Inbound Link

What Is An Inbound Link?

An inbound link is a clickable link from another website to your website.

“Inbound” is the term used by the website owner who has received the link.

This differs from “outbound links,” which are clickable links you add from your website to another.

Inbound links are also called backlinks.

What’s An Example Of An Inbound Link

An example of an inbound link would be if entrepreneur.com added a clickable link from an article on their website to your website.

You are receiving the link from them – Which is an inbound link to your website.

Why Are Inbound Links Important For SEO?

Inbound links are important for SEO because they signal to search engines that your website is trustworthy.

Search engines like Google treat inbound links like a vote of confidence that your content is valuable and high-quality.

The more inbound links you have from other high-authority websites, the more trust you build with Google.

This will increase the authority of your own site and help you rank higher in the search results.

Here’s what Google themselves have said about how inbound links impact their algorithm:

“We look for sites that many users seem to value for similar queries. For example, if other prominent websites link to the page (what is known as PageRank), that has proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted.”

Google

PageRank is a metric that Google uses to evaluate each page on your site.

It works by counting the number and quality of inbound links to a page to determine its importance.

Bottom line: More inbound links = Higher ranking & traffic

The truth is that inbound links are one of the most important Google ranking factors today. They have been part of search engine algorithms for 20+ years.

What Does A Good Inbound Link Look Like?

A good inbound link comes from an authoritative page on a reputable website that has content relevant to your website.

It should be naturally placed within the content and contain descriptive anchor text relevant to the linked page. A reader should read the anchor text and understand what the page is about.

Here are the six main factors used to evaluate inbound link quality:

When it comes to inbound links, quality matters more than quantity.

One high-quality inbound link can impact your SEO more than 5 low-quality links.

How To Build More Inbound Links

Here are 3 proven ways to build more inbound links:

1. Uncover Your Competitors Current Backlinks

Competitor backlink analysis is one of the best link building strategies.

Here’s how it works:

Google your target keyword and copy the top 5 ranking pages.

Next, download and copy my custom-built, free backlink analysis spreadsheet to extract your competitors’ best inbound links.

Enter your competitor’s URLs into the #1 – Start Here tab.

For this next part, you’ll need a Semrush account.

The good news is that you can use this 14-day free trial to access Semrush for free!

Sign up with the trial and create your account on Semrush.

Now click on the “Click Here” links to automatically open the Backlink Analytics report in Semrush.

Select “Follow” and then click on the export button. You can choose either an Excel or CSV export, both will work-

Export the data for each competitor URL.

Next, head over to Tab #2 – Data on the spreadsheet and import each file you exported.

The quickest way to do that is-

The process looks something like this-

Finally, click on Tab #3 – Plan Of Attack.

That’s it! You now have a complete list of quality inbound links you need to get.

The last step?

Simply reach out and contact each site to acquire links similar to your competitors.

For more information, check out our complete backlink analysis tutorial.

2. Search For Unlinked Mentions Of Your Brand

This is the fastest way to get more outbound links.

When another website mentions your brand without linking to your site, you can reach out via email to request a link placement.

Simple, right?

Head over to Google and search:

Look through the search results to see if you can find any unlinked mentions.

Found one?

Reach out to them and ask if they can add a link to your site.

It doesn’t get much easier than that!

You can even take this strategy a step further by setting up Google alerts for brand mentions and your target keywords.

3. Outsource To A Trusted Link Building Service

Outsourcing link building is the easiest way to get more high-quality inbound links to your site.

Which link building service should you use?

We Recommend LinksThatRank.

LinksThatRank has a reputation for building the highest quality links that actually help you rank higher in the SERPs.

Check out their results below:

All you have to do is choose how many links you want and let them know your target keywords. They will take care of the rest!

It doesn’t get much easier than that, right?

They even offer monthly link building packages for a discount!