Understanding what Backlinks are and how they affect your website can be challenging. Let’s break down Backlinks so you can understand them bit easier.
Imagine a website is a person. This person has a built reputation with those who have interacted with them. This individual person, is late to every single meeting that they set. They never keep their word and are always lying. Now this person tells you, “Hey! My friend here is a great fit for that position at your job. You should recommend him. He really needs it!”.
Well, because you know that this person is a liar, flake, and untimely anyone they refer to you is automatically going to come with some bad taste…If not a lot. Unfortunately this guy that is being referred is just being caught in the cross hairs. Now this enallage is very similar to how Google has adopted it’s search algorithm to work.
If a ton of bad ‘people’/websites are saying, “Hey, go check out my friend. He’s cool!” and they say that about everyone.. Well that just doesn’t hold much water. The amount of authority that website has is going to be close to nothing compare to a very creditable website that will only point toward real “Cool” people. *Another anallage**
So now you ask, what’s the purpose. The purpose for such a algorithm is to provide searcher’s of the internet better results. The Backlinks like people referring you are counted like votes. But the catch is each vote is NOT created equal. Yeah not so much a democracy huh?
You now what makes a Backlink better than the other.
Many factors play into this and none can be completely confirmed. I can only tell you my knowledge from experience. Backlinks seem to be like juice. Yes literally. Fill up a bucket without holes and it fills up nicely. But fill out a bucket with tons of holes and you have nothing, no matter how much juice you pour in. Backlinks contain juice. This is basically the points transfering over through links. Those links going out from a website to another is considered a Backlink. Each Backlink you give out can be considered as a hole in your bucket. Now remember, not all Backlinks are count the same.
What determines how much ‘Juice’ your website has?
This is determined by how many high quality Backlinks you have point to your website. Remember it”s quality not quantity. Pagerank is one of the oldest ways to determine how reliable a webpage is. Reliablity meant it was trustworthy content wise and was trusted by other websites as well. Now this is being less and less reliable but is definitely still a major factor.
Constant work
Building Backlinks is hard work and it should be. Easily obtained Backlinks only show that it will be easy for others to get them as well form that same source. Overtime that source of a Backlink will become of low quality and might become harmful to your website’s reputation in the major Search Engines eyes *if they had any, haha just kidding.*.
- Ensure that the Backlinks you build are relevant for future algorithm bullet proofing. This can be one heck of a task and take sometime but it is worth it long term.
- Use creative strategies for build Backlinks using social media networks. There are tons of them being released on a regular basis, take advantage of them.
- Review your Backlinks. This can help you understand who is linking to you and by reviewing the websites you can determine the quality. Reviewing low quality Backlinks will help you from getting penalized.