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A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. It is also called “inbound link,” “incoming link,” or “one-way link.” Backlinks are essential to SEO because Google and other major search engines believe that backlinks are used to “vote” for a specific page. Each of these votes lets search engines know that the content is valuable and useful. So the more of these “votes” you have, the higher your website will rank in search engines.
What defines a quality backlink?
A quality backlink is a link that comes from a high domain authority website that is well-trusted by search engines. Today, high domain authority means that not only robots trust the website, but real people also do. It makes these backlinks reliable and trustworthy, so you don’t need to worry about hurting your search engine rankings by accidentally building a relationship with a spam website.
In other words, quality backlinks are beneficial because you know what you’re getting. You can know for a fact that the links you’re building are high-value and, over time, will generate traffic for your website and bring value.
Another benefit of high-quality links is that each one tends to be worth more for SEO. Because the links are from high domain authority websites, they are also more valuable than other backlinks.
How to Find High-Quality Links?
Authority of the Page
An authority website is a site trusted by its users, industry experts, other websites and search engines. A link from such a website is what you’re looking for. To check the authority of a page you can use tools like Ahref or Moz. Just enter the URL from the site you want to build a link to into the Ahref tool and check out the site’s “Domain Rating.” If you prefer using the Moz searching tool, check their “Domain Authority” metric.
Relevancy of the Site
Another characteristic to pay attention to is the site’s relevance. If you run a website about restaurants, getting a backlink from an authoritative site about IT and Artificial Intelligence will not bring a lot of traffic or improve SEO. A better idea is getting links from authority sites that are closely related to your topic. Coming back to that restaurant website, anything about cooking or the entertainment industry might help.
Link’s Position on the Page
The place where you choose to put your link is also crucial. Specifically, links in the footers and sidebars aren’t worth nearly as much as links found in the middle of a page’s body content.
Link Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text section of a link. Google uses anchor text as a ranking signal. For example, you get a link to your site with the anchor text “cheesecake recipe.” Google sees that anchor text is “cheesecake recipe” and believes the page they’re linking to must contain a“cheesecake recipe.”
No follow vs. Do follow Links
The main difference between the two is that do follow links help your search engine rankings while no follow links don’t.
A no follow link has the no follow link HTML tag, which looks like this: rel=”nofollow”. This tag added to a link tells search engines: “Don’t count this link as an endorsement.”
When it comes to SEO, you want to get do follow links whenever possible to improve your SEO. So if you’re going to add a backlink to get higher rankings, a do follow link is a go-to option.
Now that you know how to size up a link’s quality, it’s time to start building them! And if you need a little expert support, we're always here to help;) – just shoot us a message.