What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important for SEO?
A backlink or inbound link is a link coming from another site to your website.
The person receiving the link is the one who refers to the link as a backlink. In other words, if someone links to your site, you have a backlink from that person. Backlinks are very different from outbound links (links from your site to another website) and internal links (links from one internal page of your website to another internal page of your website).
Backlinks are important for SEO (search engine optimization) because they:
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- They drive traffic to your website.
If someone posts a backlink on their website to your website, one of their readers might click on it and you will benefit from that referral traffic.
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- They can help you rank higher in search results.
Backlinks tell search engines that your website is an authority on a certain subject. So the more backlinks you have from high quality, high traffic, high authority websites, the better your website will rank in search engine results.
A good inbound link comes from an authoritative website, and uses natural anchor text. Anchor text is simply the text copy that’s hyperlinked, like this. (The anchor text there is “like this.”) Natural anchor text means you’re not just hyperlinking keywords left and right. Google understands the context of a link, so more generic “learn more” and “click here” anchor text can be just as valuable as keyword-optimized anchor text.
