In the world of Search Engine Optimization, ‘backlink’ is one of the most crushing words. Let us get into details of what they actually are.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are incoming hyperlinks from one web page to another website. When a webpage is linked to any other page, we term it as backlink. In simpler words, backlinks are links from an external domain that directs the user to your webpage.
In the past days it was believed that backlinks were a major metric that would strike the ranking of a webpage. The higher the number of backlinks, higher the popularity or importance of the website. Backlinks are very important when it comes to SEO, because search engines give more credit to websites that have more number of backlinks. Once there were days where even poor quality links helped in Google ranking but since Google rolled out updates on them, poor quality links penalizes a website for un-organic links.
There are various types of backlinks in SEO but majorly they are divided in 2 types:-
- Inbound Links.
- Outbound Links.
Inbound Links: – Inbound links are the links that point towards one’s website. Search engines such as Google consider it a positive point if a website has a huge amount of links diverting towards one site. Also this links should be organic and relevant otherwise Google penalizes the website for having poor and irrelevant links diverting back to your website.
Outbound Links: – Outbound links are those links that take you to any external webpage. These links divert you to specific WebPages than that on your website. The internet has various numbers of links and each time you click on a link, you are being directed from a certain webpage to another.
There are various backlinks on the internet that are ready to bite your site. These backlinks are a danger to your website as they destroy the SEO. There are various types’ backlinks that destroy the SEO metrics, kill your website ranking as a result of which you can be penalized by Google. Below mentioned are major aspects that should be considered to monitor the un-organic backlinks that harm your SEO.
High Spam Score:- Span Score of a website is calculated by Moz, while is likely to get your website penalized. If the spam score of a domain name where your backlink is been diverted, there are chances of negative impact on your SEO.
Low Domain Authority:- If the backlink of your website are linked to any of the pages that have low domain authority, chances are that your website will hardly attract any benefit but in exchange, it will invite problems as the websites with low domain authority have very less traffic.
Un-indexed website: – Un-indexed website means the websites that are not indexed by Google. These website indicate poor quality and irrelevancy and hence are not good for your website.
Low Trust Flow:-
Trust Flow is a score given to a website. This score is given between 0 and 100 on the basis of the quality of the website. The trust flow is an important factor that affects the quality of traffic that is generated through this backlinks.
High External Links:-
If the number of links diverting to an external page are high, there are chances of low quality web directory, sitewide footer links or spam comments. This will have a negative impact on the SEO of the website.
Unnatural Anchor Text:-
A good anchor text will include the name of your brand, profile URL and keyword matches. Well an un-natural anchor text will have an absence of all of these which in turn is of no use for boosting the SEO of the website.
Below stated process is what one must follow to identify the backlinks on the website.
Step 1: – Get the Backlink Data.
Step 2: – Get Anchor Text.
Step 3: – Measure Anchor text Value.
Step 4: – Merge, Filter, Sort & Model.
Step 5 : – Build a link list.
Step 1: – Get the Backlink Data.
The first step to identify the backlinks is to extract the backlink data from the backlink index. To start with, you need to visit Link Explorer → Inbound Links Section → Enter the Domain Page → Analyze.
Step 2: – Get Anchor Text.
Extracting an anchor text from the link explorer is a very simple process. One needs to visit the Link Exporter → Anchor Text → Hit the Export Button. One needs no extra filters to extract the data of anchor text.
Step 3: – Measure Anchor text Value.
Adapting a quick trick from the Moz Keyword Explorer, one needs to remove few of the extraneous anchor text. After removing the anchor text, one should copy the anchor text and paste it into a new keyword list of the keyword explorer. After entering the anchor text data in the keyword explorer, one will easily be able to sort anchor text from the search volume.
Step 4: – Merge, Filter, Sort & Model.
Now, one needs to merge the data that is extracted from the backlink export and the keyword list export, and he will receive the list of the backlinks that he needs to be concerned with. These links will be listed in an excel sheet and then the duplicate domain names and anchor text pairs will be removed. After the duplications being removed, one is left with the choice of deciding natural and un-natural backlinks. Now the links in the excel sheet need to separated on the basis of organic and non-organic links.
Step 5: – Build a link list
The feature of listing this link allows you to track the status of the backlinks. You will be able to remove spam links on the basis of this list and can monitor the status of these links. Now you can monitor these links as they will track the metrics, and will let you know whether the link has been removed. With these your process to identify the backlinks comes to an end.
Image Source – MOZ
