What are the Links?
What are Links for SEO and how are they important for SEO? Links, more popularly called hyperlinks, are the objects which direct a web page to another web page when a user clicks on it. These links are clickable; they are usually highlighted in a different color with a hand symbol appearing on them as soon as the cursor hovers on them. Links are very essential part of search engine optimization of Websites.
What are the Internal, Inbound, & Outbound Links?
Whenever the user clicks a link, it takes him to a different section of the same Website or to a different Website, for which search engines check whether the domain of the destination page is the same or different. Depending on the destination of the landing page where that link takes you, we can further divide these links into three types, as mentioned below.
Internal links
These are the links that, when clicked, take you to another page of the same Website. Suppose you have mentioned another topic in your web content, which is different from your original content, and that you think should be elaborated on.
However, there is no scope on the current page. Then you can mention the hyperlink that takes a visitor to a different section of your Website. Most websites provide a link to their content, highlighting the topics in one line. If a reader is interested in a particular topic, he can click on it, which will take him to that content page.
Inbound links
These are also called backlinks which are mentioned by another web page or a website, giving a hyperlink of your web content or Website, for its visitors. If this happens, it is suitable for your web page/website as it means that people find your content meaningful, which helps increase your web content’s traffic.
Thus, you will find backlinks when your content is really good, and it benefits many people if free of plagiarism. Furthermore, if you have a business pact with other Websites, it can also be helpful for them to mention the link to your web page on their Websites. Thus, it will be mutually beneficial for both sides.
Outbound links
As the name suggests, these are the external links that, when clicked by your Website visitors, take them to another website with a different domain, i.e., from your web page to some other web page. In that way, it is just opposite the inbound link.
Placement of appropriate external links not only gives more credibility to your content, but as relevant sub-topics are explained on another separate website straightforwardly, it adds more value to your content and an opportunity for the audience to understand the scope and benefit from it in a better way.
In addition, highlighting these links in the relevant places in your content will also create better branding for your web page.
Advantages of Natural Backlinks
Natural Backlinks from High-Quality Web Pages are essential for more incredible SEO benefits. Natural links are those links of your web content for which you don’t have to create links through link-building practices, i.e., They occur naturally and organically.
So you get more natural links for your web page when other websites and content creators of different domains mention your content and give a link to your Website. In other words, these are the inbound/backlinks from other web pages to your web pages.
They are like votes from other Websites because the more you get natural links, the more is the chance of your Website’s popularity, which also ensures a better ranking of your web page on search engines like Google.
It is widely accepted among SEO writers that for greater SEO benefits with a high number of natural links, the content on your web page should be trustworthy, credible, and free of plagiarism, i.e., your content should be original and free of grammatical errors.
Valuable tips to generate excellent quality natural links
- Keep your content plagiarism-free because if the content is copied from any source, then the original content owner can sue the person who had copied the content; hence, it will be unwanted hassles that every webmaster wants to avoid.
- Write high-quality genuine content, which should be a beneficial knowledge addition for others. Of course, there is no substitute for good quality work. For example, suppose we can solve the problems that many people usually face or give valuable information with expert tips. In that case, it will generate outstanding traffic for our web page.
- Try to contribute on the Question and Answer networks like Quora, LinkedIn answers, etc., because you would have ownership of your answer on these Websites where you can mention the link of your Website’s content. That way, you are creating a backlink for your Website.
Also, read – How Do I Get Started with SEO?
NoFollow Links and DoFollow Links
Simply put, DoFollow links convey to the search engines that PageRank authority of the web page can be passed to the destination web page. In contrast, NoFollow Links are just the opposite of DoFollow Links.
As the name suggests, a NoFollow link tells the search engines not to follow the outbound link mentioned in the content, i.e., the web content with an outbound link does not endorse that link.
From the search engine’s perspective, when other content creators mention the links of a particular web page, it connotes that many people are noticing that web content which adds to its popularity and so it will add more visibility to that web page, which in turn results in getting a better ranking for that web page. But, of course, this will happen only when the content is extraordinary and provides precious information to the user.
When these internal, inbound, and outbound links are put at appropriate points on your Web pages, they add more value to your content by adding another perspective to it or elaborating on that topic on a separate page (which may or may not be on the same domain as explained above), where there is more scope to talk about it. Hence, these links help in making your content more meaningful.
Also, read – How To Optimize Your Website For SEO