Gulf Coast Local Blog

SEO? What does that stand for?

If you are not sure what the term “SEO” stands for in today’s digital marketing landscape, you have some homework to do. SEO, standing for search engine optimization, is a pivotal function that helps get traffic to your articles, blogs, posts, websites and practically anything you want to get noticed on the internet.
When users search for a specific topic in a search engine, a list of related articles and links are displayed. But how do you get a user to see your article above the thousands of others in a search result?
Well, search results are based on a ranking system that is created using Google’s search algorithm.
That’s where the backlink comes in.

The Backlink

If you have a basic understanding of SEO, you’ve probably heard of the backlink. But although it is a common term in the SEO world, they can be difficult to understand.

When you read an article online that has links to other webpages embedded in the article, like this, you are seeing a backlink. When another page or article online is linking to your webpage, it’s helping your article increase its SEO ranking. In turn making it easier to be found. Get it?

Any article with links to other webpages create a higher SEO ranking, i.e. search engines will pick up webpages with backlinks more than webpages without.

But just understanding the definition of a backlink is just skimming the surface. Backlink terminology is wide and varied.
Here are a few:

Link juice: When another page links to your website, or vise versa, this creates "link juice." Link juice aids in producing a higher ranking for your webpage, domain and article. But take note:Link juice is connected to the quality of the website's link "power," so to speak. An example: If a well-known website such as Huffington Post were to backlink to your webpage, the link juice would be more powerful than if a lesser-known website backlinked to your page. Having a quality website backlink to your webpage is valuable because it increases the power of that backlink in relation to SEO.
No-follow links: If an article creates a link, but doesn’t want to pass the link juice around, they can create a no-follow link. These types of links don’t improve the article’s ranking, but they prevent link juice from being passed to webpages that are not reliable sources.
Do-Follow Links: By default the links you put in your article are do-follow links and pass on "link juice."
Anchor text: the text you click on that re-directs you to a link. It is important the text a user clicks on pertains to what the link is actually about.

Recently, Google Search switched up its search algorithm to prevent webpages with unreliable or questionable links to be pulled up in the search engine. Your article needs to have links to RELEVANT and credible sites backlinking to it, not spam-y bogus sites.
Don’t forget to incorporate specific and relevant keyword out-bound links in your articles.

Quality over quantity

Having credible websites and articles linking back to your webpage is key. You don’t need to have hundreds of links directing users to your webpage to obtain a higher SEO ranking though. Many times if you pay for questionable or non-relevant pages to create links to your website, Google’s search algorithm will penalize you. Quality webpages linking back to your page is what is important- not a million different websites you pay to link, but have nothing in common with what your article or webpage is about.

Review

OK, so we talked about some technical terms, some do’s and don’ts of backlinking, and quality vs. quantity, but let’s summarize:

Backlinks refer to the webpages that are creating links to your webpage. Having substantial, quality sites link to your page is better than having thousands of miscellaneous, irrelevant websites linking to your page (plus you may get penalized by Google).
Create anchor text that is relevant to the hyperlink—this will help raise your SEO ranking instead of creating a link that says CLICK HERE to read more.

Backlink knowledge is a lot more complex than just these few suggestions, but with an overall understanding of what they do and why they are useful you are already ahead of the competition.