What Are Backlinks and How Do They Work?

What Are Backlinks and How Do They Work?

Backlinks are when someone links to your website from their site. The more sites that link to you, the higher you will rank in Google.

Now all backlinks aren’t equal. Here are some of the things Google looks at when analyzing backlinks:

1. How authoritative is the site linking to you? If Huffington Post links to you it is more effective than if I, NeilPatel.com links to you. Why? Because Huffington Post is considered a well known authoritative site.

2. Authority is measured by a metric called “domain authority”. It’s from a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the number the better. You ideally want to get backlinks from sites with a domain authority that is higher than yours. You can use the tool ahrefs.com to learn what your domain authority is.

3. The more related a site is the better the link. If you are in the plumbing space, a link from Huffington Post isn’t as good as Home Depot (which is an authority site in the home repair space). Try to get links from high domain authority sites within your space.

If you want to build links the quickest way to generate them is through round up posts. Email people within your space and interview them. Include their thoughts within your blog and let them know when you publish the post that includes them. Ask them to share the post on their favorite social network and even ask if they can link back to you.

By doing this your rankings will climb in Google.

00:00 – Introduction
00:32 – Does Backlinks Affects Google Rankings?
01:14 – Look For Relevant Backlinks
01:37 – Do You Know What Is Domain Authority?
02:30 – Free Version Tool To Use
02:50 – Create Engaging Roundup Posts

Transcript

00:00
How does Google determine which website to rank number one, two and three.
00:04
It comes down to SEO, right?
00:06
Well, it’s more in depth than that.
00:08
Google has over 200 factors; and the number one factor that affects rankings is backlinks.
00:13
Today, I’m going to teach you what backlinks are and how they work.
00:20
Moz SEO company interviewed tons of marketing experts, and they asked them what factors
00:28
affect Google’s rankings the most?
00:30
They all said backlinks.
00:31
So, with backlinks, that’s one website linking to another website.
00:36
Google’s looking at it as votes.
00:39
The more links that your website has, the higher you’re gonna rank.
00:42
In addition to that, they’re looking at quality.
00:45
So, if Huffington Post links to you, that’s way more effective than if Joe the plumber
00:51
linked to you.
00:52
And Google knows that it’s way harder to get a link from Huffington Post than it is to
00:55
get a link from Joe the plumber.
00:57
Now, another thing that they’re using within their algorithm is how related is that link?
01:02
So, if Huffington Post links to your plumbing website, that’s actually not as effective
01:08
compared to Joe the plumber linking to you.
01:10
But, on the flip side, if Home Depot linked to you, because it’s very relevant and they’re
01:16
within your space, that’s way more effective than if Joe the plumber linked to you.
01:20
So, a few things.
01:21
Google is looking at how many backlinks you’re getting; how many you’re getting over time
01:25
because it has to be natural, they don’t want you to just go pay people to link to your
01:28
website because they don’t like that, you shouldn’t pay for links; they’re looking at
01:32
how related those websites are; and they’re looking at something called domain authority,
01:38
that’s how authoritative that website is.
01:41
So, assume you’re getting tons of backlinks, you’re getting them from related websites
01:45
and they have high domain authority.
01:47
A domain authority is from a scale of 0 to 100, 100 being like a Google.com, a Youtube,
01:53
a Facebook.
01:54
And it works like on a Richter scale, right?
01:56
A logarithmic scale, in which it’s way easier to go from 1 to 10, than it is to go from
02:02
10 to 20.
02:04
So, if you can get a lot of backlinks, you can get them from relevant sites, and you
02:08
can get them from authoritative sites that have high domain authority, your rankings
02:12
are gonna climb.
02:13
If you’re wondering what domain authority is, like what number a certain site has, you
02:18
can go to ahrefs.com, A-H-R-E-F-S dot com, put in a URL and they’ll spit out the domain
02:25
authority.
02:26
It’s a paid tool.
02:27
A free version of this is Open Site Explorer.
02:30
If you Google ‘Open Site Explorer’, it’ll take you to moz.com, and you can put in a
02:35
URL and it’ll tell you that site’s domain authority.
02:37
Now that you know how links work in the eyes of Google, if you want to get links the quickest
02:42
way is to do round up posts.
02:45
So, go and email every single expert within your space.
02:49
And I’ve discussed this in one of my past videos, you can go into the description, click
02:53
on the link and you can get to the past videos where I talk about round up posts.
02:57
You can email these people, include them in their round up posts; and since you’re asking
03:01
them one question and you’re asking that same question to every expert within the space,
03:05
it’s a great opportunity for them to get free press, which is why they’re gonna participate.
03:10
And then once they all participate, and give you their response, write an amazing looking
03:14
blog post showcasing all the responses, include their name, link to their website, link to
03:20
their Twitter or Facebook profile.
03:22
And then from there, email each of those experts, once you’ve published the post, and ask them
03:27
to share it on their favorite social network.
03:29
By doing this, your blog, your website, is gonna get more traffic.
03:33
The more eyeballs that see your sight, the higher probability that someone’s gonna link
03:37
back to your site.
03:38
As you get more backlinks, your rankings will also climb.
03:42
Thanks for watching, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

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