“The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.” – Voltaire

Quality backlinks are one of the main ways that search engines establish ranking for a consumer. This is done by identifying the importance of a website by establishing link building and quality back links throughout the websites that the search engine crawls. As a beginner, learning how to establish credible backlink building is essential for a searchable and powerful website.

Backlinks in SEO

Backlinks were one of the initial thoughts for the Google search team on how to identify and capture top results for searches that were reputable and trustworthy. The logic evolved around credible link building websites where good websites linked to good websites, which linked to good websites in turn, gave good websites.

Since the late 1990’s the ‘good links’ have been used as votes in evaluating the best websites on the web. Because of this premise, a websites credibility is based largely on quality back links. Although back links in SEO are not everything to website development, it is a very viable way to establish your website for search engine results. In 2011-2012 a large rise in social media sharing through the use of Google +, twitter, and Facebook had drastic effects on search engine results.  Because of this Google began to add social signals into its search results. This was shown through personalized results tailored to logged-in users that included searcher’s social circle.

Although these results might not always appear as the front-runner they were promoted due to social influence. Even though social shares are not links, there is evidence that suggest social shares can affect ranking. In turn as backlink monitoring algorithms continue to improve social media could potentially be a larger player.

Good Backlinks in SEO

In the beginning stages of website development all backlinks in SEO need to have an SEO link building strategy. In order to determine what will be the best SEO link building strategy we must look at important link signals that will be identified by search engines. Moz considers the following to be important link signals based on experience, which include global popularity, local/topic-specific popularity, anchor text, link neighborhood, freshness, and social sharing. Although each one of these factors is important to link building the foundational link signal for a beginner is anchor text.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the basis for creating backlinks for SEO. It is one of the strongest signals used by search engines. If many links point to a page with all the correct keywords it is highly likely that the page will rank well for what is found in the anchor text. Anchor text is the visible characters and words that hyperlinks display when linking to another document or location on the web. For example if a consumer is searching the web for dog training techniques I can name a webpage http://www.dogtrainingtechniques.com/Dog-Training-Techniques with the bolded portion being the key anchor text. This factor is one of those things that enables control within a website. By naming web pages in accordance with the desired anchor text, the power to buy high pr backlinks is in the website owner’s hands and is a simple way to capture relevant terms. Some important points to remember when deciding on the type of anchor text to use is that it is succinct, relevant to the linked page, not overly keyword heavy, and not generic.

Competitor Analysis

Competitor link analysis is another great way to identify how to get a website on top. This provides a simple way to dive into the market that the website is being built for and find keywords to provide a website with traffic. This also provides a beginning website the ability to see what it is up against. By analyzing what a competitor has, it better allows for identification of strategies that are used to acquire links and identify resources that didn’t acquire many links.

Bad Backlinks in SEO

In the past there have been many ways that website developers have tried to scam search engines. Over time search engines have developed more complex ways to identify spamming backlink generators. Although it is impossible for search engines to identify those who buy links they strive to search these out. Websites that are caught buying links risk adverse penalties and typically, the ability to buy high quality backlinks is virtually impossible. Typically backlink buyers get their sites scoured with backlinks on extremely poor websites. It is also important to insure that backlinks stay away from low quality websites. This can be avoided by using a backlink finder such as Majestic. Websites like Majestic allow for an SEO backlink checker and provide trust flow as well as other dependable statistics.

Backlinks in SEO Final Word

There are good ways to start a website and there are bad ways to start a website. From a beginner to a beginner there are simple ways to optimize websites that can allow a website to overcome many of the growing pains. Whether it is having the best-looking website to the most user friendly, if a search engine can’t find it what’s the point?