Key Factors That Affect the Quality of Your Backlinks

In today’s tech-savvy world, digital marketing has made its mark as a superior form of advertising. As search engines continue to give us better ways to reach our audience, marketers use various methods to remain visible online. Among these methods, Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the most result-driven technique to create brand awareness. SEO is all about gaining top rankings on the search results page, enabling customers to engage with relevant products/services for transactional purposes.

Search engines rank websites based on multiple factors that marketers categorize into two parts: on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is about creating an experience on a landing page or website that users find attractive. It includes page layout, color schemes, informative content, design, and other factors present online.

Off-page SEO, however, is much different and complex than its on-page counterpart. It is about receiving endorsements and validation from other highly ranked websites on the internet. They give authority in the form of links called “backlinks” that increase rankings if it has quality.

Importance of Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are the links on other websites that direct visitors to your website when they click on them. While you have various sources to receive backlinks, blog posts and website pages are the most relevant and widely used source. Backlinks are the most crucial page ranking factor that dramatically impacts search rankings. Whenever an authority website links your page, they endorse that you have quality content worth sharing. Since searching for high quality and informative content is the point of searching, linking is a prominent factor for high rankings. Search engines decipher the authority and importance of a site by interpreting the links that point towards them.

Why Do Backlink Quality Matters?

A quality backlink is the link that comes from a high authority and trusted website from the same industry or business. Marketers use various methods and tools like backlink checker to determine a website’s authority and the quality of a backlink. Sites with the highest authority and trustworthiness are the ones that produce the best backlinks and, ultimately, search rankings.

Receiving backlinks does not mean going to any high ranking site and putting a link in comments to obtain authority. There is much more in play that marketers understand and take into consideration. Several factors determine the quality of backlinks that marketers need to keep in mind. These include:

Site Reputation

The first factor that determines the quality of a backlink is the reputation and authority of a website that links to you. Links obtained from a website with higher domain and page authority weigh more than those from an unknown or new site. For instance, if you receive backlinks from sites like HubSpot, TheVerge, or SmashMagazine, they’re generally considered as high-quality backlinks. Google knows that the content present on those websites has relevance and have a long history of publishing quality content for popular keywords.

Page Rankings

Page Rankings (PR) is a benchmark that evaluates each ranking of a website in search engine as set by Google. Pages with high PR often have better authority than the ones with lower or zero PR. Although with recent updates, PR no longer has the same value as it used to before. However, it still holds its share of importance in ranking evaluations and assessment of quality. An important point to consider here is that even high PR websites fail if they do not contain relevant content. That is why marketers do not consider links that have low PR or do not include relevant content.

Same Content Pages

All the SEO tutorials and digital marketing experts emphasize the importance of quality content for getting good rankings and backlinks. If you cannot find a page with sufficient authority, then the best option is to create backlinks on websites with the same content. It does not matter if those pages have a high ranking or not. Suppose you have a blog about digital marketing; you can build backlinks from sites with WordPress or SEO tricks. If you are a guest blogger who providing writing services, you can easily create content to link to that site. The backlink you receive from the site has a quality that Google will appreciate and rank accordingly.

Website Type

The type of website is also a factor that influences the quality of backlinks. Many marketers use methods like submitting articles on famous directories as an easy way to get backlinks. The procedure does not depend too much on backlink quality, and in fact, Google does not appreciate backlinks from such sources. Search engine algorithms categorize such links as spam. Hence, the best backlinks come from blogs, news portals, and digital magazines with high authority. Journalism, education, healthcare, and lifestyle are popular categories.

Placement

Some backlink service providers claim to generate the ‘best’ PR backlinks by placing them in header, footer, or sidebars. Google considers these backlinks the least useful and sometimes penalizes content creators and publishers. For bots looking through the website for indexing, placement plays an important part. Backlinks placed on the top are the ones most preferred. However, they should be contextual via natural placements. Additionally, if you place a backlink at the beginning of an article, it is more likely to get more clicks.

Number of Links

Google and other search engines don’t like too many outbound links placed within the content. They consider it as spam. The best way of avoiding spam is to avoid placing too many links within an article. Just insert relevant links and avoid obtaining them from an unknown or non-authoritative source. Additionally, do not place every link that points to the home page only. Have multiple pages linked to relevant content, or else Google will place the site in the sandbox.

Final Word

For significant SEO results via backlinks, you need to have an endorsement from relevant authorities. However, the quality of a backlink is an essential factor that influences search engine rankings. Remember, relevance, authority, and quality content are your key to success.