What is the importance of backlink and Page Rank?

The questions which we will be covering in this Zlob are What is a backlink? What are internal and external links? Why is it important to have quality backlinks? What are quality backlinks? What is page rank? And What is Dofollow and Nofollow?

What is a backlink?

In simple terms backlink is a HTML clickable link from any site to your site or website page.
The link should be the URL or web address on your page.
This simple means that if any other website puts a link from his page to any of your page in your website then it is counted as a backlink. The link can be in any form, it can be a text, picture or a button- the main thing is that by clicking on it the browser should open your page in the same window, another tab or in another window.

What is the difference between internal and external links?

An internal link- points to a page in your own website or blog. For example if you write any Zlob and post a link pointing to a page in Zlobber will be termed as an internal link.

An external link- points to a page in another blog or website. It means that any link not containing zlobber.com as the starting address is an external link. For example if you add a link from your Blogspot blog to Zlobber then it is a external link.

What is the need to create backlinks to your articles?

Backlinks are created for two reasons:

1. For referred traffic- Whenever people see a link with anchor text (explained below) that interests them then they will visit your page through that link.
2. Search engine reputation- Search engines give any page some value or let’s call it points. Now if there is a link in that page to another page especially an external link then the points for the page whose link is given increases. So a backlink in simple terms has the power to increase your search engine ranking.

How to create the best backlinks?

Not all backlinks give you the maximum profit. A few things are to be taken care of to make quality backlinks:

1. Anchor text- The words which are used to create a link are called anchor text. It is important that these words point to the subject matter of the page which is linked. An anchor text with unrelated anchor text will do no good.
2. Subject of article- Not only the anchor text but the subject of the article also matters when creating a backlink. For example if you create a link from a food recipe article to a Windows related article then such a link is going to do no good. People who have to come to see recipes are rarely going to be interested in Windows related articles. Therefore it is better to link to sites having similar subject matter as you.
3. Site quality- Opening a Blogspot blog and writing a small article for the sake of a link is not going to do any good to you. Nor you will get any referred visitor but search engines too won’t give you any points for link from such a site. Now for example if you are able to get a link from Microsoft to a Microsoft related article in your site then it is the best you can do.

Are all backlinks good or at least harmless?

No, this is not the case. However most will say that it is not the case and even I don’t have a proof of it but it is suggested to avoid backlinks from:

1. Spam or adult sites unless your own site is an adult one.
2. Articles which have no relation to the article you are linking.

However I do not say that it is a total waste of time to get a backlink from a less reputed site even if the article is related. Who knows that site just might become famous one day and in such scenario that backlink is going to be highly profitable to you. And as higher quality links are hard to make you should not entirely avoid making low quality backlinks.

What are the places where I can easily make some backlinks?

There are some easy ways to get backlinks. Here are a few:

• Forums- Some sites allow external links in forum footer or otherwise in quality responses or reputed users.
• Blogs: Search for blogs having similar type of content by using Google search (“inurl:blog” (your subject) and in the quality blogs leave a valid comment and include backlinks to your site through it.
• Answer sites- Sites like Yahoo! Answers or Answerbag. Note that Yahoo! Answers requires you to be at least on level 2 to make links.
• Blog directories offering Dofollow links like followlist
• Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Facebook and redgage
Through guest posts- This is the best method however requires time to create a quality article which most blog owners except and offer Dofollow links in return.

Difference between Dofollow and Nofollow

If you are not even a basic technical person or have just learnt a few HTML tricks then you can stop now. All the important points about Backlinks have been discussed above. However if you can understand a few basic HTMLs and a comfortable will very basic coding then read on to know a little more about backlinks.

Google and other search engines have provided authors some controls to authors to tell the search engine bots how to consider a particular link. By adding some attributes authors tell bots what to do with a link.
Nofollow attribute tells the Google bots not to follow the linked page. This also stops from yur points being donated to the linked page. Therefore Nofollow links do not help in increasing your site reputation in search results.
Dofollow tells web crawlers that it is okay to follow the other page and that we recommend other page. These links improve your search engine reputation.
These tags do not interfere with the working of links for a human user and are only for the Web crawlers or search engine bots.

What are paid backlinks?

Some reputed website owners night ask you some amount to create backlinks to your site. In such a case the backlink can be called a paid one. However I suggest no to pay for backlinks. There is no dearth of reputed sites which will offer backlinks with just some quality write-ups.

Is it possible to create too many backlinks?

No, it is very difficult to get backlink from reputed sites leave aside creating too many backlinks. However there are some black hat methods where some people offers some xyz number of backlinks for a payment. I suggest not going for such offers as these backlinks are created in low quality websites which might be taken up as Google as link spamming and instead of increasing your sites reputation it might end up harming it.

What is Page Rank (PR)?

Page Rank is given by Google which ranges from 0 to 10. All websites start their PR from 0 and the higher a site has its PR higher the placement of their articles in the search engines. A lot of things help in determining the PR of a site. I have seen sites getting PR 3 within a span of 3 months as well as in 6 months. One of the site I am talking about is Thoughtfromgeeks which got its PR 3 in just 3 months and the other site is Googleplustips which got PR 3 in 6 months. As I was personally associated with Googleplustips I know that it got that rank due to the quality content and timely posting of the relevant articles. GPT got its PR 3 with just 60 articles. As for Thoughtfrokgeeks, backlinks and quality content help them get that PR.

Please note that SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is one thing and PR another. SERP is where you rank in search for a particular or set of keywords whereas PR denotes the overall ranking of the site. However, if you have high PR then your SERP will also be high.

Is site’s PR the same as page PR?

Most backlinks will point to the landing page and not the Homepage.
Pages within the site will obviously have more value if the Homepage is ranked higher. However it is not suggested to link the Homepage unless the article at other site is specifically about your site. The rank of the site should be increased by increasing the rank of the internal pages.

Are advertisement links also counted as backlinks like of Adwords?

No, the ads of Google or other advertising firms are Nofollow and hold no value in search engines. There are not even read by the search engines. Moreover as they keep on rotating they wouldn’t hold any value in any case.