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  • Writer's pictureVin Andrew

How Does Backlinking Work?

Updated: Feb 23, 2023

Above all, Google wants to offer its Internet users quality content. To get an idea of ​​the "quality" or relevance of content, the search engine robots will analyze the "votes" that the page receives. What Google considers to vote is the juice transmitted by hyperlinks. Therefore, the first element of backlinking is the power of the links that will be transmitted. Regarding backlinks or inbound links, you should always aim for quality rather than quantity. You can use SEO tools or entrust your backlinking strategy to an SEO agency.




How does backlinking work?

The juice

Link Juice is the transmission of popularity (the "Page Rank" or "PR") generated by a page targeting another through a backlink. This notion is one of the pillars of a backlinking strategy.

The pictorial term "juice" allows visualization of the process: the juice pours from the main container into other containers, which also discharge the juice afterward.


The Link Juice takes several criteria into consideration:

  • Authority: it is generally identified by the indicator called “Trust Flow”. The Trust Flow is the confidence index of a website or a web page; it assesses the quality of backlinks. Included in 0 and 100, this indicator is calculated based on a logarithmic scale. Created by Majestic SEO, Trust Flow is often associated with Citation Flow, the power index (number of links)

  • Anchor: it allows you to indicate to search engines the content that will be accessible through this link.

  • The position: A link at the beginning of a page will carry more weight than a link at the bottom.

  • The number of links: the number of links on a page must be limited. We detail this criterion in the "Limit number of links" section.

Page Rank

The Page Rank, or PR, is a criterion of relevance, at the base of the Google algorithm, making it possible to analyze the quantity and quality of the links that point towards a web page. On the Internet all the pages are linked together with links, Google wanted to know which the most popular pages are and what is the probability that an Internet user who passes from a link while following the sites falls on a page.

The page rank is based on the Google algorithm which can be translated as more links your site receives, the more likely that visitors come to your site and therefore Google will get into its search results. It is therefore a matter of calculating the probability of arriving on all the pages of the web, this index is a fixed datum measuring the popularity of a site. PR is also diffused internally as we will see in our article on internal networking.



Thematic Page Rank

Page Rank is almost as old as the Google search engine, but changes in players and practices have led to the creation of a new concept: Thematic Page Rank. Google added this thematic Page Rank algorithm in 2011 using the Dmoz directory. The thematic page rank is at the semantic cocoon's origin since it gives the links meaning.

A website can be associated with several thematic Pagerank. When a site deals with several topics, the value of the Thematic PageRank will be divided between these different topics. For example, if a website deals with two topics, Google will associate 50% with each topic. The Thematic PageRank, therefore, favors pages dealing with a single subject to optimize natural referencing.


Semantic backlinking

You should know that Google vectorizes texts. Thus, if a term is rare on the web but we often find it and its associated lexical fields on a page, Google will certainly consider the latter relevant. The lexical relevance is calculated by Google using the TF-IDF and cosine Salton. SEO experts agree: semantics should therefore not be opposed to backlinking but well coupled to obtain all the power of links while benefiting from a perfect contextualization. Semantic backlinking therefore boost the Google referencing of your website.


The link environment

In backlinking, the link is not the only element involved in the referencing of a website. The choice of anchors is essential in a backlinking strategy. An anchor is defined by the clickable text where the hyperlink is located. The anchor is seen by google as content added to the landing page. Optimizing this anchor, therefore, promotes SEO.

Link markup is also important: a link is categorized as "Dofollow" or "Nofollow". A link containing the "Dofollow" tag will tell Google that the link should be taken into account by search engine robots. The majority of classic links have this tag. A link can also contain the "Nofollow" tag which tells the search engine robot not to take a link into account. This tag can be used when a webmaster does not want to be associated with the target site or not to index an internal page. Links from social networks are categorized as "Nofollow". This tag does not pass juice to the target page. There are therefore significant differences in SEO consequences between these two tags.

Beyond the link, the semantic contexts of the page as well as the structure of the content of the website are essential to ensure optimized referencing. We invite you to refer to the paragraph dealing with semantic backlinking for more details on this subject.


Types of Backlinks

There are many types of backlinks in SEO that can rank your website on Google easily like Guest Posting, Web 2.0 Blogs, PBN links, Profiling and PDF submission. For your a little help I'm sharing some web 2.0 blogs where you can create your backlinks free.

Web 2.0 Sites List:

The risks of backlinking

Although effective, the backlinking is not safe in case of bad practices (black hat) and may result in Google penalties if your link profile does not seem natural. This is why it is generally preferable to entrust your backlinking strategy to an agency or an experienced SEO consultant.

The backlinking strategy must be handled with care and expertise. Several solutions make it possible to carry out this strategy. The main risk of backlinking is over-optimization. It is very tempting to use over-optimizations. This is effective in the short term, but the medium and long-term results may be reduced.

The golden rule to follow is to act in line with what happens naturally on the internet. You must therefore avoid using too many optimized anchors, being too present on directories, or having links to quality sites and your theme.

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