What Makes a High-Quality Backlink?
Backlinks are a crucial element of SEO, boosting a website’s ranking, credibility, and authority in the eyes of search engines. However, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Everything’s here, read now!
Backlinks are a crucial element of SEO, boosting a website’s ranking, credibility, and authority in the eyes of search engines. However, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Everything’s here, read now!
Every website owner wants their website to pop up first whenever a related search query is made. However, amidst all the competition from other websites, finding your spot on the search engine results page can become challenging. But fret not. With effective backlinks, your website can increase its ranking on search engines, boost the potential for revenue, and give tough competition to others in the industry.
But what is a backlink? And how will these help your website? Here’s everything you need to know about them!
Backlinks are links placed on websites (other than yours) with higher authority and credibility than your website. They are also termed inbound links, which denote traffic coming from other websites to yours. These backlinks should always be high-quality to ensure they drive quality traffic to your website while encouraging higher rankings on search engines.
Search engines like Google view backlinks as recommendations from websites that have already established their brand as trustworthy and credible. Here are the ways backlinks support your SEO efforts:
Getting more high-quality backlinks (from reputed sources) will make your website appear more credible for search engines.
Search engines consider backlinks a vote of confidence, implying that a reputed website considers your website a trustworthy source of information.
Getting backlinks from reputable websites that receive massive monthly traffic can send targeted visitors to your website, eventually boosting your organic traffic and conversions. Also, being linked to a repeat website increases your website’s visibility online.
As search engines highly regard backlinks, it is crucial that you get them from websites that are known for their reputation, authenticity, and credibility. Getting a backlink from a poor-quality website with a low DA will drain your website’s existing credibility, staggering its growth potential.
Moreover, a single set of backlinks can undo all the progress your SEO efforts have made. Due to this, it is crucial that you get your backlinks from websites that are reputed, clean from spam, and authoritative.
Here are the key things that make a link high-quality and worthy:
While high-quality backlinks benefit your website, their relevance to the published content is equally important. Backlinking to content that doesn’t align with what your brand does or offers will mislead people visiting your website, as they will be reading about one thing and coming to a website that offers nothing remotely close. Instead, opt for relevant websites.
A good domain authority score is usually between 70 and 90. Domain authority comes from the keywords a website is ranking for. The higher the authority, the more effortless it becomes for the website to rank on search engines. By carefully gauging the DA of the linking website, you can significantly improve your chances of ranking higher on search engines.
There are malicious websites that cloak their content to rank higher on search engines. But, in reality, they have low-quality and meaningless content. Opting to get a backlink from these websites, in most cases, is relatively easier but, at the same time, extremely damaging. Such websites usually have spam content and plenty of bots to manipulate search engine crawlers and bots. Linking to such websites will lower your value for search engines, eventually resulting in a drop in SERP rankings.
Writing and publishing high-quality content on publication websites is the most effective way to get trustworthy backlinks. These websites are usually large publications or are niche-specific, allowing your business to show its expertise and command of the subject matter.
Some ways to obtain editorial backlinks are to refer back to your website as the source of information, show your website as the creator of an infographic, cite a company team member as the source of information, and interview someone in your industry.
Instead of getting all your backlinks from a single source, consider diversifying where you are getting backlinks from. Some government websites are willing to publish relevant information (data and statistics, for instance) on their platforms. Such links are high in quality and have robust domain authority, significantly boosting your search engine rankings.
With backlinks being an incredibly effective way to boost your website rankings, it can sometimes seem tempting to take the shorter route to acquire them. However, acquiring backlinks can topple your efforts and lower your website ranking in SERPs than anticipated. To ensure that you are acquiring backlinks from reputed sources, here are the steps to follow:
Creating unique content and prompting it on high-DA websites is among the best ways to gain backlinks. As the world evolves, new information becomes more relevant, and producing such content pieces can lay the foundation for your business to become a credible name in the industry. Engaging in research and surveys to publish your own findings is another ingenious way to gain backlinks from reputed websites.
Guest blogging involves creating your own high-quality content and then getting it published on a website that has a higher authority than yours. It is an excellent way to share your opinion, knowledge, and findings on a subject with a like-minded audience. However, realizing if the website has significant organic traffic and engagement is vital before sharing your content. There will also be websites that want to write their own content for you. Being transparent with your expectations and process can be the key to navigating such conversations.
This process involves pitching your content to websites that have broken links. By replacing the broken links with the content you provide them, websites get to correct a major error and have fresh content on their page, and it multiplies your ranking potential. But, finding broken links on thousands of websites can be a massive challenge, and it is best to use tools for efficiency and accuracy.
Outreach is a highly practiced way to get backlinks and leverage networking opportunities. Since you will be reaching out to various websites with a proposal, you get to understand what their website specializes in and how they came into existence. As an online business, having a strong network of high-DA websites will always work in your best interest. Additionally, having a well-connected network also simplifies getting referrals and suggestions for other websites that otherwise could be difficult to approach.
If you are still unsure where to start, consider looking at what your competitors are doing. Competitive research is among the most sought-after ways to learn how others are acquiring backlinks, their sources, and even the keywords they are targeting. It gives a concrete headstart to your strategy while highlighting the areas your competitors might miss out on.
Domain authority refers to a website’s credibility and dependability on the Internet and its potential to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). DA is calculated based on the quality and quantity of links pointing to a domain. The higher your domain authority is, the higher the website will rank.
Page authority, on the other hand, is used to calculate a webpage’s specific strength and quality in terms of ranking potential. Web pages that have a higher PA are more likely to attract organic traffic. By working on the PA, websites can acquire high-quality backlinks from quality websites.
Malicious websites constantly engage in unethical practices to boost their search engine rankings. One tactic is to publish spammy content that has been plagiarized and stuffed with keywords. Many tools check spam scores to avoid ranking such websites high on search engines and ruining the user experience. The metric indicates if the website has been penalized for having spam content. The score ranges from 0 to 17, with the latter indicating the highest likelihood of getting penalized.
Anchor text refers to visible text that gets hyperlinked when displayed. The text acts as a bridge, linking to a webpage. The process involves evenly placing targeted and non-targeted links on your website to avoid condensing multiple keywords on a single page. Overusing anchor texts can result in your website getting penalized by search engines. A specific type of anchor text shouldn’t be used for more than 20% of the website.
When a website user lands on your website after following a link shared, it is known as referral traffic. Such traffic can come from social media as well as websites. UTM codes are usually used to track the referral traffic a website is getting and the source. It is an excellent strategy to increase brand visibility, as referral traffic can come from anywhere your website or brand name is mentioned.
The best way to find reputed websites to acquire backlinks is by conducting a thorough analysis of their historical data and trends. Monitoring these data sets makes it easier to understand the quality of links the website has been offering, identify potential spam, and work towards enhancing the search engine rankings of your website. The analysis of these data sets also reveals the changes your website can make to make the process of acquiring new backlinks easier.
Backlinks are a crucial part of any SEO strategy. They can help a website soar in its ranking on search engines by recommending your website as credible and high-value. However, many spam websites on the internet promise instant results in exchange for hefty amounts of money. To protect the integrity of your website from such malicious intent, check historical data, domain authority (alongside page authority), and spam score. Linking to a low-quality website will significantly hamper years of efforts put into increasing online visibility and trustworthiness.
Have more questions? Reach out to our experts now!
Yes, high-quality backlinks from reputed websites signal to search engines like Google and Bing that they deem your content a valuable resource. As a website starts acquiring more links, search engines start considering it as an important and genuine source of information. Due to this, your website will start to climb the rankings on SERP in order to be seen more by people looking for relevant information.
Acquiring free but high-quality backlinks will give your website the initial momentum it needs to get going. Websites like the following are a good place to get started:
These platforms allow businesses to showcase their expertise, research, and knowledge by creating unique and fresh content pieces. However, it is important to approach content creation on these websites strategically, as too many backlinks from the same set of platforms will shrink your backlink profile and may come across as spammy to search engines.
Assessing your backlink profile is crucial to ensuring there are no spammy websites linking to your website. Defining parameters to monitor and using advanced SEO tools will simplify checking backlinks. These tools can also be used for competitor analysis, allowing you to understand their strategy and areas they haven’t explored yet.
Here are some effective ways to improve the quality of backlinks:
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