So, What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links from one website to another website. They are also called inbound/incoming links as they direct website traffic from one webpage to another.
Site A adds hyperlink to Site B ->Backlink-> Site B now has backlink from site A
Why do backlinks matter?
Backlinks are probably the most important ranking factor for Google, as they are seen as a vote for ranking. Think about it, now there are so many websites on the internet, with so many pages and so much content. How does Google know what to rank? How can Google rank these websites, some of which are useful and some not so useful?
Google uses backlinks to rank. Now if a website has some really great content and you find it useful and helpful, you may choose to add a link to that website in your content. That link that you add would show google that the website you linked to has good content, and your link can testify to that. Now, if more and more people link to the website, it would show google that the site has good content as more people are linking to it. Google would now rank that site higher in the search engine ranking pages (SERP).
Types of backlinks?
Getting backlinks is the hardest part of SEO, but the most important, and you can call this task link building or link earning.
There are backlinks from high-authority sites like Forbes, CNN, and similar that are very valuable, as these sites are highly reputable in Googles eyes. High-authority means that they have lots of valuable / relevant content, lots of links to their site, have been around for a long time on the internet and built their reputation, people trust them and so does google. This all adds to their domain authority (a score out of 100) and they have a high authority score. So getting a backlink from these guys is a huge boost to your website ranking.
Then you have the not so authoritative sites and getting backlink from these sites won’t do much for the ranking of your website. You can amass many of these not so valuable links and they would not be equal to one from a high-authority site.
You can also link to a site and the style in which you link, like follow or nofollow link, the page which you link from (good content, page-authority, ranking etc..) and more can impact on value you want to pass along. Follow link is a link where you have hyperlinked the text to go back to the website, this is the most valuable of all links. No-follow link is when you do not link the text back to the website and does carry some ranking juice.
How to get backlinks?
Getting backlinks is time consuming, and it is very difficult when starting out and trying to rank a website. You can search the internet for ways to get backlinks and they will find articles saying reach out to bloggers and sites for backlinks. Doing some competitive backlink research to find sites that rank highly for your keywords, and reaching out to the sites that link to them and more.
Tips to get Backlinks:
Start with creating profiles with nofollow links on sites
Fix redirects
Change 302’s (permanent redirect ) —> 301’s (temporary redirect)
Leverage pages with existing authority -> link to pages/sites from there
Reclaim lost equity from 404 (not found) pages
Find broken links and get them to link to you
Create linkable assets – make them the best
Consolidate content (close keywords – similar content) – in-depth resource | look at competitor – create better and promote
HARO
“Link roundup” + “finance” use data scraper extension and contact sites
Contact sites
Find Guest posts – example: Search in Google for your niche -> “finance” + “guest post” or “write for us”
Important error codes:
A 200 code means everything is good – the page is working like it’s supposed to, and the spider should crawl and index the page. A browser will display the intended page.
A 301 tells the spider and browser that the page has moved permanently to a new address. The spider will crawl and index the new page, and any link equity the old page had earned will pass to the new page. The browser will redirect visitors and display the new page.
302 code – it tells the spider and browser that the page has moved temporarily. The spider will keep the original page indexed and link equity will not be passed to the new page. The browser will redirect visitors to the new page.
A 404 code means that the intended page doesn’t exist. Spiders will eventually drop a page from the index, and a browser will display a “404 not found” page.
A 500 error signifies a server error. Nothing is visible to spiders or browsers.
A 503 error is a “temporarily unavailable” error that tells users and spiders to come back later.