Innovkraft Inc

Backlinks: Types, Importance, and DoFollow vs NoFollow Links

what are backlinks

Have you wondered that, as a brand, what would your customers or visitors be looking for, on a website? If you ask us, they look for details like compelling content, easy navigation, visually appealing yet simple design, mobile friendliness and most importantly, credibility and trustworthiness. This is where backlinks come into picture; to authenticate your content and ultimately help your website’s ranking and increase conversions.

In this blog, let us know everything about backlinks, their significance and the distinguishing points between Do Follow and No Follow backlinks to help you with a better website and content optimization for better visibility and credibility.

what are backlinks

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are incoming links from external websites to yours, and a significant factor for determining a strong online presence for your website in the search engines. You might have heard this term from your digital marketing partner while discussing your SEO strategies. So, with SEO rules changing all the time, you might wonder what are backlinks and do they matter with these dynamic changes?

Simply putting it for you, backlinks are external links that lead back to your site from another domain. Ummm, did you get it? No? Yes, it may be a little too detailed than this. So, for you to create a backlink, there are rules to follow, to benefit through rankings. For instance, to create backlinks, it is mandatory for you to insert a hyperlink to the text leading to a particular page or website content like a blog. Here is an example where www.innovkraft.in is now valid only with this hyperlink attached to the text www.innovkraft.in.

What is the Importance of Backlinks?

There is much importance of backlinks as they pass on the page and the domain authority to your website increasing the chances of search engine rankings. It acts like a verification or an authenticator to your website indicating they have chosen a trustworthy website to back content.

For an overview of what are backlinks functions, it is an indicator to Google and other search engines showing that someone has validated you and finds it valuable. These links will then be crawled by Google bots to authenticate the information, and your chances are higher if your backlinks are placed high on top.

So how do we know if it is an authoritative website or not? One can gauge the authoritativeness of a website by measuring the three main metrics which are domain authority, page authority and the spam score.

In short, if you want your website to rank, build relevant, authoritative and trustworthy links that the readers or customer can rely on. In case you are a digital marketing agency, understand the importance of backlinks thoroughly before trying to get hold of well-known and authoritative links of a high-ranking digital marketing agency that are not under the black-hat SEO radar.

What are the Types of Backlinks?

Attributes
Types of Backlinks
Description
Can be both Do Follow Backlinks and No Follow Backlinks
Editorial Backlinks
Earned organically when another website validates your content is of value & links to it naturally.
Guest Post Backlinks
Obtained by external writing guest posts for other websites in your niche market.
Directory Backlinks
This type is got by submitting your website or content to online directories.
Image Backlinks
Links embedded within the images that direct to your website.
Video Backlinks
Links embedded within videos that point to your website.
Resource Page Backlinks
Getting links from resource pages that contain helpful tools and resources to your niche.
Do Follow Backlinks
Broken Link Building
Looking for broken links on other websites and offering your own relevant content as a replacement.
Scholarly Backlinks
Links from educational institutes, academic journals, and research papers and their sites.
No Follow Backlinks
Forum Backlinks
Obtained by taking part in digital forums and including links to your website in your posts.
Social Media Backlinks
Links are got from social media sites and platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Note that among the types of backlinks, usually most links are Do Follow backlinks by default unless specifically marked as No follow backlinks. The latter is only treated as a hint by Google, rather than a strict direction to follow, and meant only for ranking purpose. These attributes mainly follow the individual website policies for linking.

How to Build Backlinks for My Website?

After knowing what are backlinks, it is important to know the following steps to create backlinks-

  • Come up with relevant content related to your business and brand
  • Ensure to collate a library of different content format that is informational to the readers, as backlinks reply on these contents primarily. After all, if there is no content, there is no backlink at all.
  • Post the content creation, ensure your site is optimized well so as to get ranked in the SERPs
  • Ensure that your site is healthy, by securing your website with SSL certificate, check for mobile friendliness, check for broken links, make it easy to navigate, optimize content and images accordingly etc, so that you are ranked high
  • Lastly, set up backlinks in genuine and relevant sites like business directories, or an E-commerce forum, especially the local sites with their blogs, publications and other relevant content.

What Backlinks to Avoid?

While looking to include backlinks, avoid these-
  • The low-quality or unauthenticated directories whose intention is more to make money than to be of help to the community. Search engines often identify such sites and penalize them for doing so. It is best not to get caught up in this situation yourself.
  • Spam websites are becoming increasingly popular with their unethical behaviours and are considered as bad backlinks.
  • Look for hacked links that are inserted without permission of the owners and can be hidden within the site’s content in places difficult to discover
  • Irrelevant backlinks from site that does not fit in your niche market are also considered as bad backlinks

Difference between No Follow and Do Follow Backlinks

Feature
No follow Backlinks
Do follow Backlinks
Definition
Links that do not pass PageRank to the linked website, having no direct impact on its search engine rankings.
Links that pass PageRank (link equity) to the linked website, influencing its search engine rankings.
HTML Code
Include the attribute rel=”nofollow” in the link’s HTML code.
No specific attribute in the link’s HTML code.
Impact on SEO
No direct impact on search engine rankings.
Significant impact on search engine rankings.
Other Benefits
Can still drive traffic and improve brand visibility.
Can drive significant traffic and improve brand visibility.
types of backlinks

Conclusion

Now that you know the answers to the fundamental question “What are backlinks?” You are now equipped to create a premium quality backlink keeping customer intent in mind as a primary goal. For this to work, you need to have the best content with unique information that is helpful for your visitors, and to get hold of one, it is ideal to partner with a digital marketing agency like Innovkraft Inc, to provide you with the right prerequisites like SEO strategies, optimization ideas and more for a top-performing stellar website for your brand.

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