Think of backlinks as a vote of confidence. The more links you have from reputable and relevant sources, the better your website is perceived in the eyes of Google.

Websites linking to you increase your authority and thus the likelihood of your website appearing in SERPs.

This is why links are considered essential for SEO.

Quality over quantity, always. Building links can be done via guest posts, tracking brand mentions, or earned through great content you create.

Great content can be amplified via other channels to increase linking chances. You can also outreach to relevant and reputable websites and/or influencers to share your great content.

Who knows… they may love it enough to share it themselves!

There are a myriad of online tools you can use to check backlinks.

Ahrefs, MOZ, SEMRush, Majestic, to name a few…

Unfortunately most of these require paid subscriptions to get a complete picture of your backlink profile.

You can also check linking websites within Google Search Console.

A do follow backlink is a backlink that passes SEO equity (aka, link juice) to your website.

As a result, do follow links have a direct impact on your ability to rank and the overall authority score of your website.

A no follow backlink (rel=”nofollow”) is a snippet of code placed around a backlink that tells search engines to pass no SEO value to the linked website.

The no follow attribute is basically used to cut any association with potentially spammy websites.

Yes! Not all backlinks are equal and some backlinks can be very damaging to your website.

“Toxic” links, aka spam, are low quality links that can trip Google’s algorithm penalties. You’ll often end up with a toxic backlink profile when engaging in cheap SEO.

In the end, toxic links will need to be disavowed or removed in order to prevent your website from being penalised.