A backlink is one hyperlink pointing from one site to another. Not all backlinks are equal either; a backlink from a higher quality domain is more important than several from lower authority websites.
All sites have a backlink portfolio, some of which you have control over and others that you don’t. The higher quality backlinks you have to an individual page or post, the greater chances of the post competing and ranking against similar posts. In general, the more backlinks a post has, the better the post will rank.
This article will discuss what you need to know about backlinks and various methods of building these.
What pages to build backlinks to
You should always be building backlinks to your site, especially to your homepage. However, you need to build links to individual pages and posts too. In particular, you should build links to posts that contain greater keyword difficulty than others, increasing your likelihood of ranking higher in the search engines.
If possible, use your domain name as an anchor, further increasing SEO and driving users to your website.
How to build links
Building backlinks is a difficult process, but if done correctly, can be extremely effective. There are numerous ways to build backlinks, some of which are better than others. For example, paying for links is frowned upon, falling under the bracket of “grey hat SEO.” This is not approved by Google and could jeopardize your site, perhaps landing you a penalty from Google.
A popular method of asking for a backlink is emailing sites with similar posts and asking for a link back to your site. Ensure the email is relevant, preferably providing something in exchange for the link, increasing the recipient’s likelihood of accepting your offer. For example, you could offer to share various blog posts on social media with your audience, create a rich pin, or write a guest post for the site.
That brings us onto our second method of building links: guest posting. Guest posting involves writing a post for another site in exchange for a link or two to your website. This method takes longer, but is easier to land than cold-emailing website owners or bloggers.
You should send out requests for guest posts and emails for links regularly, aiming for at least two new links a week.
