On-site optimisation work is only really part of SEO.
It’s an important part, but off-site SEO is extremely important too.
Google uses over 200 factors to rank a website, but one of the key influencing factors in backlinks.
Backlinks are created when one website links to another website.
When Google sees a link on another website that links to your website, it counts as a ‘vote’.
In this FREE online course, I explain the basics and provide some tips on what you can do to increase your domain authority (DA) of your website.
Don’t know what domain authority is? Then you definitely need this course!
First up, what’s a backlink?
What is a Backlink?
In this video, I talk about backlinks so we can understand what is a link and why we need them.
So a ‘link’ is short for a hyperlink. As an example, anywhere that there is some text that says something like ‘check out my website‘ and that Web site is a clickable link or a clickable word that when you click it it takes you to to the intended page. The other Web site sees in this example that that is a link.
Not all links are created equal but we will cover the different types of links and the different types of the link profile and the value of each one of them in the next several videos. So the thing about a link is it’s how people navigate the Internet. It’s how people get from point A to Point B.
Not only are links part of going from other websites there’s also going to different pages so you can have on the home page of your website links that says ‘contact‘ and you click it and goes to your contact and you didn’t leave your website, so that is still considered a link. So you have internal links, external links and you’re basically going from one page to another.
Also, search engines use links to navigate or to. So when a search engine is looking through their website everything’s automated it’s not a person behind the search engine.
Google Bots
And what they do is they look at websites, look at every single page on the Internet and they look at the links. So that’s how they get from one page to the next to the next. So if you have a page on your Web site it doesn’t have a link to it anywhere. Then Google or any other search engine will not be able to find it. So search engines use links to discover new web pages. So whenever you have a brand new website it’s imperative to get links to your website through shares online or directories or blogs and other methods to help other people to find you.
If you have a lot of links then you are you’re definitely getting more exposure. So we’re going to help again dive a lot deeper into this. But there’s also some help over at MOZ.com There’s a beginners guide to link building. We’re going to cover a lot of these methods in more specific detail especially as it pertains to photographers how it pertains to a newborn, family, wedding all the different types of photography that are targeted toward individuals.
Vote of Confidence
So, why do we need links? They are a vote from the source of the link. So if you are linking up to another website you’re basically voting for that Web site.
It’s a little indication that hey this is actually a good site, ‘I recommend it’. And that is where it becomes good. Now on that same token if you’re linking out to a bunch of gambling sites or some sort of negative really bad sites that are spamming or that have malware or even sites that don’t exist if you’re just looking out to things that sites that have been deleted. That is a vote also that it can be a sign of the poor quality of an outbound link. So you were linking out to other people, it’s also important that you’re linking out to people that you find credible. So every time you get a link and every time that link is quality and relevant and we’re going to get into that in the next set of videos. This is very important when it comes to adding SEO juice and making search engines able to find you. Also, it also provides traffic to your site so other than just you and Google and Bing and other search engines finding you through the crawl, other people are going to be on the other website that links to you. So they’re going to click through it they’re going to find you they’re going to get over to your Web site.
Tip: For example, a link from another photographer is relevant to your industry. The photographer’s domain authority is unlikely to be very high though. A link from the Huffington Post would be more influential, as it’s a large, internationally recognised site with high domain authority (93). Compare this to Peta Pixel, however, and although the domain authority is lower (90), it’s more relevant to the photography industry, so this would make a link from Peta Pixel more influential than one from the Huffington Post.
Brand Mentions, or Linkless Backlinks
Do you always need a link?
