Backlink Building: An Introduction & SEO Link Building Guide

A Backlink Checker is a tool used for checking incoming links pointing to your domain. A backlink checker is essential when you doing SEO link building and want to view every relevant and spam backlinks pointing to your domain.

So, do you really need a backlink checker? It lets you view all the incoming external links to your domain for free. Then, you need to add this post to your RSS feed. I will show you one of the best and rare backlink checkers on the internet.

As a blog owner, I’m sure you must have heard of the Google Search Console. It was previously known as the webmaster tool. Search console is a free service offered by Google. It helps submit your sitemaps and index your blog for search ranking.

This tool is for submitting sitemaps. But, it has unlimited features like a backlink checker. The list of what you can do with these tools is endless. But before I take you any further, let’s know what a backlink is.

Backlinks are all external links from other blogs pointing to your webpage. They have a hyperlink anchor text or an image link. Clicking them leads people to your webpage or homepage.

Building Backlinks are still very essential in the game of SEO. Moreover, backlinks are powerful and can help skyrocket your search engine ranking enormously. 

As a web owner, you need to set aside or hire some agency to help you build backlinks to your blog. But hiring an agency to build backlinks for you is very expensive. That is why I recommend you build them yourself. But how do you build relevant backlinks? 

Backlinks are a way of telling the search engines that what you are linking out to is relevant is important.

Backlink - An Introduction And SEO Link Building Guide 1
EXAMPLE OF A BACKLINK

Take, for instance, you submitted your cv for an interview with a very reputable company. Let say Wikipedia. Inside your cv, there is a recommendation from another reputable company, let say Facebook. The recommendation from Facebook in your cv will boost your chances of getting a job with Wikipedia.

That is how backlinks work. When a bigger website gives you a backlink, it tells search engines that the receiving website is relevant. As a result, it will increase your ranking enormously.

A backlink from a related niche will boost your relevancy, your authority.

HOW TO BUILD BACKLINKS
HOW TO CREATE BACKLINK

So now you know what a backlink is? How do you create them?

  • Go to any post you intend to create the backlinks with.
  • Highlight your desired anchor text and click on the link icon.
  • Now go to the website you want to give the backlink.
  • Copy the URL of the webpage or homepage, go back to the post editor, paste the copied link in the space and click on apply.

And voila, your backlink is ready.

Without a doubt, backlinks are essential in the game of SEO. Backlinks are very important that they cannot be overlooked.

A few backlinks from authoritative websites can earn you a soft spot in search engines. Backlinks are so important that big brands hire people or agencies to build them high and quality backlinks. So therefore, backlinks are essential in SEO.

TWO WAYS TO BUILD HIGH-QUALITY RELEVANT BACKLINKS

Getting backlinks from other blogs is not easy at all. It is not something you just get, especially when your blog is new. But when you get famous, you will start getting them without asking for it. When you create excellent content(Recommended proofreaders like Grammarly and ProWritingAid), people will automatically link up to it. But for now, you need to do the job by asking for backlinks. Let’s take a look at some of the ways to build backlinks. 

TWO WAYS TO BUILD HIGH-QUALITY RELEVANT BACKLINKS
TWO WAYS TO BUILD HIGH-QUALITY RELEVANT BACKLINKS

Also checkout: six ways to build a better blog

GUEST POSTING

This is an excellent way of building relevant backlinks. Formally guest posting was very hot years back because virtually everybody was doing guest posting. Guest posting is no longer blazing hot. But still relevant if you are looking for a faster and more convenient way of building backlinks. 

Basically, this method involves you creating content for another blog in your niche. You get to create content for other blogs in your niche. It will have an anchor link leading people to your webpage.

Anchor text is a clickable link. It can lead prospects or Google crawlers from one page to another. But, how do you start guest posting on other blogs?

Simple, it is easy to look for blogs that accept guest posting. Search your niche site that accepts guest posting on google. Then, pick up a blog that still accepts guest posting on their blog and starts creating content for them.

The content you create for them should include a link that directs prospects to your web post. It is advisable to use a specific keyword you are trying to rank for as the anchor text. Also, it is advisable to use other words as your anchor text. Because, it helps communicate with google that your blog is not spam. But it must be related to the content. Remember always to create unique content without plagiarism.

You should always remember that you should not keep building external links from the same blog. Because, it adds only little authority and relevancy to your own blog. 

Another thing to look out for when guest posting is that you should target blogs with higher domain authority than yours. This builds your trust and relevance in Google.

Guest blogging is also a significant way of driving great referral traffics to your blog.

What exactly is broken link backlink building? You may be confused right now, but trust me, this also one of the easiest ways of getting backlinks.

So what is the process of building links with broken links? It’s merely referred to as the broken link found on a web post. Maybe you are reading an article about your blog’s topic. You notice a broken link when you click on it. It leads to a 404 error page. That means the page you are trying to reach no longer exists.

This could be your next avenue of getting backlinks. The owner of the blog may not be aware of the broken links on its page. 

When I notice a broken link on an old blog post, I will alert the web owner. I will tell them about the broken link on its page. Because, it can ruin the UX of the people reading the blog post.

The blog owner is likely to link to you. This is because you are doing them a big favor. You’re bringing a broken link on their blog to their notice.

But before I tell the web owner about the broken link, I will make similar content. It will relate to the broken link. Still, you can alert the web owner right away if you have similar content. It should be related to the broken link found on the page. But how do you identify a broken link?

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Simple! Finding broken links is easy. There is a Chrome extension that can help you find broken links on the web. This extension comes very handily when you read a post on another blog related to your niche.

Go to chrome browser and search for check my links extension and install it. Anytime you are reading a blog post, all you have to do is activate the extension. Doing this, you will see a list of all the valid and broken links on that webpage or a blog post. Your system will highlight valid links with green colors and broken links with red colors.

Try to click on any of the broken links and see where it leads you. It will lead you to a 404 error display page. This could be as a result of the web page been deleted, or the permalink is changed. So now you have found broken links. How then do you discover what the broken link is all about?

Knowing what the broken link is all about, you can do this by taking a snapshot of the broken webpage on archive.org. Before removing or deleting it, this website provides you with a snapshot of what a broken web page is about.

This is helpful because it gives you ideas on the previous web page that got deleted. Once you have an idea of what the deleted page is all about, you can create your own version of the topic. But make sure not to plagiarize the contents.

Note: When building backlinks, avoid links from spam blogs. These links will make Google flag your blog as spam. So how do you avoid such links?

Without a doubt, external links play an essential role in SEO. These links are important. But, you should avoid some at all costs. Why? They can lead to Google penalizing your blog. Let’s take a look at some of the backlinks you should avoid at all costs.

Whatever you do, I’d recommend you never buy backlinks or whatsoever, especially from fiverr.com. External links from these blogs are highly spam and could get your blog google penalty. 

Buying from Others
Buying Backlinks

Google bots are very smart and can detect purchased backlinks. Especially as a new blog, you should avoid buying external links because they will land you in hot soup. You can’t be having 200 monthly traffic, and your site has more than 50 external links pointing to it; that’s a considerable flag off.

The is another type of backlinks you should avoid most times. Just like the name sounds. For instance, if you link to another blog in your niche and that blog gives you backlinks, it becomes a reciprocal backlink.

Reciprocal Method
Reciprocal Backlinks

This method is fine with Google. But, it can be irrelevant if the backlink exchange between the two blogs becomes ordinary. Hence, it will decrease your blogs’ value.

After building your backlinks, the next thing is: how do you check the blogs giving you the backlink? There are tons of backlink checker or white label SEO tools available on the internet.

I want to show you some of the best and amazing tools out there for checking your backlinks. Some of these tools require a fee to be able to peruse the full features of the tools.

Moz.com

The tool above is a great backlink checker. The free version of the Moz tool offers a lot of great features. You can use the Moz open site explorer to check all incoming links pointing to your domain. Moz free version allows you to view up to 50 backlinks on your site and five search queries in 24 hours.

This amazing tool also has an extension. When you turn it on, it can show you the DA and PA (domain and page authority) of a blog. The extension is also known as the Mozbar. It can show the number of backlinks to a page or post.

Ahrefs.com

This is another excellent backlinks checker tool. But unlike Moz, you pay on the go. The Ahref tool allows new users to use the tool for $7 for seven days, which they claim to be their free version. After the seven days expires, you will need to pay up to $99 per month. This is high for beginners.

Semrush.com

Like Ahrefs, with SEMrush, you also need to sign up with your credit card before you can use the tool.

When you sign up on SEMrush, you get a free trial for 7 days. Then, they will charge your card when it ends. But you can always cancel the trial before it ends. Then, you won’t get unneeded debit alerts from your account.

Google Search Console

This is the rarest backlink checker. It’s from Google and has many features. You can use this tool to check your SERP, submit a sitemap, and index a page for search engines to crawl. For you to access this tool, you need a blog. Create an account and add your blog properties to the search console, which is very easy.

After all the necessary steps, this is how to check your backlinks. Login to your dashboard on the search console. Scroll down to ‘links‘ in the menu. There, you will see all the info about external links to your domain and the text they used.

Also Check: Why Does Outsourcing Link Building Matter In Digital Marketing?

Many questions are being asked around the internet regarding backlink building, but these are the most frequently asked questions.

Do backlinks still matter?

The simple truth is yes; backlinks still matter a lot. In SEO, the backlink will always be relevant. It serves as a route for web crawlers and your users between pages. You can mark a link as Nofollow. This means web crawlers can’t follow the link. But, when a link is nofollow, it will not impact your DA. With some incoming links pointing to your domain from other relevant blogs of the same niche. It will skyrocket your DA and ranking.
So therefore, backlinks are still essential in the game of SEO, and you should start to build them. With the more backlinks you have, the likely you are to rank first on SERP. Although backlinks alone cannot make you rank. You must correctly do your on-page SEO. You should also consider your load time, as it is a major ranking factor. A site that takes more than 5 seconds to load does not perform well on search engines.

How to build backlinks faster?

There are no simple ways of building backlinks, especially from more prominent blogs. So, the goal is to target big blogs with high domain authority. Link building takes a lot of time, so any blog guilty of purchasing external links is being penalized. Because google understands that link building does take some time. Build your links manually, and your blog relevancy will increase.

Conclusion

If you use link building techniques above, you will generate powerful and relevant backlinks in no time.

Also Check: How To Make Money With Guest Posting?


Images by Parveender Lamba