What is external linking? A complete guide to backlinks and their impact

external linking? a complete guide to backlinks and their impact: Now imagine that your flower shop is your website and your friend's restaurant is a well-known website.

In terms of SEO, backlinks or external links are the same links that you give from your website to another website. In this article, we want to examine external link building, its effect on SEO and the importance of backlinks.

What is external linking or BackLink?

Backlink or external linking includes links that other sites have given to your website or are directed from your site to other sites. For example, imagine you own a small flower shop:

This flower shop is located in a side street. Your flower shop is full of beautiful flowers, but few customers come there. One day, you decide to introduce your flower shop to more people.
To do this, you tell one of your friends who owns a large restaurant on the main street that if he invites his customers to visit your flower shop, you will have special offers for them in return.

Your friend who owns a famous restaurant accepts your offer and directs his customers to your flower shop. Suddenly, many customers flock to your flower shop and your business booms.

Now imagine that your flower shop is your website and your friend's restaurant is a well-known website. In this example, the links that the restaurant gives to your flower shop are the same as external links (Backlinks).

These links make search engines like Google see your website as more credible and your rank in search results will rise, just like new customers come to your flower shop and trust you with the credibility of your friend's restaurant.

Note : Using the Backlink Analytics tool, you can easily see the number of external links directed to your site.

In response to the question of what is a backlink, we will give another example: Suppose you are the owner of website A at A.com. If reputable website Y links to one of your pages (eg A.com/product) in one of its articles, you have received an external link from website Y.

Let's look at another example; For example, all scientific sources and references at the end of research articles are external links for main sites. These links show the search engines that your website has been referred from reliable sources and as a result, they can help increase the credibility and ranking of your site.

Difference between internal link and external link

Internal link directs you to other pages of the site, but external link points to another website. So:

• Internal link : Direct to other pages of the same site
• External link : Reference to other sites

Internal linking improves the structure of the site and external linking adds to its credibility.

The importance of external link building in SEO

The more backlinks your website has from reliable sources, the more reliable it is for search engines. This can make you rank higher. Based on ranking factor studies, domains with high ranking pages often have more backlinks than other lower ranking domains.

External links are a way for users to enter your site from other net spaces. When thousands of roads are open to your website, more users can come to your website. Increasing site visitors can help improve your site's ranking in Google.

Higher search rankings can also lead to increased organic traffic and more sales.

The importance of quality and value of backlinks in SEO site

Remember that the quality of backlinks is more important than their number. In other words, having one quality backlink is better than 1000 low quality backlinks on your website.

Although Google has made thousands of changes in its algorithms, backlinks still have an effect as a main and important signal in the ranking of websites. Also, Google has confirmed that external links are one of the 3 most important search engine ranking factors.

When users click on these backlinks, they will be directed directly to your content. This will both increase traffic to your site and increase brand awareness and organically attract a wider audience.

In the following diagram from Semrash website, you can see the effect of external linking on the position of each page in search results pages (SERP):

Types of external linking strategies

In this part of external link building training, we want to list some important strategies in external link building that should be paid attention to:

• Do not use spam sites and methods
• Get links from powerful and reliable sites
• check the received links and ensure that they are directed to the desired page
• Getting links from similar and related sites with close and identical target audience
• Using synonym and sub-keywords next to the main keyword
• Creating an external link Do Follow

Finally, we suggest you take a look at the article " What is SEO " to familiarize yourself with various SEO methods.

types of backlinks (external linking)

In this section, we want to check the different types of backlinks and SEO enhancing links.

1. Backlink Dofollow

These backlinks tell search engines that the landing page is valuable and should be ranked. In fact, Dofollow links are a way of transferring credit to a site.

2. Backlink Nofollow

These links have `rel=”nofollow” feature to tell search engines not to follow and transfer credit to the destination page. These backlinks are often used when the site owner does not want to give credit to the landing page; Like links to competitors' pages.

Therefore, the nofollow backlink does not transfer and link the credit of the 2 domains.

3. Backlink Sponsored

These backlinks have `rel=”sponsored” feature and show that a fee may have been paid for placing the link on that page. be These types of links have less impact on rankings. Because search engines consider these links less valid.

4. Backlink UGC (User-Generated Content)

These backlinks are created from content generated by users on different sites such as forums and comments on blogs. they become These types of links have `rel=”ugc” feature which tells search engines: “These links were created by the user. So, they might be spam!”

types of SEO enhancing backlinks

• Editorial Backlinks ( Editorial Backlinks ): These links are obtained from educational sources and reputable news sites and can have a great effect on SEO.
• image backlinks ( Image Backlinks ): links that refer to images and their sources.
• Back Video Backlinks ( Video Backlinks ): Links that point to video sources.

Backlinks less effective in SEO

Types of backlinks that are probably slightly less effective in SEO:

1. Guest Post Backlinks Guest Post Backlinks )

Links coming from guest posts on other websites. These backlinks are often provided as nofollow.

2. Press Release Backlinks ( Press Release Backlinks )

Links that are in news releases and are mostly nofollow.

3. Comment Backlinks ( Comment Backlinks )

Links that are placed in the comment section of blogs or social posts.

4. Directory Backlinks ( Directory Backlinks )

Links coming from online directories like Google, Yelp or TripAdvisor.

SEO Harmful Backlinks

Backlinks that can harm SEO include:

1. Paid backlinks Dofollow : Buying dofollow paid backlinks is against Google policies and can cause your site to be fined.
2. Spam backlinks in the comments section or forums : Poor quality links that are unhelpfully placed in the comments section or forum posts.
3. Hidden Widget Backlinks ( Hidden Widget Backlinks ): Hidden links in widget codes (the same small graphic programs) that unnaturally refer to your site.

External link building training

In this section, we want to deal with external link building training and check different methods of external link building.

1. Production of quality content

One of the best ways to get external links is to produce quality content. If you produce good and attractive content, other websites will link to your site without asking.

Of course, this method is not very popular in Iran, but some websites use it. Also, you can have interviews with famous people and by publishing the interview, you can get an external link due to the trustworthiness of the source.

2. Advertisement report

In this method, an ad is published on other websites to introduce and increase the reach of your services or products. This method is one of the important tools in internet marketing, which is often done by paying a fee.

You can show your product and services to more people by publishing an ad on popular and reputable sites. Remember to choose sites whose users are your target audience to publish the report. This will help make your ad report more effective.

3. Publish guest post

You can produce a quality content and publish it on another website with the aim of getting backlinks to your site. For this, you must first find a valid website related to your site, then ask the site administrator to allow you to become a guest author and publish your content on that site.

Then produce a content following the rules of the destination site and put your website link in it.

4. Online Business Directories

Many businesses have directories. You can put your information in them and link to your website to attract your target users. Directories are sites that collect information about various businesses and provide them to people who want them.

5. Activities in specialized online forums and forums

You can participate in forums and forums and make them familiar with your business through useful activity. It is better to put your website link in your profile to attract more people. To effectively introduce your brand, you can also read the article ", what is brand"?

6. Social networks

You can also give valuable links to your website through social networks. Getting valuable backlinks through social networks has to do with SEO and digital marketing strategies.

Although direct links from these networks do not have much impact on search engine rankings, remember Instagram branding helps increase brand awareness and attract organic traffic. As a result, it can lead to receiving quality backlinks from other sites.

For this, you can produce valuable and attractive content, collaborate with influencers, be active in groups and forums, and use relevant hashtags. Also, building social profiles, holding contests and communicating with the media can also help attract quality backlinks.

Which backlinks are valuable?

The value of all backlinks is not the same; In other words, if you want to rank higher in SERPs, focus on quality backlinks. As you know, one quality backlink is more powerful than 1000 poor quality backlinks.

But the features of quality and valuable backlinks include the following:

1. Backlinks from reputable and reliable sites

Links from reputable sites (such as Harvard or TechCrunch) are more valuable.

The more authoritative a website is, the more credibility it transfers to your site through links. These links are hard to come by, but they are valuable.

2. Using the target keyword in the link text

The display text of the link (anchor text) must include your target keyword. Be careful not to overuse exact keywords; Because Google may penalize you for using black hat strategies (Google Penguin filter).

3. Thematic connection of the linking site with your site

Links that come from sites related to the topic of your site are more valuable; For example, links from sites related to running or marathons are more important for an article about marathons than links from sites related to fishing.

4. Dofollow Links

Links with "Dofollow" tag are considered for SEO and ranking. Nofollow links (like links from blog comments, press releases, paid ads) are ignored by search engines when ranking.

5. New linking domains for you

Getting links from many different sites is more useful and valuable than getting many links from one site; Therefore, if each of 10 different sites give you a link to your site, these 10 links, in total, will have a greater effect on your ranking than if you get 10 links from a specific site.

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Reaching top ranks in search engine results is the goal of many businesses. To achieve this important goal, you can contact Kanoon Iran Novin Advertising Center, the first and largest advertising center in Iran, and use the services of experts of Novin Iran Digital Marketing Agency .

Summary

Ultimately, external link building is one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) that can have a significant impact on your website's ranking. Different types of backlinks include dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, and UGC, each with different features and effects.

To succeed in external link building, you should obtain credible, relevant, dofollow backlinks from diverse domains to improve your site's SEO and avoid spammy and untrustworthy links.

Given the importance of backlink quality, it is essential to adopt effective strategies for acquiring and managing external links to enhance your site's position in search results and stay ahead of your competitors.