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Introduction
What is a backlink?
A backlink refers to an external link to a website on the internet from another website, backlinks can also be referred to as incoming links, hyperlinks and inbound links and allow a user to click on a link from one page and from there reach another web page.
Role in search engines
In the context of search engines backlinks act as citations or votes of confidence from one website to another and are considered a major ranking factor which helps specific pages rank highly in search engine result pages (SERP’S) across search engines like Google and Bing.
Due to this importance backlinks are often weighted heavily by search engines as they scan different pages and determine whether or not they should rank for certain keywords.
When backlinks are considered quality over quantity is preferred as higher quality links can positively affect a website whilst many low quality links from spam websites can harm a websites ranking over time.
Therefore it is important to ensure backlinks going to your website are of high quality and don’t come from low quality sources such as websites containing malware or that are out of context with your website or specific page.
Linkbuilding can be done manually or through an SEO consultant/agency to ensure links are picked properly and are of the utmost quality. For example we provide linkbuilding for businesses in Melbourne and other parts of Australia which includes fully custom outreach to secure placement on industry relevant sites that compliment your content.
Types of backlinks
Nofollow
The nofollow attribute on a web page hyperlink instructs search engines not to use the link in page ranking calculations. It was initially proposed to combat comment spam on blogs.
The authors copyrighted the nofollow specification in 2005–07 and it is subject to a royalty-free patent policy, such as the W3C Patent Policy 20040205.
The standard was originally developed by Google however has since been adopted by many major search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, Yandex and Baidu.
Nofollow links still pass value however are designed to not pass as much power and infer that the website doesn’t necessarily endorse the link.
Example code:
<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link text</a>
Follow
This refers to all other links that don’t make use of the nofollow attribute and pass maximum power to search engines.
Nofollow sponsored
This is a variation of the nofollow attribute released by Google designed to be used in circumstances where links are been paid for as part of a advertising campaign.
It is also used for best practice with affiliate links in order to prevent the flow of pagerank and is a commonly accepted standard by search engines for this purpose.
Nofollow UGC (User-Generated Content)
This is a variation of the nofollow standard and clearly tells search engine that the content was created by an independent user and not published directly by the website.
Nofollow UGC is intended for community websites like forums, Q&A style websites, message boards and other types of user-generated website platforms.
Conclusion
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*Image credits:
Image by IO-Images from Pixabay
Related pages from the agrtech glossary:
SERP (Search Engine Result Page)
Source(s) cited:
“Nofollow” Wikipedia, 18 Jan. 2006, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow. Accessed 31 Jan. 2022.