What are SEO backlinks?

Think about it this way: the internet is made up of two things—content, and links between content. When search engines first started indexing web pages, they needed a way to determine which pages were most relevant to certain queries—a system of ranking. The quality and number of backlinks pointing to a page immediately became a factor in determining that page’s rank. Backlinks represent a vote of confidence from one site to another. The more quality backlinks your page earns, the more valuable it is in the eyes of the search engine, and the more likely it is to achieve a high ranking.

Follow vs. nofollow links: What’s the difference?

The difference between follow and nofollow links: a follow link carries link equity. A nofollow link carries no link equity.

What is link equity?

Formally referred to as “link juice,” link equity is the amount of clout a link transfers from one page to another. Before nofollow links, all links carried link equity, and spam (posting links across the web not for the sake of being informative, but for the sake of acquiring referral traffic) was a surefire way to get your pages to rank higher. It was common to see several sites owned by the same person on the first page of the SERP, and to see blog comments flooded with links to irrelevant content. Today, you can still click through from one page to another using nofollow links; but search engines don’t follow them when they crawl the web, so no link equity is passed.

The amount of link equity a link carries is determined by several factors. Links from relevant content, from authoritative sites, and from body paragraphs have more equity than links from irrelevant content, non-authoritative sites, and page headers and footers.

What is domain authority?

A website’s domain authority corresponds directly to its ability to rank in the search engine. Conceptually, you can think of domain authority as an extension of link equity. If a page’s link equity is determined by the number and quality of its links, then a site’s domain authority is determined by the link equity of all its pages.

What is link building?

Link building is an SEO strategy by which an SEO acquires links to boost a page’s link equity; and therefore its ranking; and therefore its traffic. Both internal and external link building can help boost page authority, but one is decidedly harder than the other!

Internal vs. external links: What’s the difference?

Internal links are links that come from within the same domain. External links are links that don’t come from within the same domain.

How do I build links?

Internal link building is a means of piggybacking on one’s own link equity. You build internal links by linking from pages on your own site. For example: this page’s authority is bolstered by links from other SEO-related pages that live within www.wordstream.com. If you have a large website, you can use a site search to find related content, like so: "site:wordstream.com search term."

Look to link from pages that are already authoritative and high-ranking pages; but be wary that linking too much from these pages can have an adverse effect on their link equity. Once you identify a page, you’ll want to find some anchor text that closely matches your target keyword. Then link away!

External link building is the process of soliciting links to your content from other websites. Who would want to link to your website? Why, people in related industries who could use your informative resources! There are a variety of methods when it comes to building external links, but the general roadmap looks like this: find pages that could use your resource; find the contact information of the authors/webmasters of said pages; kindly invite said authors/webmasters to link to your new and valuable resource.

What is anchor text?

This is anchor text. It’s the clickable text in a hyperlink. This is exact match anchor text. It’s anchor text that exactly matches the target keyword of the page to which it links. Anchor text informs the crawling search engine about the topic of the linked-to page. Exact match anchor text is more valuable than non-exact-match anchor text, but too many exact match links can appear spammy and can negatively impact a page. Moral of the story: a little bit of variety is good!

What is broken link building?

Broken link building is the process of seeking out links to pages that no either no longer exist or have been moved and replacing them with your own pages. There are many ways to find broken links. Most SEO tools allow you to check the backlink profiles of competitors and see which of their links are broken. If you find a heavily linked-to resource that has either switched URLs or no longer exists, and that’s similar to a resource you already offer or are willing to create, then you’re in luck! Dig up the page owner’s contact information, and offer your resource as a replacement.   

Will redirects affect SEO? 

Redirects are a natural part of linking between content on your site. That said, 301 redirects pass anywhere between 90-99% of link equity (read: ranking power) to the redirected page. So, if you’ve moved a piece of content between several different pages, and all those redirects are still in place, you might be sacrificing some load speed/link equity. It’s a good idea to eliminate those superfluous intermediaries.

Still, not all redirects are created equal. 301 redirects, in which a page is moved permanently, are the most SEO-friendly redirects. They pass between 90-99% of link equity. 302 redirects, which indicate a temporarily redirected page, pass less link equity (though some Google employees have disputed this). Meta refreshes are redirects that take place on the page level, rather than the server level. These are most commonly associated with the text, “If you are not redirected in five seconds, click here.” Meta refreshes pass some link equity, but are not a recommended SEO tactic.