3 Ways Backlinks Improve SEO of Your Site

Here is some fresh news of interest for SEO experts working with backlinks: the day before this was written, Google analyst John Mueller provided some explanations on the effect of adding <a rel=”external”…> and <a rel=”noopener”…> attributes to hyperlinks. As Search Engine Roundtable reported, this gives nothing to search engine optimization. Although those attributes are used by website owners sometimes to display links differently, adding them has “no effect” on SEO. A good example of how technical issues should be taken into account when designing a backlink-related SEO strategy: it’s not as straightforward as one might think, and not every backlink counts. 

Here is another good example: almost a year ago, Google announced that it would penalize using dofollow backlinks. Do you think blog posting is ideal for your brand promotion? Still true – but please, only with the nofollow parameter, no matter if you pay for the post containing backlinks or write it yourself.

Toughening of regulation doesn’t mean backlinks have become less important for search engine optimization. On the contrary, this all made backlinks management strategies more considered and balanced. That’s why not a single article about SEO today goes without mentioning backlinks, and there are so many ways they can affect it. Here are just three important nuances to think of.

They Improve SEO Quality Itself

Website ranking is probably the most important question which has become much more complex. How do backlinks affect the rankings of websites they lead to? The original Google algorithm of website ranking took into account the mere presence of backlinks and their quantity: the more – the better, seen as a demonstration of reliability of resources they point at.

Very soon webmasters started to abuse this method of promotion of websites of even poor quality. At the same time owners of external websites where backlinks were accumulated started to add the nofollow parameter to inform search bots they are not a part of it. Google noticed and appreciated that.

It seems like Google interprets the nofollow backlink attribute literally, meaning that the search engine doesn’t follow it. It doesn’t take it into account for website rank calculation either. 

Does that mean backlinks now have only a minor influence on rankings? For obvious reasons, in its attempt to fight what was called “a spam technology” of promotion, Google made abuse of backlinks impossible. It doesn’t even index the website to which the backlink points because it doesn’t follow it (although Yahoo! still does, apart from following).

Even if Google doesn’t do indexation, the modernized ranking algorithm still works. Earlier, what you had to think of in the first place was the quantity of backlinks. Today, what really matters is quality. That means the evolution of search engine optimization itself! With that in mind, it may not be so easy to design advanced backlink-building tactics, but professional consultants from https://www.velocityconsultancy.com/ who know it inside out make the life of SEO experts much easier.

They Still Increase Rankings

Despite what was said earlier, backlinks are one of the main instruments to manage website rankings. Although some time has passed since then, results of the study by Moz clearly demonstrated a positive correlation between external backlinks and a website’s position among other search results: top websites, as it was discovered, had at least one.

That still holds true, with the only difference of higher standards of quality required for an effective backlink building strategy. Low-quality backlinks do not count, being placed on resources:

• With low domain authority (DA) of 20 and below;
• Without unique or relevant content.

Picking up correct resources and negotiating with their owners requires firm policies, processes, and procedures in your company, setting up which may go faster with bizmanualz.com whose team has helped more than 26 thousand customers since 1995.

They Increase Citation

Let’s look at something from Yandex terminology. Until 2018, the biggest Russian search engine with slightly less than a half of the total market share (as of July 2019, as shown by Search Facts) used to operate the so-called Thematic Citation Index (TCI). It later was replaced with a more sophisticated measure of website quality – the Site Quality Index. This could be a reflection of Google’s attempts to disregard the mere quantity of references (as it may be infinite, as demonstrated by the absence of upper boundaries of the former TCI index), focusing on quality instead.

Indeed, the transformation of quantity into quality at a certain moment in time is one of the fundamental principles of Hegelian dialectics. It works, being a universal trend, so it doesn’t matter if Yandex made it with or without Google’s influence. What matters is that citation should now be increased by taking the quality of resources into account. High-quality backlinks are placed:

• At thematically similar resources;
• At highly ranked, trusted resources with DA of at least 40;
• Wisely within the text which is also thematically relevant to your website.

With so many nuances to be kept in mind, it might be helpful to outsource that part of search engine optimization to magecloud.agency which knows many other tips for making your website traffic more organic.

New Level of Backlinking

What we have observed in recent years is an evolutionary process following its natural path of development. After learning the basics of flying above the safety net, SEO managers can now surf the wind streams and fly wherever they want – but at their own risk and with full responsibility for actions. 

Author Bio

Nancy P. Howard has been working as a journalist at an online magazine in London for a year. She is also a professional writer on such topics as blogging, SEO, and marketing.