality content by looking at the Page Trust Score (PTS), and consider the anchor text to see the nature of the links. Hint: Your best links use keyword-rich anchor text.

Let’s use the example The Eco Hub again. Here, we’ve filtered the results to show links for the URL theecohub.com/what-is-compostable/. You’ll notice that the majority of the link anchor text is for the word ‘compostable’ or variations of it.

Now that you know how to see your and your competitor’s backlink data, are you ready to turn that into a killer link-building strategy?

How to get backlinks in 7 steps

If you’ve ever managed content, you’ll be familiar with the endless cringe-worthy LinkedIn link swap requests. These untargeted cold requests have practically zero chance of landing a link.

Instead of getting yourself muted by everyone who follows you on LinkedIn, be strategic. That’s the key to getting someone to link to your content.

There are the 7 steps to creating a winning link-building strategy:

1. Understand what links to go after

When building a link-building strategy, you first need to understand what links to go after. Backlink gap analysis is a great way to help you do that. It’s a competitive strategy that will quickly help you to:

• Understand what types of links work in your niche
• Prioritize your link-building efforts
• Stay ahead of your competitors

You can do this two ways:

• Analyze your direct competitors’ domain: When you analyze your top competitors’ domains, you might notice some domains that link out to all of them. Make it your goal to earn links from these domains over time. Think of these as entry-level links.
• Analyze pages to rank on specific keywords: If you want to rank your content on a target keyword, take the top-ranking pages and analyze their backlinks. Again, you might find domains that link out to all of them.

With a solid backlink gap analysis in hand, you will have a list of backlinks you need to build. Your next step is to make sure you have content worth linking to.

2. Build quality targeted content

No matter how good your prospect list is, your link-building efforts won’t be successful without the right content.

What we mean by “right” content will differ from industry to industry. For instance, in a SAAS company, free tools tend to perform well. So, how do you figure out the types of content you should create?

Backlink data, of course.

Similarweb Links report will inform you of the type of content your link prospects generally link out to. Is it data? Free tools? Ultimate guides?

Start by analyzing both your own and your top competitors’ backlinks. Use the target URL filter to see all the links a page has earned:

At this stage, you are looking for the pages that get the most links.

Take your time over this step. The better you do this, the more likely you are to create a high-value piece of link bait. And if your content is high-value enough, you could potentially earn links without much effort.

3. Broken link building

Once your targeted content strategy is well on its way, it’s time to look at your broken link opportunities in your industry.

If you find relevant broken links and you have up-to-date content that could replace the broken link, reach out to the site owner and let them know.

You can also use the nifty Chrome extension called Check My Links to find broken links on any site. Just install it and browse around on sites in your niche.

If you know a site that has migrated to a new domain, this could be a big-hitter. Reach out to the sites that were initially linking to the old domain, letting them know you have up-to-date replacement content – you’ll be surprised at how many link opportunities you might find.

4. Paid link building

Disclaimer alert:  We do not recommend buying links, as this is against Google’s guidelines. If you do pay for backlinks, you must include the rel=”sponsored” attribute.

That said, if you don’t have the expertise to build links in-house, you can hire a link building agency – just make sure that the agency uses white hat link building tactics.

5. Guest posting

Although Google considers guest post links as promotional links and should be nofollowed, many SEOs still use guest posting for SEO purposes. However, guest posting could still be highly valuable to your business even if the links are nofollow.

Guest posts will help you:

• Reach a large targeted audience
• Bring targeted traffic to your site
• Establish your expertise
• Build relationships

6. Find sites looking for sources

Another way to earn links is to find sites that are actively looking for resources.

You can find them in places like Connectively (which was recently called HARO.) Connectively connects journalists with content creators. These journalists are actively looking to add content to their own stories from subject matter experts. If they choose your content, they are highly likely to link back to your site.

7. Link outreach

Once you’ve created a solid list of prospects and you have content that they are likely to link out to, your next step is to reach out to the site owners. When doing link outreach, the difficulty you face is that when a link request comes out of the blue, it will almost always fall flat.

So, how do you increase your link outreach response rates?

The key is to think of link outreach as relationship building. This means personalizing your outreach emails and demonstrating a clear understanding of the recipient’s content. What’s more, when you reach out, try to find a way to offer them something in return – , a feature in your upcoming newsletter, for example.

Pro tip: Try to create a genuine relationship with your prospect on social media before reaching out. Be genuine and take your time over it. This will greatly increase your chance of earning a link from them.

Backlinks: The art of relationship building

You can’t (or shouldn’t) ask someone to marry you on the first date.

Building relationships takes time, and your outreach and link building efforts should be no different.

Similarweb Backlinks Analysis provides you with the data you need to:

• Find the right prospects
• Improve the quality of your outreach
• Create link-worthy content

And you know what that means? Improved response rates and more quality backlinks to help build the authority of your website… and get you ranking higher in search results.

FAQs

What are backlinks and how do they work?

Backlinks are links from one page of a website to another. When several websites link to the same webpage, search engines view the backlink as high quality and will boost its ranking on a SERP (search engine results page).

How do I get backlinks?

There are several methods to get backlinks:

• Look at your top referral sources
• Check outbound links and sent outreach emails
• Use Google Search Console reports to find new opportunities
• Check what your competitors are doing
• Find broken links and pitch your content as a replacement
• Create high-quality content that sites want to link to
• Write testimonials in exchange for links
• Guest blogging

Why are backlinks important?

Backlinks are important because they tell search engines that your content is valuable. Including backlinks will increase your website’s visibility on search engines as well as your organic traffic.