What is backlink: definition and introduction of backlink
Backlinks refer to links from other websites to the target website. For example, if there is a hyperlink on website A that links to one of the pages on website B, the link is the reverse of website B. To link, as shown below.
Before the birth of search engines, the commerciality of websites was not so high at that time. Internet users shuttled between web pages through hyperlinks, and when a term was mentioned on a web page and needed more in-depth explanation, It is a very common behavior to make it a link to a web page with more information.
After the advent of search engines and SEO, the behavior of website owners using links has changed considerably.
The importance of backlinks: the role of backlinks in SEO
In the early days of search engine development, web content, title, H tags and other elements were mainly used to judge page relevance. Therefore, many website owners used this feature to fill in a large number of keywords in web pages, or even place completely irrelevant but high traffic , And such an approach can indeed improve page ranking and bring more traffic, but it brings a very poor user experience.
As a result, search engines add other people's statements to the judgment of relevance, that is, backlinks and anchor text.
PageRank, a well-known algorithm, is named after one of the founders of Google: Larry Page.
The concept was originally based on the rating of academic papers. The more citations of academic papers, the higher their importance; and the importance of papers being cited by people with different achievements or papers. It will be different.
A well-known analogy is voting. The reverse link from page A to page B is like A vote for B, which increases the importance of B. At the same time, the importance of A itself determines the weight of his vote. , The higher the PR, the more important the votes cast.
For example, today if you want to ask someone to help recommend which pizza is more delicious, and among the two options, three little pigs recommended the pizza on the left, and the one on the right is not specifically recommended. You should be inclined to choose the one on the left. , Three little pigs recommend delicious Pizza.
But if hell chef Gordon Ramsay jumps out and says that the pizza on the right is more delicious. At this time, compared to the three little pigs, you might believe what the chef said, because he is eating The field has a high degree of authority.
The effect of backlinks is similar to the above examples in simple terms. PageRank is also an algorithm introduced by Google in the early days. Today, the calculation of the entire ranking factor has become much more complicated, and the degree of influence of the PR value itself It has also become relatively small (backlinks are still an important factor affecting rankings, only the PR value algorithm confirmed by Google).
In addition to the above mentioned, backlinks themselves are also the channel for search spiders to retrieve webpages. Search spiders follow links between webpages to find the next webpage. A large number of backlinks can help your website be included more quickly and completely. .
The difference between reverse link, internal link, and external link
Before officially entering the explanation of the back link, I will introduce the proper terms related to the link to everyone.
People who are new to SEO may not understand the difference between these terms. Here is a complete summary of ideas for everyone, because many first-hand SEO news have to read foreign articles or use foreign tools. If confused, it will lead to understanding of wrong concepts in the learning process, and even affect the execution plan of SEO.
- Inbound Link reverse link (inbound link) = External Link external link (outside link)
Place a link on website A to connect to website B. For website B, website A is a backlink (inbound link, external link) of website B.
- Outbound Link (outbound link)
Place a link on website A to connect to website B. For website A, website B is an outbound link (outbound link) of website A.
From the above two examples, it can be seen that external links and reverse links are actually viewed from a different "angle", so the explanations are different. The links are placed on website A and connected to website B.
- Internal Link ( Internal Link )
Take the following figure as an example. Place a link on page A of website A to page B of website A. This kind of link is called an internal link.
Internal links are often used in website navigation breadcrumbs, related articles/product recommendations, etc. Because this article uses backlinks as the theme,
The relationship between the link and the anchor text
Anchor text, also known as Anchor Text, refers to the visible and clickable text in a hyperlink, and is one of the basic concepts for establishing a link. Anchor text is one of the sources of information for search engines to understand the target page, because it can reflect how other people view the content of the target page.
The types of anchor text are quite diverse (because we can’t control how other people want to link to your website). The types can be roughly divided into complete matching keywords, partial matching keywords, brand names, hybrids, URLs, general Words, pictures, etc.
Take Qibao’s official website as an example. Others may set the anchor text as: Qibao SEO, Qibao Network, click here, visit now... etc. An unoperated website should have natural and scattered The proportion of anchor text distribution.
The relationship between the link and the nofollow attribute
The nofollow attribute instructs search engines to "don't go to the link on this page" or "don't go to this link", which can be applied to meta tags (meta tags) or individual links. The code example is as follows.
Meta tags:
Individual link: example
According to Google’s documentation, through the setting of nofollow, the weight of the link will not be directed to the target website, so we usually hope that the source website of the backlink does not set nofollow (provided that the source website has a certain quality, Non-spam websites can effectively recommend our website to search engines), hoping to make Google more understand and trust our website through the recommendation of external websites, and to bring recommended traffic to the website.
The following text is quoted from Google documentation: Use rel="nofollow" for specific links
"Usually we do not go to these links. This means that Google will not transmit PageRank or use anchor text in these links."
However, there are many large websites or forums that preset links to external links with nofollow attributes, such as Facebook, Twitter, PTT, etc. Although this link cannot convey weight, is the value of this link relatively low? Is the purpose of backlinks only to convey link weight?
Through effective exposure on these websites, users can click on the link and enter our website, leading to valuable traffic. At this time, you need to consider whether there is corresponding content in your website that can retain visitors What? Continuously creating valuable and high-quality content and effectively answering visitors' questions is the best strategy for website management and brand image maintenance!
Twitter case:
Facebook case:
PTT case:
How to establish reverse links: develop link strategies through observation and analysis
Before starting, ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you think it would be helpful for users to see such a link on the website?
- Do you think users will want to click on it when they see this link?
- Is your link really the information users are looking for?
- Is the location where your link appears, where users expect to see it?
The first step is to grasp the status of the current website Link Profile. If your website has a service account for Google Search Console, you can view it through the "Links" report, and the results are shown in the following figure (the URL in the sample image is processed by mosaic).
The link report contains two parts: external links and internal links. The report fields include:
- The number of backlinks on the website page.
- The number of internal links on the website page.
- Top link sites: Popular backlink domains and the number of links to the site.
- The content of the popular link text (anchor text).
In this report of Google Search Console, all links may not be listed. For example, a webpage blocked by robots.txt will not be listed. Links to this webpage will not be listed. At the same time, data will be repeated and merged. So the number of links you actually see will decrease.
By grasping the current status of existing backlinks, we can think about:
- Which page has more backlinks? Does more backlinks mean that the content on that page is more attractive?
- What is the distribution of anchor text? Do the words on the report concentrate on a specific word?
- Is the reverse link invalid? If you can no longer browse, you can arrange to repair the webpage, or ask the other party to change the destination URL.
- Does the anchor text of the backlink do not mention brand words or product (service) terms? At this time, you can discuss with the other party's website whether it can help change the anchor text.
Link building starts with analyzing competitors: backlink detection analysis, tool introduction
The Google Search Console above provides limited information on backlinks, and does not provide link quality indicators, anchor texts corresponding to backlinks, etc. We usually use third-party tools for analysis. In addition to the Google Search Console mentioned above, there are also some paid tools such as Ahrefs and Moz, which can also provide backlink information, and there are detailed index data that can help us determine the current status of the link profile of the website. But pay special attention to the different methods of collecting and organizing data, the results obtained by different tools will not be exactly the same.
Analyze and understand which websites your customers frequently visit and what channels are they used to receiving information through? Find out which websites and platforms your target audience is active on. Collect these valuable websites, and then formulate their own website backlink strategy.
After collecting the website, how do you start next? The following introduces several types of websites and ways to implement links, you can refer to and actually implement them.
- Media News Site
Blog site
Backlinks to blogs may appear in the form of "professional articles", which can help websites quickly gain the weight of blogs. But when discussing cooperation with bloggers, you should pay attention to whether the anchor text setting is related to our website, and whether the blog is relevant and relevant to our website is high enough, in order to truly play the value of this backlink.
- Forums, communities
Other high-weight websites
High-powered organizations (websites with .org or .edu), trade unions/associations, and related cooperative manufacturers are all well-exposed websites, and such websites are highly related to their own websites, which will be of equal value Gao's backlinks, I suggest you try to negotiate link cooperation with these websites.
Link quality judgment: judgment indicators related to reverse links
Basic link index data can be obtained through the tools mentioned above, such as the number of links, domain name weight, number of anchor texts, etc. Next, in addition to the indicators of the tool, you must also consider the conditions when building links.
- Site relevance
In the previous description, it was also mentioned that the degree of relevance between the website of the backlink source and its own website will affect Google's evaluation of this link. In addition, in the article where the link is placed, whether the content of the context and the link are related is also an important criterion for judging. When selecting sites with backlinks, remember that "relevance" is an indicator that must be considered.
- The location of the link on the page
Reverse links should be placed in a conspicuous and natural position in the article as much as possible. The value of such links will be higher. Imagine that when your visitors are browsing the page, if we place the back link at the end of the page, this kind of link is not only difficult for visitors to notice, or even not easy to be clicked on, but Google may also consider it as a low-quality link.
- Link-out density
If a website has a large number of external links, this kind of website is easy to be judged by Google as a spam website. The links established on this kind of website will also deliver low scores. A detailed case will be explained in the following content .
Google has always advocated natural external links (white hat techniques), because when the quality of your website is high enough to cause discussion, it will naturally be shared by others, which is to create external links (backlinks), but today, When the website's popularity is not high enough, some people may want to build links by exploiting loopholes.
Here are a few key points mentioned in the Google Quality Guidelines. When establishing backlinks, you should avoid these forms of links to avoid the risk of being penalized by Google's algorithm.
- Hide link
There are many ways to hide links, such as adjusting the color of the link to the same color as the background color, or hiding the link under an image or article. These methods are all frauds for Google (black hat technique) , Whether on your own website or on an external website, you must avoid this technique.
- Link farm
A link farm means that the website has only external links, and there are multiple links to each other, the main purpose is to operate the page rank of the website. This technique was effective in the past, but with the evolution of Google’s algorithm, this kind of website has no effect. If you put a backlink on this kind of website, it will have no actual effect on your website and will be After Google finds it, it may be punished instead. When laying out links, we should avoid such sites from becoming our backlinks.
- Message form
Leave a message under the high-weight blog and insert a large number of links in the message. This method is a commonly seen operation method before. This form is also recognized by Google as a negative link configuration method, which will bring to our website Negative impact.
For more information about link configuration, please refer to the Google documentation: link configuration
After reading the above description, you may be curious, but which websites are suitable for placing links?
In Moz, there is an indicator called " Spam Score ". This indicator can help us judge the quality of the website (whether it is a spam website) and the trustworthiness of the website. You can use the tools introduced above to help determine the appropriate website based on the indicator.
GoogleLink quality inspection: Penguin algorithm and human intervention
- Penguin Algorithm (Penguin Update)
In order to prevent low-quality backlinks from being abused to manipulate ranking results, Google released the Penguin algorithm in 2012. The purpose is to find and downgrade sites that use "unnatural" links to manipulate rankings.
On September 23, 2016, Google released Penguin 4.0 as part of the core calculation, which means that it will be updated in real time and will not announce future updates. This also means that its impact on the website is "real-time", and the website owner no longer needs to look forward to the next update as in the past to free the website from penguin punishment. At the beginning of this generation of Penguin algorithm, when it finds a bad link, it will choose to ignore it and not put it into the consideration of website ranking.
Nowadays, when considering the deployment of backlinks, in addition to the quantity, the quality of the links must also be considered, because each link is not equal, and high-quality and relevant links can have a better impact on website ranking.
- Specialized intervention
Google has detected unnatural, artificial, fake, or tampered links pointing to your website. Purchasing links or adding link configurations in order to manipulate PageRank violates Google’s "Webmaster Guidelines", and may result in part or all of the site's content requiring special intervention. For details, please refer to Google's documentation: Specialized handling reports
After reviewing the link status of the site, assuming that these are not the backlinks we have set, and we do not have the permission to remove the links, you can use the " Disavow backlinks " tool to submit a txt format to Google File, submit the list of domains or links you wish to ban to Google.
Please refer to the Google documentation for details: Backlinks are prohibited
in conclusion
After reading the above content, you should have a better understanding of backlinks, and realize that the establishment of backlinks can be said to be one of the indispensable and important tasks of SEO.
The keyword does not appear in our website, but through the external link setting precise anchor text, our website is ranked first in the search results of this term, which shows that the external link still has an important influence on the website.
Backlinks can accelerate the speed of the website being included by Google, and can increase the trustworthiness and authority of the website. When creating a backlink, you should think from the standpoint of the user and the search engine. Is the page reached through the link relevant, can it bring value to the user, or is it a bad experience?
The ideal way to generate high-quality backlinks is to create content worth sharing.
When the content you write and organize today can provide considerable value or information, people will naturally share your content, and the number of backlinks will naturally increase. Operating in this way, you can have High-quality content can also drive the growth of links and website traffic. It can be said to be the most solid practice in response to content marketing.
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