You can use a backlink checker to discover your backlink profile. If you want to rank higher on the SERPs, there is one part you should not neglect: Building your backlinks SEO. You need to spend quite a lot of your time focusing on building backlinks SEO that will actually improve your Google rankings. And, you can use a backlink checker to help with.

You will learn:

• The importance and characteristics of a quality backlink.
• 4 ways to create more backlinks to your websites.
• How to use BacklinkGap to check your backlink profile.
• What you should do after checking your backlinks.

If you are a complete newbie to search engine optimization, then you probably heard that the number one way to rank your website is by getting more backlinks to your site. 

However, as simple as it sounds, executing a backlinks SEO strategy is far from being simple. For example, do you know that poor-quality links can get you penalized and even de-indexed from Google? Do you know how many backlinks you have right now? Do you know which ones are good?

I have all the answers for you later, but before that, let’s start with learning more about the ways to gain more backlinks and some of the other fundamentals. 

What is a backlink & Why are backlinks SEO important? 

A backlink links back to your website from another site. These links are also known as inbound or incoming links.

Backlinks remain an important part of SEO and content marketing. They help to show the importance of a particular piece of content within the greater search ranking ecosystem. When other reputable sites link to your page, they are vouching for the quality of your material.

Because links are such a crucial aspect in SEO, search engines design and use sophisticated algorithms to determine how pages are related to each other and how a backlink should be graded.

Thus, 58.1% of SEOs believe that backlinks have a big impact on search engine rankings, and  56.3% of SEOs believe that link quality and quantity impact rankings. Most, if not all SEOs believe backlinks determine the relevancy and the authority of your page. SInce backlinks form when one website mentions another website on their site and links to it, these connections help drive traffic to your site and improve your site’s authority

Backlinks are essential to your business because they determine your page’s authority.

When you gain backlinks, it serves as a symbol that other websites endorse your content. If Google sees that several high-authority sites link back to your pages, it will assume that you have relevant content that’s worth linking to for other websites, making you a highly authoritative domain. And when your domain is authoritative, Google determines that it’s worth ranking higher in the search results so more people can find it.

Backlinks determine the relevancy of your page, too. If you’re covering a particular subject and authority sites link out to your page in their content (on the same subject), it tells Google that your page is relevant to the subject. 

How to identify quality backlinks SEO?

The characteristic:

As mentioned, some backlinks are inherently more valuable than others. In other words, backlinks have weighted values within the algorithm based on type. 

For example, the most desirable backlinks to earn are backlinks from popular, high-authority, trustworthy sites. In contrast, backlinks from low-authority, potentially spammy sources are typically considered undesirable or even harmful backlinks.

If you want a backlink to add value to your site, the first thing is that it needs to be a natural link. There are opportunities that allow you to pay for links to your website, but if you do so, you risk diminishing your ranking or getting banned by Google. 

How can you tell if a backlink is good or bad right from the get-go? 

• Good backlinks can significantly boost rankings and improve website traffic.
• Bad backlinks can do nothing at best and get a site penalized by Google at worst.

There is no single metric that will accurately determine whether a backlink is of high or poor quality. But having the skills to interpret link-related metrics will help you get oriented and, after a bit of practice, figure out the quality of the link at a glimpse. 

• Get a full list of website backlinks: Firstly, you need to know all of your backlinks. By having a full picture of backlinks, you will then know what backlink is doing good. If you’re looking for a website where you can get a backlink, start by analyzing the backlink profiles of your competitors. That way, you’ll be able to access backlink donors and choose the ones that suit you best.
• Get metrics from SEO tools: A backlink checker is what can help you with this. You usually can get the number of backlinks, the number of new & lost links, referring domains, and so on. When you have these data, you then can analyze and know your performance.

4 ways to create more quality backlinks SEO

You don’t need a lot of money or celebrity status to learn how to get backlinks. Backlinks are an important ingredient in your SEO strategy, but they don’t happen by accident. Rather than sitting around and waiting for them to happen, be proactive and start asking for them.

#1. Pursuing competitor’s links

Competitor link research is one of the most fundamental activities in link building. Think about it, the top-ranking page for your desired search query has all the right links which persuaded Google of its superiority. By studying its links you can figure out which tactics to use so that you can get similar links and outrank that page.

#2. Creating linkable assets

It’s possible to build links to any page with enough willpower and determination, but life is easier when you have something that people actually want to link to. When talking about linkable assets people tend to think of very specific things like:

• Online tools & calculators
• Infographics, GIFographics & “Map-o-graphics”
• Awards & rankings
• Studies & research
• “How to” guides & tutorials
• Definitions & coined terms

These are the types of blogs that most people will love to access. Why? Because they are detailed, helpful, ultimate and ready-to-use.

#3. Content promotion

Now matter how “linkable” your pages are, people can’t link to them without first discovering them. In other words, even the best linkable assets have to be promoted in order to attract links. Generally speaking, there are just three ways to promote content:

• Advertising
• Outreach: You must be proactive to email, direct message or ask people to link to your sources.
• Communities: You can comment on some forums, websites and QnA topics with your link.

#4. Guest blogging

Guest blogging has become so popular in the SEO world.

Every blogger wants to publish high-quality content that brings value to their audience, right? But doing that consistently is a hell of a challenge. Which is part of the reason why many blog owners accept guest articles on their blogs. 

Use a backlink checker to improve your work process

What is it?

Generally, each backlink checker is powered by a huge database. This database catalogs millions (or even billions) of web pages that have been crawled by the backlink checker or other software. The backlink checker uses that database index to check against the archived backlinks to see which websites link to other websites, using the target site as its search term.

A good tool for link building can provide you an overview of all your backlinks, but more importantly your recently gained and lost links. This is an important feature, as in some cases you get the opportunity to “rebuild” those lost backlinks.

It takes time and effort to monitor your backlinks and create a strategy to build more links. You can use Google Search Console to help grow your site and see your backlinks, but it can take a lot of time and it’s limited on what it can do.

The good thing is, there are faster and better tools available. For example, by using BacklinkGap, you can quickly know your backlink profile.

If you need help creating a backlink strategy that works for your company, the data from BacklinkGap can help. 

BacklinkGap 

Growing traffic to your site partly depends on building great links. With BacklinkGap, you can know your detailed backlink profile: the number of backlinks you have, your friendship score, total referring domain, new & lost backlinks, and so on. These data will provide you with information to analyze your backlinks performance. 

The way to use it is very simple. You just need to enter your domain or URL, then wait for this backlink checker to generate your results.

Thus, you can also use BacklinkGap to know your competitors’ profiles. It helps you know the relevant, high-quality sites that you can contact for outreach and link building.

With the chart view, you can see all the changing patterns of your backlinks, in 6 months, 1 year or all time.

Get out of the spreadsheets and simplify your workflow. You can share your data or generate reports to have an overall view.

Most of BacklinkGap’s feature can be access for free, but if you gain premium access, you can export your CSV files, get more rows of backlinks, more rows to monitor.

On the other hand, you work so hard to gain links with content and guest posting. What if one of these sites removes your link? Monitor Backlinks will let you know instantly. The backlink status will inform you of your active/lost or not found backlinks. You will also know your types of backlinks SEO and see the information of each backlink.

What to do after checking your backlink

After checking your profile with the backlink checker free like BacklinkGap, you must find the link building strategies to improve your backlinks.

#1. Fix broken backlink

Broken Link Building (also known as Dead Link Building) is the practice of building backlinks by replacing links to 404 pages with a working link.

Most outreach emails ask for something (a link, a share etc.) without offering anything in return. But with Broken Link Building, you flip the script.

Instead of only asking for something, you offer help first. Specifically when there is a list of broken links on someone’s site.

When you reach out to their site, you not only help them point out where they need to fix, but also provide them with the solution. The link that you suggest is the link of your site. So, then, you have more backlinks. 

#2. Apply the 4 ways to gain more backlink

As we have mentioned before, there are 4 common link building techniques to build backlinks:

• Pursuing competitor’s links
• Creating linkable assets
• Content promotion
• Guest blogging

When you analyze your backlinks profile and know your performance, you can continue to use these techniques to keep gaining your backlinks.

#3. Keep monitoring

Quality backlinks are a huge part of the SEO job, but just getting them doesn’t mean the job is done. Backlinks are constantly subjected to change, and each change will be reflected in your backlink profile in one way or another. A website can go through dozens of link profile changes in just a day – so it’s worth checking backlinks periodically, tracking down the most important ones first.

Monitoring backlinks regularly will help you:

• track the total and check for the most important links;
• check for changes in page indexing and backlink attributes;
• detect spam attacks and prevent search engine fines;
• use the most current data for reporting.

So that is why the monitoring feature of BacklinkGap can provide you with tons of support.

TL;DR

Link building in SEO, or getting backlinks, is an important part of external SEO. So, it’s important to know how to answer these 2 questions:

• Where can I find all my backlinks?
• How can I know if they are broken?

Thankfully, the answer is easy with the right backlink checker tools. Use a backlink checker free like BacklinkGap to get your backlink profile and monitor your backlinks SEO.

Besides, don’t forget to apply link-building strategies to get more backlinks, such as pursuing competitor’s link, creating linkable asset, promoting your content, doing guest blogging.