What Makes a High-Quality Backlink?
If you’re wondering how to backlink or link building for SEO purposes, you’re in the right place. Backlinking is an essential part of SEO. You need high-quality backlinks if you hope to rank high in SERPs aka search engine result pages. This was once a complex SEO theory, but today we’re going to break it down for you. When you’re done reading you’ll understand how to what makes a high-quality backlink, why you should improve the number and quality of links leading to your website, and how to find them and build upon those links.
Types of Backlinks
According to Google, there are three types of backlinks– low-quality, medium-quality, and high-quality. Google considers the first category spam, and they will tank your rankings if found on your page.
The most common type of low-quality backlinks are fake and used to boost rankings, which is against Google’s guidelines. The second category, medium-quality backlinks, are a lot easier to obtain than the high-quality ones. They’re not as effective but still provide value.
Ideally, you should strive to have the highest-quality backlinks, but that’s not easy to achieve.
Core Elements of a High-Quality Backlink
The main problem with SEO is that there are no specific rules you can study. No one knows everything about it, because the search engine\’s algorithm is constantly evolving. And Google, unfortunately, doesn’t plan to release any specific info on how they measure website quality.
However, there are a couple of tricks that most SEO experts agree on. The first rule is that the links need to be natural, i.e., they should be obtained in a natural way and not through paid promotions for the purposes of increasing organic traffic. The owner of a link-hosting website should link to your website organically, so your goal is to earn it.
The easiest way to achieve this is to improve every piece of content on your website and ensure that it’s high-quality so that people want to share it or refer to it.
Furthermore, backlinks originating from different sites have different values. The higher the credibility of the host site, the better for you. When a random blog refers and a well-known one refers to your website the SEO benefit to your website will vary greatly. The website’s reputation plays an important role in the quality of a backlink.
Finally, another important factor is relevance. As you can probably guess, the backlink should be relevant to the rest of the content on the page. If your site is associated with irrelevant backlinks, Google will penalize you. Do the links appear to be natural. What kind of pattern can be detected behind the links. How often does your website get new backlinks and from what sources?
What Is the Best Approach to Building Backlinks?
Having a high-quality backlink is a good goal, but ultimately quite difficult to achieve. It takes a lot of work, and you need to have premium content on your website. However, this doesn’t mean that anything less than high-quality links is bad. Just because a backlink doesn’t fulfill all the conditions we have mentioned, it doesn’t mean that you should disavow the link to Google or ask to remove it.
The truth is, all types of backlinks can help your website, as long as they are natural. Even if the website pointing to you is not relevant, it is still a backlink you’ve earned. Every point counts, and the more backlinks you have, the better your website will ultimately perform in the search results rankings.
Ideally, you should aim for high-quality backlinks that are also natural and highly reputable. While this isn’t always possible, having backlinks that are less than perfect can also help your business. One of the best links to focus on are those citations that mention your NAP or Name, Address, and Phone Number. These kinds of links are like a vote of trust in your business.
Rise Local SEO Experts
Here at Rise Local, we\’re experts in backlinking. In fact, that\’s how one of our owners got his start. If you\’re looking to build brand authority in your industry and rank higher in SERP get in contact with us right away.