Backlinks are part of the most important facets if you are into search engine optimization. If you have been dabbling in SEO it is probable that you have read or heard about them. They are the building blocks of good SEO. This article will give you insights on why backlinks are important and how to help you not to get into trouble with the big G and other search engines.
What is a backlink?
Backlinks are links that go back to your website. It is also known by other terms like inbound link. Backlinks are good indicators of the popularity or the importance of the website. Google give high regard to websites that have a lot of good quality backlinks. Google considers websites with good backlinks as legitimate ones and more relevant compared to others that appear in the search query.
How important are backlinks?
Search engines like Google would try to figure out the relevance of a keyword to a site and looks at the number of quality backlinks that point back to that site. That is why it is important that no one should be content by having backlinks. What really matters is the quality of backlinks which makes the website relevant to search engines. When there is a backlink pointing to your site and the content on that site is relevant to your own site then it becomes a quality link. The key here is relevance. As the relevance of the content increases; the quality of the backlink increases too.
Is it a level playing field?
Google and other search engines try to level the playing field to all websites as it searches for natural links. It is fairly easy to manipulate links on a web page so that it can get a higher page rank in the search results. This is the main reason why the factor is ingrained in the search engine algorithm. Lately, a lot of SEO experts and pro bloggers suddenly felt much anxiety after search engines tweaked their algorithms and thanks to webmasters that resorted to sneaky ways to have the page rank high.
What is the consequence of being sneaky?
Google has become more intelligent as it has cracked down on sneaky methods to make the pages rank high in the search results. In the old days webmasters got away by using reciprocal backlinking and using a link farm. This is no longer being used as it is a sure way of getting your site banned.
What are contextual backlinks?
Backlinks that are normally found in the middle of the sentence in a post or an article is considered contextual backlinks. It is of high value because the content has become important that it has been subjected to have it linked. The result is that it can provide higher page results since it is conscious, related to the topic and it something that is specific.
Quality backlink is the hallmark of good SEO. It should be the most important thing to do so you can rank well in the search results. There are a lot of tools that can give you better results but you need to play by the rules first.