Last Updated on 1 year by Komolafe Bamidele
The competition between websites to rank their content on the first page of search engines keeps getting tougher every year which more depend on Backlinks in SEO.
Many webmasters and bloggers key in on several Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to ensure their content tops others on Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Among these techniques is linking building, SEO Quality Articles, Keywords Research etc But according to Google 2019 SEO practices, backlinks in SEO which involves getting backlinks from high authority websites.
What Are Backlinks in SEO?
Backlinks (also known as inbound links) are simply links of your website on other websites. In simpler words, when a website posts a link of your website e.g www.example .com on one of its pages that counts as a backlink. They are simply other domain Authority linking back to your website to indicate how good is your pages on your website are.
Are Backlinks Important In SEO?
Backlinks are very important in search engine ranking and are used to determine the quality of content. However, you would need to get only high-quality backlinks to ensure that you rank higher than your competitors.
Google has indicated that backlink building is among the criteria for ranking your website ahead of your competitors.
In this article, we are going to discuss strategies for building high-quality backlinks for SEO
What are High-Quality Backlinks in seo?
All backlinks are not equal and the quality of a backlink will determine how well your site will rank above your competitors.
A website with 1,000 low-quality backlinks will definitely rank below another with just 10 high-quality backlinks.
High-quality backlinks are backlinks from websites that are trusted and have high authority. The authority of a website is known as Domain Authority and is measured by 100 points.
Getting backlinks from websites with a high domain authority like Wikipedia, Forbes, Harvard, and Amazon will definitely improve the ranking of your content in SERP.
Search engines like Google only take count of high-quality backlinks pointing to content on a website, Low-quality backlinks, on the other hand, can drop your content from the first page or entirely off Google SERP
How to Find High-Authority Websites?
Finding high-authority websites is quite easy and would require you to work with some tools.
Tip 1: You can use several tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs to find the Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR) of a website. Websites with DA or DR higher than 40 are considered authoritative enough but you should aim higher for websites with DA or DR higher than 60 to give your site more authority and boost your search engine ranking.
Tip 2: When searching for high-authority websites to build backlinks from, it is important to the only search for websites which posts contents related to your site.
If you post content on iPhones, then you have no business linking to a health website. Links built this way are considered high-quality.
Tip 3: High-quality backlinks are mainly do follow backlinks. These links signal search engines to follow them and will increase your search engine rankings.
Nofollow backlinks, on the other hand, are ignored by search engines and do not impact your search engine rankings.
However, no follow links are important to help you balance your backlink profile and avoid looking spammy to search Engines. That means that while you build high-quality do-follow backlinks, you should also build some no follow backlinks too.
Backlinks from these sources tend to have the no-follow tag:
- Blog comments
- Social media profile links
- Links in forum posts
How to Build High-Quality Backlinks
There are many strategies to building high-quality backlinks in SEO and we are going to list all of the methods that work and will ensure your content moves higher in Google SERP.
1. Create High-Quality Content That Other Websites Want To Link Back To
High-quality websites like Wikipedia, Forbes, and CNN have thousands of other websites linking back to them because they are a resource. These sites post in-depth content that provides useful information which makes other websites want to link back to them.
For example, if you want to list the Top Billionaires in The World in 2019, you would have to provide a source which would be Wikipedia or Forbes and link back to that source. You have simply given Wikipedia or Forbes a backlink which builds up its backlink profile and ranks it higher in SERP.
Top backlink building SEO specialists like Brain Dean of Backlinko write very long in-depth useful content which earns him backlinks from top authority websites like TechCrunch, Inc.com and Forbes, among others.
2. Guest Posting Backlinks in SEO
Guest posting is the easiest way to Link Building for SEO from high-authority websites. This strategy not only improves your search engine ranking but allows you to reach new audiences and win more exposure.
Guest posting involves publishing an article on another website and linking back to your website or social media profiles in the article.
All you need to do is find blogs in your niche that accept guest posts and message them with your proposal.
You can use the Google search queries below to find blogs that accept guest contributors
- your keyword + inurl:write-for-u
- your keyword + guest-posts
- your keyword + inurl:guest-post-guidelines
- your keyword + become a contributor
- your keyword + bloggers wanted
- your keyword + submit an article
- your keyword + want to write for
- your keyword + contribute
- your keyword + become an author
- your keyword + guest post by
- your keyword + now accepting guest posts
Note: Only guest post on high-authority websites to ensure you build only high-quality backlinks.
3. Get Links From Forums and Blog Comments
Although, most backlinks from forums and blog comments no follow which means they wouldn’t impact your search engine ranking. You can find high-authority forums and blogs which offer do follow backlinks by spying on your competitors.
To do this, you will require special tools like Ahrefs. Ahrefs allows you to spy on your competitor’s backlink profile and get similar backlinks
Simply, log into your Ahrefs account and follow the instruction below
Site Explorer > enter the competitors domain > Backlinks > filter for “do follow” links > filter for links from “message boards”
Above is a simple trick to getting do follow backlinks from Forums by spying on your competitors.
Backlinking Terms
Below are some backlink building terms you need to understand to ensure you build the right backlinks from high-quality sites.
Dofollow and Nofollow backlinks have been explained above
Referring Domains
Referring domains means websites that backlinks are coming from.
Referring Links
Referring Links simply means the number of backlinks you have. You can have several backlinks from one referring domain.
However, if you want to build your site authority and rank higher in SERP, then you would need to focus on getting as many domains as you can to refer to your site. A website with 20 backlinks from 10 referring domains is better than another site with 50 backlinks from 2 referring domains.
Wrapping Up What is Backlinks in SEO
It is important to note that backlink isn’t the only search engine ranking factor you would need to consider when hoping to rank on Google first page but it is one of the main factors that will determine how fast and how high your rank in SERP.