What is a backlink?

Backlinks are a key component of a successful strategy, but we often get asked by our clients “What is a backlink?”. In short, a backlink is when one website has an external hyperlink out to another website.

How do backlinks help with SEO?

Backlinks are one of the ranking signals. Search engines use backlinks as a way of determining how credible a website is. If a website has lots of high-quality backlinks from relevant and reputable websites, the search engine will view the website as being more trustworthy and credible. Search engines want to serve the best websites to the user in relation to their search in order to deliver the best service. Ranking websites that are viewed as credible is one way of doing this.

Quality over quantity

Now that you understand what a backlink is and how they assist with SEO you might be thinking that you want to get loads of backlinks pointing to your website. This isn’t how it works though. It is all about having backlinks from other reputable websites that are natural and relevant: quality over quantity. The quality of a link can be seen by using backlink tools, such as Majestic SEO or SemRush. These tools interpret the way that search engines determine the strength of backlinks into metrics that we can use to optimise a website – such as ‘trust flow’ or ‘domain authority’. The higher the ‘trust flow’ or ‘domain authority’, the better.

What makes a good backlink?

There are many things to consider when it comes to getting good backlinks. The perfect backlink would be all of the below:

- From a high-quality website that has credibility, such as The Guardian.
- From a relevant web page to your business. For example, if you are a hotel then having a link from a ‘Best hotels in the UK’ web page on a hotel specific site.
- Point to a live website page that is relevant to the topic. It is good to have links spread across your website. For example, if the link is talking about weddings then the best link destination would be your wedding page.
- Having keyword focussed anchor text that is relevant to your business. For example, having the link anchor text as ‘Country house hotel in Warwickshire’ instead of just a brand name or ‘click here’.
- Be positioned high up the web page as opposed to sitting at the very bottom of a page.
- Have clear styling that makes the link visible. For example, bold text that is a different colour and is underlined as opposed to being hidden in the normal text.
- Will be a ‘follow’ link and not a ‘no-follow’ link. Google views these both differently, but from an SEO perspective a ‘follow’ link brings more benefits.
- Be one of the only links from the web page as opposed to being linked from a page that is packed full of links as this appears spammy.
- Generated naturally and not a paid placement.

How do I obtain more backlinks?

Building backlinks ethically is one of the more difficult elements of search engine optimisation. Ethically is a keyword in that sentence. You could easily buy a host of spammy backlinks, but this is bad practice, and we strongly recommend against this. We only focus on ‘white hat SEO’ practices. Methods for building backlinks include:

- Outreach to unlinked brand mentions to ask for a link to be added.
- Reaching out to industry blog sites and influencers to obtain a placement. This might require a visit from them to review your business for example.
- Analysing competitor backlink profiles to see where their best backlinks are coming from and seeing how you can get a link from those sites.
- Optimising your current backlink profile to ensure that your current links have optimised anchor text and are linking to the most relevant page possible.
- Outreach to lost links in order to see if the link can be obtained again.
- Skyscraper content – reviewing successful articles that have generated a lot of links and writing it better. Once this is uploaded on your site, reach out to the sites that are linking to the competitor article and see if they would like to update their link to your website as your article is better.
- Create infographics that are useful as these naturally obtain backlinks.
- Publish findings from data studies as these naturally obtain backlinks.
- PR is a great way to generate backlinks.
- Create ‘ultimate guides’ which are in-depth and cover topics that people will find useful.
- Outreach to local attractions that have ‘places to stay near us pages’.
- Speak with suppliers to see if they would be able to provide a link to your site, this could be from a testimonial or case study.