Backlinks, incoming links or simply inbound links are one of the most misunderstood factors in search engine optimisation, but also the single most important. Continue below to discover some of the first steps to take in a backlink analysis.
What is backlinks?
A backlink is simply a hyperlink, which can be seen as a reference from another website to your website. Without good backlinks, you will not experience prominent search engine rankings – at least not for competitive keywords.Why backlinks factors are often misunderstood
Many people believe that backlinks are mostly a numbers game. I would say they’re not. Focus on trusted, high quality backlinks instead. Having outstanding content makes it way easier to get those relevant, high quality backlinks that will make your website increase quickly in search engine rankings.The reason backlinks are so often misunderstood is partly because:
- Data Overflow: There are a lot of various metrics to follow in an analysis of backlinks.
- How To Isolate Factors: It’s very hard to isolate various backlink metrics for the average webmaster.
- Link Quantity: At first, it might sound logical that links is a numbers game. Then you realise that search engines have long term statistics over each and every link and rank them according to the content quality, new link speed among other factors.
- Hard To Measure: It’s hard to measure link quality and trust for average webmasters.
Where do you get backlinks from?
Analysing where you get your current links from is usually a good start. Google doesn’t provide any backlink tools and Yahoo recently ended the API for Yahoo SiteExplorer.To discover backlinks to your site it is now recommended to use a trusted backlink tool such as Open Site Explorer by SEO Moz. Currently, SEO Moz has a good offer where you can try the backlinks tool for free for 30 days.
Want to know more about your backlinks?