What Is a Backlink?

Links from other websites to your website are called external or backlinks. Acquiring such links to your website is certainly one of the most important activities in website optimization, specifically falling under the off-site part of SEO optimization. It should be emphasized that the process of acquiring backlinks must be a regular task. Regular management and building of backlinks is extremely important, as they are one of the 10 SEO rules for higher Google positions.

How to Acquire Backlinks?

Acquiring these links (linkbuilding) is not the most difficult aspect of optimization – the harder part is acquiring quality backlinks. A quality backlink is created when a link to your website is placed on a site that Google considers an authority. Ideally, the site should address similar topics as yours.

What Does a Backlink Mean for Website Optimization?

A backlink is essentially an upgrade to on-site optimization, which means that good keywords also come into play. If we simplify the whole matter, we could simply say that a backlink for search engines is like a “street connection between individual pages.” In this way, search engines can more easily analyze connections and determine how websites are linked to each other.

Backlink activities are also called off-site optimization, meaning that search engines analyze your website based on the number and popularity of external pages. We know two types of backlinks – natural and manually created links. Backlinks are usually handled by SEO experts who know the rules of website optimization and help you achieve the best results.

Don’t Overdo the Number of Links

As always with website optimization, the rule applies that quantity does not mean quality. We follow this rule when building backlinks as well. A website should not contain more than two backlinks to the same URL. Of course, it depends on the content of the page and the topic it covers, but in any case, we should not overdo it with links.

Types of Backlinks: Nofollow and Dofollow

There are basically two types of backlinks, distinguished by their Nofollow or Dofollow tags.

Nofollow Tag

If a link’s URL contains a Nofollow tag, it tells the search engine to ignore it. A backlink or link marked as Nofollow will therefore not rank in web search results. Such links have no value and do not contribute to improving positions in search engines like Google. Nofollow tags are usually only used when we deliberately want to hide or remove certain web pages from Google’s radar for various reasons.

Dofollow Tag

Dofollow backlinks are simply those that everyone wants. They carry value and transfer it, thus influencing the improvement (or even worsening!) of rankings in Google and other browser search results. The greater the authority of a website, the greater the power of the backlink placed within it. The goal of everyone who wants to acquire backlinks is that they come from sites with the highest possible authority, as this is the fastest way to achieve better results.

Backlinks Can Also Be Harmful

However, be careful – some Dofollow links can also be bad or can be identified as such by search engines (e.g., Google). Bad or even harmful backlinks are those coming from websites of dubious reputation. Or from websites that violate the rules and terms of use of search engines. Such links can severely harm your site. If Google identifies your backlinks as harmful, it can penalize you or even delete you from its index. In other words, with a single move, Google can completely remove any website from search results if it appears that the rules of the game have been violated in any way.

To avoid bad experiences, stick to the rule that quality takes precedence over quantity. It’s better to have just a few truly quality backlinks than hundreds of links coming from suspicious sites.

What Forms of Backlinks Exist?

Backlinks Within Website Text (Anchor Text)

Most of us have probably noticed a link located directly in the body text of a website. We usually quickly recognize such a backlink because it is often colored differently and perhaps even underlined. A word, phrase, or perhaps an entire sentence can be used as a backlink and contains a link to another website. This part of the text is called anchor text.

Images Can Also Be Backlinks

Similar to the example above, a backlink as always points to another URL, another website. The difference is that this time it’s an image that contains the link (backlink), not a piece of text. Such backlinks are harder to identify, as we can only really determine whether an image contains a link after clicking on it.

Blog and Forum Comments Can Contain Backlinks

The third approach to building links is related to other, already existing blog posts or forums. It is often possible to write a comment under blog or forum posts, and thus either comment on the content, converse with other internet users, or add a backlink to other, thematically related content to your response. This makes it much more likely that visitors to the forum or website where the blog post is located will also follow the link to your site.

Backlinks from Guest Posts

With this form of backlink building, we first need to find a website that is looking for or offers the opportunity to publish a guest article. When looking for a suitable site for our guest post, it’s good to find one that thematically connects with our website. Once we find the right site, we write a guest article on the chosen topic and make sure to properly use the chosen primary keyword along with secondary keywords. Of course, don’t forget to include backlinks. In the case of a guest article, it works best to use a backlink within the website text (the first example described above).

The Best Backlinks

Backlinks are a crucial part of a broader SEO strategy for improving website positions on search engine results pages (SERP), such as Google. Without backlinks, it’s practically impossible to rank a website on the first page of results, let alone among the top three results, where the highest number of clicks has been proven to occur.

The answer to which backlinks are the best is certainly not straightforward. Even SEO experts don’t agree on which links have the greatest effect. Nevertheless, it’s clear that building backlinks achieves two things:

• Search engines (e.g., Google) better understand the content of the website.
• Search engines can thus attribute greater authority to a site that has more quality backlinks.

Building backlinks (linkbuilding) is therefore essential if we want to achieve high positions on search results pages, increase the number of website visitors, and ultimately improve the visibility of a company or brand. Because they play such a significant role, it is advisable to entrust the backlink building strategy to SEO experts. The entire process is complex, requires constant activity, upgrading, and choosing the right methods of building links so they truly bring the best possible results and rank the website at the very top.