What Are Backlinks, Importance, Advantages, and How to Build Them (Quick and Simple Strategies)
Friends, if you do blogging or have a website, you must have heard the name Backlink, but do you know what Backlink is? How to make Backlink? And how important are backlinks to get a good ranking on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP)?
If not, then definitely read this article till the end because, in this article, we will talk about backlinks and will give you accurate information on all the topics related to backlinks.
What’s the Difference Between Nofollow Links and Dofollow Links?
Here are a quick overview and side-by-side comparison between dofollow and nofollow links.
| Criteria | Dofollow | Nofollow |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | To pass PageRank | Not to pass PageRank |
| SEO Value | High | Low |
| Crawled | Always crawled | May or may not be crawled |
| Indexed | Always used for indexing | Not always used for indexing |
| Anchor Tag Attribute | None required | rel=”nofollow” |
| Best Backlink Ratio | 75% or more | 25% or less |
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What Are Backlinks?
Backlink works to connect any two websites. In other words, the way to reach from one website to another website is called a backlink. Suppose there is one website A and the link of that website is on another website B, then it would mean that website A has got a backlink from website B.
Let me explain it with a real-life example so that it is easy for you to understand backlinks
Example of a Backlink:
Whenever you go for an interview in a private company, you mostly go with the reference of a friend or relative who is already familiar with that company.
With the help of which you get that job quickly. Because the company's HR gives you priority over other candidates because of your friend's reference.
Just as your friends are doing reference work here, backlinks also work for the website. If you look at this example by connecting it to the backlink –
- Just think you are a website.
- Your friends or relatives are your backlinks.
- And the company are search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.).
With this example, you must have easily understood what a backlink is, but to use any backlink, there are some terms related to it that you need to know; only then will you be able to understand it and use it in your blog/website.
So let's know about its terms.
1. Link Juice
2. Low-Quality Links
3. High-Quality Links
4. Internal Links
Link Juice
Whenever your website gets a Do Follow Backlink from any other website, then your website gets some value through this backlink. The value received by the website through Do Follow Backlink is called Link Juice in the language of SEO.
Low-Quality Links
Low-quality links are those links that are coming to your website from any wrong sites, spam sites or adult sites.
Such links can only harm your website, so whenever you are using backlinks in your blog, keep in mind that the link of your blog should be linked to a high-quality link.
High-Quality Links
High-quality backlinks come from quality websites. Quality websites are popular and whose value remains high on google. If your website also gets backlinks from quality websites, then your website will get a high ranking in the search engine.
Internal Links
Internal linking is an essential factor in On-Page SEO. Via internal linking, the articles of our blog are connected to each other, so whenever the user comes to any of our blog posts through the search engine, he can read different posts from the same post.
Suppose an article on your website is on an excellent rank on the google page, and you want to bring your other article to a good rank on google like that. In that case, you can link these two articles with each other.
Now let's know what the types of backlinks are.
Types of Backlinks You Need to Know for SEO
- DoFollow Backlinks
- NoFollow Backlinks
What are Dofollow & Nofollow backlinks, and how do they differ?
As per Rule, do-follow and no-follow backlinks are two ways to indicate whether search engines should pass website authority from the origin to the destination website or not.
As a rule of thumb, do-follow backlinks pass on website authority, while no-follow links do not.
DoFollow Backlinks:
What Is a Dofollow Link?
A dofollow link is a backlink that points back to your website or blog for Google and other search engines to crawl. Dofollow links help with SEO bypassing the authority of the origin site to the destination site. A dofollow backlink is essential for search engine optimization and rankings.
Dofollow Link Example
<a href="https://your-domain.com">hyperlinked text</a>{codeBox}
Why is it important to have dofollow links in SEO?
Dofollow links are an essential part of an SEO strategy for building backlinks to a website. The significant benefit of dofollow links is that they improve the PageRank for a site and individual web pages. The more high-quality dofollow links a site has, the better it ranks in search engines.
Let’s talk about the pros and cons of Dofollow links:
The pros of Dofollow links
- Builds an excellent professional relationship with brands.
- Dofollow links attract more additional visitors to your website.
- Improves the rank of your content for multiple keywords.
- Have a positive impact on the Google search ranking algorithm.
- Enhances blog authority in Google's eyes.
- It also helps you make your website blog post popular.
- It increases activity on your site by allowing commentators to write on your blog.
- With dofollow links, you can get more comments on your content or blog post.
- It inspires others to link your blog with theirs; this allows them to get backlinks.
- It increases your page preview.
The cons of Dofollow links
- When you make your site ‘Dofollow’ links, you might deal with spam comments.
- You may end up spending much time moderating every comment.
- Your site might also lose Google authority, having given out ‘Dofollow’ links to other blogs or sites.
- You might also lose your page rank, affecting your search engine ranking.
The Best Ways to Build High-quality Dofollow Backlinks
To build a dofollow link, you must highlight the text on a web page and then add a hyperlink.
Dofollow links are created by default in most website HTML editors for the anchor tag element.
If the link is created with a nofollow rel attribute, you have to remove the no follow link attribute; no extra coding is required for this.
NOTE: While creating or providing a dofollow link, ensure your webpage opens in - NEW TAB.
How to open Custom HTML Link to open in a new tab:
You can create an HTML link open in a new tab by adding the target=”_blank” attribute. You should insert this after the link address.
Here is an example link that would open any page in a new tab:
<a href="https://your-domain.com"target="_blank">hyperlinked text</a>{codeBox}
Please let me know in the comment section if you need further assistance.
How to Know Whether the Link is Dofollow or Not?
You can check whether a link is dofollow or not by inspecting the link in the browser's HTML code. If the link doesn't have nofollow in the rel HTML attribute, Then it's a dofollow link.
Here are the steps to check for dofollow links:
- Right-click on the link in your browser.
- Click on “Inspect”.
- Check the anchor element tag in the HTML source code for the “rel” attribute.
- If you see a “nofollow” in the rel attribute, then the link is nofollowed. Otherwise, the link is dofollow.
How Do I Create High-Quality Dofollow Backlinks? ( FOR MY WEBSITE )
Everyone has a different point of view about creating backlinks; some people feel that their posts cannot rank on Google without backlinks, so they pay more attention to creating backlinks than content.
But I agree that backlinks are not very important. I have not created any backlinks from any website till today date, and out of my 1870 posts today, 1634 are ranked on the first page of Google;
I have always paid attention to the content.
Yes, backlinks have some advantages, it helps to increase visitors to your blog and your Domain Authority and Page Authority – DA/PA, but if you ignore the content, then do whatever you want; your post may not rank on Google.
NOTE: Backlinks bring a user once to our post. However, good content makes users return, So it's essential to look out for the pros and cons while creating links for our site; a small mistake can make your site get de-rank instead of ranked.
So if you want to rank in Google, follow the steps below.
1. Publish Quality Content on Your Blog
You can get your blog ranked on the first page of Google without backlinks, but you have to improve your content quality; if your content is strong, Then no one can stop you from ranking on the first page at number one on google and other search engines.
2. Guest Blogging
A guest Post is such a post in which we submit the post written by us to another High Authority website, and the owner of that website publishes the post written by us in his blog; it is called Guest Post.
We add links ( hyperlinked text ) to our website in Guest posts. Through this, we get a high-quality Do-Follow-Backlink and traffic starts coming to our website.
Now, if you’re wondering how to go about guest blogging in the right way, here are a quick tip to get you started:
- Do your research into a site you’re planning to pitch for a guest post.
- Come up with a high-quality, relevant post for the site that they’ve not written on before, preferably.
- Email the blog owner an outline of what you’d publish on their site, including the headline and key points.
- Make sure to promote the post after publication.
3. Find Broken Links ( and Offer Your Own )
.webp "Broken Links")
You read a bunch of the content produced in your niche. Everyone does.
And sometimes, you're reading a piece of content and seeing a great link. So you click on it and read through some of that page too – and so on until you end up many clicks away from what you initially read.
But, other times, you see a great link, click on it, and it takes you nowhere.
You get a 404 error. Or a 405. Or another error message is telling you that the content you were interested in reading is no longer available.
Not a big deal; for you, but it's bad news for that website owner. Drop a comment at the end of the post letting the author know that one of the links is broken.
Suppose you can solve their 404 error. Or a 405, Or another error message with your perfect post, then you can ask the website owner to provide you dofollow Backlink.
4. Make High-Value Comments on Other Sites
Blog commenting is an effortless way to create a backlink; you can give a link to your site or a particular page while commenting on other high authority sites related to your website.
While commenting, mention your actual email and your name below. Then give the URL of your website or any post, and submit it by providing a good comment related to that post.
Most of the comment backlink is not followed, but on some site, comment backlink is also do-follow.
Along with do-follow, creating a no-follow backlink is necessary; a do-follow backlink increases the authority and ranking of your site. On the other hand, a no-follow backlink makes your site natural.
NOTE: leaving these four methods, There are also many ways to create a high-quality backlink, but those methods can lead your website to spam.
If you are new in the field of blogging, select the ( Publish Quality Content on Your Website ) method to rank; after uploading 45 to 50 quality posts, you can start making backlinks for your website.
This method will not waste your time; on the other hand, your site will start ranking as; well, you also start making which can boost your site rank on ( SERPs ) Search engine results page.
Now let's know a complete about the Nofollow Link.
NoFollow Backlinks:
What Is a Nofollow Link?
Nofollow backlinks are broadly defined as links that do not pass authority from the origin website to the destination website.
As a general rule, nofollow backlinks do not improve your SEO. To create a nofollow link, add the rel= “nofollow” attribute to the code when linking out.
In simple terms, the nofollow attribute tells Google that the destination website has not earned a “vote of trust.”
However, it has a backlink from the origin website. As the name itself suggests, Google did not even crawl (follow) nofollow links for an extended period.
NoFollow Link Example
<a href="https://your-domain.com" rel= “nofollow”>hyperlinked text</a>{codeBox}
Types of Nofollow Links
According to Google’s guidelines on qualifying outbound links, there are several different ways you can tag a link to be nofollow to help the search engine crawler understand the relationship with the linked page.
- rel=”sponsored”: These nofollow links should be used for advertisements or paid placements (i.e., paid links).
- rel=”ugc”: These nofollow links should be added to user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts.
- rel=”nofollow”: This is the default nofollow value that should be used when other values don’t apply, and you don’t want Google to associate your site with the linked page.
Why Did Search Engines Create the Nofollow Tag?
Nofollow links were introduced in 2005 by Google to combat content spam. Their objective is simple - to permit search engines to differentiate between genuine value-adding links and spam or non-valuable links.
By default, all links on a website are followed by search engine spiders unless the link has a rel = "nofollow" tag or the header of your webpage has a nofollow tag.
This way, search engine spiders won't index and crawl the spam links, and website users won't see spammy sites in their search results. These links help search engines with crawl prioritization.
Why is it important to have NoFollow links in SEO?
Nofollow links are essential in SEO because they drive traffic to your website, boost brand awareness, and can lead to dofollow links. The importance of nofollow links goes beyond just PageRank value for SEO.
A few years ago, when Google discovered that people were manipulating links to get high ranks, it introduced the idea of the Nofollow attribute.
Let’s talk about the pros and cons of NoFollow links:
The pros of NoFollow links
- Nofollow links drive traffic. Even though nofollow links don't count towards your backlink profile, the traffic still counts.
- Nofollow links build brand awareness.
- Nofollow links make your backlink profile look natural. Only dofollow links to your website may look suspicious to the ranking algorithms.
- Nofollow links can lead to dofollow links.
- Nofollow links can improve the domain authority.
The cons of NoFollow links
- A no follow link has no direct impact on your SEO ranking.
How to Make a Nofollow Link?
To make a nofollow link, you need to add the link attribute rel=”nofollow” to the anchor tag element. You can create a nofollow link using the “sponsored” or “ugc” rel attributes per Google’s guidelines on qualifying outbound links.
How Do You Check if a Link is Nofollow?
Here are the steps to checking if a link is nofollow:
Step 1: Right-click the anchor text and select 'Inspect' or 'view page source.'
Step 2: Check the highlighted code. If it has the tag rel = "nofollow," your hyperlink is a nofollow link.
If you're a Google Chrome user, you can use the 'Strike Out Nofollow Links' extension to automatically identify nofollow links on web pages.
What Types of Links are Nofollow?
Nofollow links are links that do not add SEO weight to the webpage. It includes links to functional anchor texts such as 'Sign-in' or 'Start your free trial.'
The following is a list of different sources that tend to have a nofollow tag when you link from them:
- Blog comments
- Social Media Posts (Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, etc.)
- Forum links or other user-generated content websites
- News Websites like the Huffington Post
- Widget Links
- Press Release Links
Apart from these common types, a few popular websites that use the rel= "nofollow" tag by default are as follows:
- Quora
- Youtube
- Wikipedia
- Twitch
- Medium
According to Google, dofollow links should appear organically. The search engine continues to find advanced ways to track and penalize websites that practice link buying or selling.
Can Nofollow Links Hurt Your site?
Nofollow links cannot hurt your site. Links marked with a nofollow rel attribute are normally not followed or counted against your site in page ranking calculations.
Are Nofollow Links Good for SEO?
Nofollow links are good for SEO because they are a great way to drive traffic to your website, and they can improve your SEO performance.
Does Google Crawl Nofollow Links?
No, Google does crawl nofollow links.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Backlinks
Advantages of Backlinks:
- Improves Ranking
- Fast indexing
- Improves Visibility and Traffic
- Easy to Build - It does not need to be an expert in computers or SEO to achieve the task of doing backlinks for the website.
Disadvantages of Backlinks:
- Penalty - The biggest disadvantage of it is that too much of it can lead to a penalty from Google
Advantages and Disadvantages of Buying Backlinks for Your Website?
The advantages of buying backlinks
- Buying backlinks from highly authoritative and reputable SEO agencies would improve your keyword ranking.
- It would help you to save time, and you can do your other duties.
- This would increase your organic traffic and bring more potential consumers to your website.
The disadvantage of buying backlinks
It would cost money, and you need to spend more budget for this.
- Search engines like Goole usually don’t like this, and it would make you get penalties such as excluding your website and lowering your rank without any warning.
- Buying backlinks gives less value rather than link building with natural backlinks.
- It would make you know nothing about SEO and how it works on your website. You will not even know the backlinks are human-generated or automatic using bots.
Backlinks: ( FAQ ) Frequently asked questions list
Q – What is Anchor Text?
Anchor Text is the text with which the hyperlink is associated. Like if we give a link to any text in our article, then it is called Anchor Text.
Q – How long does it take for backlinks to be indexed in search engines?
There is no exact answer to this, but search engines often index the backlink in a week.
Conclusion -
Friends, according to my expertise, I have written complete information about Backlinks to help you. If this post is favorable for you or not, please tell me by commenting.
In today's article, Friends, we have discussed Backlinks: The Free SEO Beginner's Guide., I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post.
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