What are Backlinks in SEO?

There are billions of websites on the web and for each search-query there are hundreds and thousands of contenders. How do you think search engines prioritize one website over the other for a search query? Among various parameters, search engines use backlinks as a major factor for ranking web pages.  To a great extent, the credibility of a web page is testified by the availability of maximum backlinks!

The Basics

In SEO, a backlink is kind of a hyperlink that links to your web page from someone else’s website. Also known as Inbound Links, play a very important role in determining a website’s popularity.

More backlinks you have pointing to your webpage, greater are the chances of your blog or website showing higher up in SERPs.

Are All Backlinks Effective?

No.

We always advise our clients to avoid low quality links. Remember, quality is more important than quantity here. One back-link from a major news website in your area, for instance, is far more beneficial for SEO than a dozen links from poorly designed and low quality websites. Many years ago, it was a common practice to create hundreds and thousands of backlinks in one go but those days are now gone. And for good.

Why Backlinks Matter

Backlinks influence the following aspects of your website:

1. Indexing: When you create a new website or blog, it is nothing short of a big challenge to get it indexed quickly on Google. Search engines index ‘pages with backlinks from an active site’ faster than those that don’t have any.
2. Search Engine Ranking: When you get good backlinks, your website’s online visibility receives a boost. Links with anchor text are more effective because for search engines, they are more organic in nature and rightly so.
3. Page Rank: Getting backlinks from high-PR (Page Rank) websites is the one of the best ways to increase your page rank.