A backlink is an external link pointing to a website or a page. Backlinks are therefore a real source of traffic for your site, but they also help your SEO. Indeed, when the backlinks come from sites “specialized and with strong authority” in your field, they will bring you an added value in terms of SEO and ranking on Google. The latter “likes” 3 other things on the websites he analyzes:
Good structuring of the pages.
Quality articles: more than 300 words with keywords and titles h1, h2, h3 ...
DoFollow backlinks: but not just any!Definition of netlinking
Netlinking consists of creating a strategy based on backlinks pointing to a website. Netlinking is a long-term strategy that will allow you to get qualified traffic to your site or specific pages. Creating a good net linking strategy will generally improve a site’s reputation and, therefore, it’s ranking on Google.
Google Penguin: the algorithm that monitors your backlinks
Now that you have the jargon in mind, let’s talk about the algorithm behind all of this: Google Penguin (yes, yes). In the early days of the backlink concept, Google had a strong preference for quantity over quality. This is now a thing of the past: since the update of its algorithm, Google has sanctioned abusive net linking, that is to say en masse. Be careful not to fall into so-called “black hat” practices heavily sanctioned by Google: do not buy links, do not comment with spam emails, do not use automatic registration programs for web directories, etc. . Over-optimization of link anchors is also sanctioned. Make sure you follow Google’s backlink guidelines and build a smart strategy.
A net linking strategy can be achieved in two different ways. You can choose net linking. Naturally, that is, through your partnerships, guest articles, infographics, etc. Or you may be actively researching and want to participate in link exchanges. Google will, however, place less importance on the links exchanged.
How to achieve a good netlinking strategy?
To get started, you need to choose websites where the content is relevant (related to your business) and regularly updated. The goal of a net linking strategy is to click your link; for this, you have to be relevant to internet users. As said before, prioritize the quality of your backlinks over quantity. However, it is important to have multiple sources for your net linking strategy to be effective.
Google ranks websites in search results based on a Page Rank score of 10. This score includes awareness and value of the content on the site. The more backlinks you have, the higher your Page Rank will be. To choose sender sites, you must choose sites with a rating greater than 3. It would help if you also considered the authority of the page. Indeed, this is one of the most important factors for ranking. The authority of a page takes into account the credibility of a page in the eyes of Google robots.
You can also set up triangular links: that is, exchange 3-way links. It would help if you had several sites under your belt for this. For example, a partner site links to your site A and B links to the partner site.
You have to make sure that your backlinks are not nofollow; otherwise, they will not affect your SEO (they do not penalize you). A nofollow link is a link that sends no signal to Google bots; that is, it does not send anything for Page Rank.
Be careful, Google doesn’t like sites that contain only dofollow links: make sure you strike a balance. A do-follow link is a link that optimizes the site’s positioning to which the link points. The issuing site transmits part of its ranking.
Finally, work on your link anchors so that they are optimized for SEO. This should perfectly describe the theme of a page or article. You can therefore delete unnecessary terms.
Good to know: backlinks on social networks do not promote your SEO UNLESS it’s a link on Google+!
How to get backlinks?
To get blacklinks, you have several choices:
- Content is King
If you have opted for an inbound marketing strategy, you necessarily have a blog! It will prove to be a formidable weapon to get backlinks. You need to feed your blog regularly with relevant, quality content that appeals to your audience. The more your content likes, the more it is shared. Beyond the artic
classic blog posts, you can create viral content such as videos, infographics, white papers, etc.
- A well-crafted influencer strategy
Nowadays, influencers are to be taken into account in all marketing campaigns! They are so far-reaching that they represent real business opportunities. When you partner with an influencer, you need to negotiate an inbound link on their blog or social media. The objective is obviously to reach the followers of the influencer, who is considered a valid prescriber. - Directories
Online directories have been around since the dawn of time (the Internet). They are still a reliable way to get backlinks, but they are not always qualified. Don’t sign up just anywhere! - The forums
You can also go to forums (without overdoing it) to get backlinks. Be sure to choose forums suited to your business! You need to actively watch the forums and respond to posts when you think you have a relevant response to maximize your chances. Your backlink will often be put in the automatic signature of your message
The internal link is mainly used to facilitate user navigation and the indexing of pages by Google robots, while the backlink is used to:
Indicate to the user the external location of a piece of information / a product
Transmit popularity from one website to anotherIt is in this second function that SEO is particularly interested. We, therefore, consider that inserting a backlink in content is a way of recommending another content, another web page. This recommendation is a token of trust (called “Trust”) that Google uses in its relevance algorithm to determine its search engine results. The more backlinks a website has (that is, links from sites that recommend it), the more its popularity grows in the eyes of Google. Of course, the reality is a little more complex than that …
The backlink is generally carried out as part of an SEO strategy and its “off-site” component, the not linking strategy. The SEO consultant is no longer satisfied with backlinks that arise “naturally” to his site from sources he does not understand. He will seek to generate them in greater quantity and quality. The backlink then becomes more complex in its theory and is assigned attributes (no-follow, for example) and even a value judgment made by Google. This classification of a backlink as being of good or bad quality is done according to many criteria, particularly related to the context of the backlink, which SEO experts try to influence.
How can the backlink influence the positioning of a site in the Google SERPs? And how to implement a netlinking strategy to acquire good backlinks?
The Backlink: definition
Then, to constitute to buy permanent backlinks, not only must the anchor of the link relate to the content of the target page, but also that the page issuing the link deals with a similar or identical topic. Thus, if the link to Napoleon’s Wikipedia page is inserted in an article describing only the life of General De Gaulle, there is little chance that Google will judge it as qualitative … On the other hand, if it is inserted in an article describing the major French military figures and that this content attaches as much importance to Napoleon as to General De Gaulle (paragraphs of equal sizes, explicit subtitles …), the link then begins to find its consistency in the eyes of Google compared to a given context.
The “nofollow” attribute of a backlink
If you have a site, a blog, or even a simple mailbox, you are probably familiar with the concept of spam: an unwanted message that imposes itself on you through an email or a comment and which, most of the time, prompts you to click on a link. Spam techniques have emerged as much to bring the visitor to specific content and retrieve something, such as personal data. We, therefore, designate as “spammy” content or comments left on blogs or forums that primarily aim to benefit their author and less to the content on which they are published. Spammy comments often contain links to questionable sites to allow them, among other things, to recover the SEO popularity of the site, to recover “link juice” (see below).
Sign for search engines the moment they discover the link in the page: it tells them that the sending site “does not” assume “the link in place, and therefore they should not transfer popularity. A blog can therefore decide to assign a “nofollow” attribute by default to all the links published by Internet users in its comments, and thus prevent SEO risks by protecting its popularity.
Logically, for a backlink to play a role in improving the referencing of a website, it must not include the “nofollow” attribute. Otherwise, it will be considered openly disowned. ‘a backlink is therefore also a matter of legitimacy!
The location of a backlink
Finally, what can be a game-changer when it comes to the quality of the backlink is its position within the source page. Google considers a link in context more relevant than a single link, disconnected from a semantic environment. It is, therefore, more efficient for your SEO performance to place a backlink inside a paragraph of text rather than in a menu, for example.
A common practice – and more or less obsolete – is to place backlinks in the footer of a site. Thus, the backlink is present on all the site’s pages, transferring the possible popularity of each of them to the target site. But Google has not fooled: the backlink’s position is lower than all the other elements on the page and generally in smaller font indicates that this link is not intended to be clicked by the user. Therefore, Google identifies your backlink as blatantly flagged “SEO” and gives it less credit in the popularity calculation.
Likewise, to avoid abuse, when faced with multiple occurrences of the same link within a page, Google only takes the former into account in its relevance and popularity calculation. Thus, only the first anchor counts to contextualize the link, as well as the position of the first link within the page.
As you will have understood, the quality of a backlink is, therefore, a clever mix of criteria to which is added its strategic positioning on the page: the more it is contextualized and located high in the text, the more it is likely to be perceived as a qualitative backlink by the Google algorithm.
