How to check for backlinks?

You might already know that backlinks can help you to get more traffic and rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing.

But what is a backlink? How to check for backlinks work? And how to get backlinks?

What is a Backlink?

A Backlink is a link from one website to another. Search engines use backlinks as a ranking signal. When one site links to another, it means they believe the content is more noteworthy. High-quality backlinks can increase the site’s ranking position and search engine results.

How do backlinks work?

Backlinks can play an important role in search engine algorithm, SEO, and your overall strategy for growing your website. You can think of backlinks as a conversation among websites.

For example, Tom is a blogger and writes an article about a music festival. Another blogger, Rachel, links Toms’s article when sharing her perspective. Since she also writes about the topic on her website, this creates a backlink to John’s post.

Because her website is popular many other sites will link back to her article. This increases the authority of Rachels’s site, and Toms’s article also gets a valuable backlink from a reputable site. It is basically a win-win situation.

Why are backlinks important?

Backlinks can help with three main things:

Ranking

Search engines like Google and Bing see backlinks as votes of confidence. The more votes your webpage has, the more likely they are to rank for relevant search queries.

You can find an ahrefs study for link base ranking factors that the number of backlinks from unique referring websites strongly correlate with organic search traffic.

Discoverability

Search engines discover new content by revisiting pages they already know about to check for new links.

Because search engines revisit popular pages more than unpopular ones, they may find your content faster if you get backlinks from popular pages.

Referral traffic

Backlinks exist to show people useful resources. That is why they are clickable.

If someone clicks on a link to your website, you get referral traffic.

The different types of backlinks

There are two types of backlinks where one is more valuable than the other.

A Nofollow tag tells search engines to ignore a link. They don’t pass any value from one site to another. Typically they don’t help improve your search rank or visibility.

Dofollow links are the backlink type that everyone wants. They need to come from respected sites, so they are valuable. It is the kind of backlink that can improve search engine rankings.

But there are do-follow links that are considered bad or toxic. Those links are from suspicious sites or gained by breaking the term of service from search engines.

It may cause Google penalizes or even de-index your site. Remember, it is not about the number of backlinks but rather the quality that makes the difference in ranking.

What is a high quality backlink?

Not all backlinks are equal there are some attributes that show the backlink’s quality and utility.

Relevance

Google places more value on relevant backlinks because people more likely click on them. This means if a plumber has backlinks from two pages, one is about dogs and one about installing boilers; chances are the latter is more valuable.

Also, a domain with readers of plumbing.com are more likely to click on a plumber website than readers of dogs.com

Authority

Backlinks from strong websites usually have more authority than those of weak ones. In contrast, it doesn’t always transfer to more authority, as Google has a fair number of various methods that assign value to backlinks. Also, internal backlinks contribute to a page’s authority.

Traffic

Backlinks from high-traffic sites will usually send you more referral traffic. There is a small but clear correlation between rank and backlinks from pages with organic search traffic. But the backlink from unique websites and page-level authority seems to be more important.

Placement

People are likelier to click prominently placed links, so some links on web pages have more authority than others. If your link ends up in the site’s footer or along with fifty others sites in the sidebar, then look for other opportunities.

Anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable words from backlinks. Anchor link text matter but isn’t as important as other things

How to check for backlinks

There are various backlink monitoring tools to check your website backlinks, including Google Search Console, Ahresfs, Semrush, etc.

Keeping your backlinks in check is very important. Google Webmaster Guidelines require you to ask toxic website owners to remove their links to your site. If you don’t do this, Google can penalize your website, and your page rank will begin in search results.

You need to know where you can find the backlink, if they are toxic and how you can contact toxic backlink site owners.

While you can use Google Search Console to help grow your site and find your backlinks, it takes a lot of time and is limited in what it can do.

There are faster and better tools available for example, SEMrush has two main areas to deal specifically with backlinks. The first is the Backlink Analytics section, where you can study your competitors. And the second is the Backlink Audit.

With the Backlink Audit, you can check every backlink and sort out toxic ones. This way, you can find and reject toxic backlinks before Google penalizes your website.

With SEMrush, you can email the toxic website owner from the user screen. But the platform can also help you improve your Keyword research, overall SEO, and Marketing strategy.

How to get Backlinks

There are many strategies to get more backlinks:

Earning backlinks

When people discover your content via search engines like Google, social media, or word of mouth and choose to link to your page. The earned link is organic.

To improve your chances of earning more backlinks by creating valuable and relevant content that people should want to link to.

Creating backlink

You can manually add links to your site from other websites. This includes submitting to business directories, leaving blog comments, and replying to forum threads.

Building Backlinks

You can also reach out to site owners, editors, or webmasters and ask them to link to your page. For this to work, you need a clear value proposition. That’s where you can use the following link-building tactics:

• Guest blogging: Write a post for another website where you link back to your site.
• Broken link building: Find the relevant dead link on other sites, reach out to them, and suggest your working link as a replacement. Use a broken link checker like SEMrush to do this. Focus on-site that has the highest Domain Authority.
• The Skyscraper Technique. Search for relevant content with many links, write something better and then ask those linking to the original to link to you instead. Don’t be pushy or spammy; most people happily share your content on social media
• Become a Source for reporters and bloggers. You can use a free service called Help a Reporter Out (HARO). The platform connects people that need sources like bloggers and journalists to people like you who want links exposure. It is a strategy that takes work, but it can be a good way to build high-quality backlinks with the right pitch.
• Content Formats: Use the right content format by writing valuable why and what posts, integrating infographics and videos, and publishing ultimate guides on specific topics.
• Develop something unique. This can be a unique strategy tip or static. While you might not have a unique ingredient, you still got a unique receipt, and that is what matters. Name your strategy and publish it as part of your blog post, preferably a case study. It is a branded strategy with proof and can bring in many backlinks.
• Unlinked mentions: Find out if there is an unlinked mention of your brand and ask the author to make the mention clickable.
• Resource pages. There are pages that exist that only link out to other sites. Search for terms like useful additional or helpful resources and further reading. When you find a resource page, you can reach out to them and ask nicely to link to them. Try personalized outreach emails as it improves how many backlinks you get.