What Makes A Quality Backlink?

Ok so you know what a backlink is – the little blue word you click on the internet and it looks like this.  

 

Maybe you know a bit more about backlinks… that backlinks are important for SEO… or that a way to get higher positions in search is through more backlinks… more backlinks the better right? Or no?

 

The REAL question is what type of backlinks help your site rank higher?

 

 

Here is a chart provides a summary of what to look for:

As of today there are 721 million results on Google discussing SEO. Some make the decision to do their best to learn all they can. 

In our opinion, SEO can be boiled down to two things – backlinks and content.

 

There are plenty of articles online about how to optimize your content.  If you approach it from the perspective of  writing quality content that genuinely helps your customers, you’ll have an easier time gaining attention and authority.

 

 

Regarding other on-page techniques, particularly internal linking, these strategies support your quality content.

 

 

Now the all important backlinks… do you need them?

 

 

Well you don’t need anything accept food, air and water, or maybe a hous. But regarding sites that rank high on google, its simple….

The golden rule is two identical sites one with more quality backlinks will always rank higher….

Have a look at competitive sites in your industry ranking on top for your desired keywords.  Look at their backlinks.  What are that doing that you’re not?

 

 

Perhaps you might not have the tools or know how to do this, and that’s ok.   Let me share that quality high-ranking sites have quality natural links.

 

 

While you may have been  able to get away with low quality links,  the sites that are overtaking you (and managing to stay there for more than month or so) are doing so in a white hat way guaranteed.

 

Tt’s true the more backlinks you have the better. But not all backlinks are equal. In fact, many do more harm than good. We will run you through what is a quality backlink based on our experience.

 

Good Links 

  • Are on pages that are relevant to your site’s content
  • Are on a page that actually looks like someone would want to visit… Just because SEO has an aspect of ambiguity to it- common sense prevails… if a placement where a link is does not look like a page an ordinary customer would be interested it.. then it’s going to be low value.
  • Good links are in content surrounded by keywords that are relevant to your site
  • Are not hidden down the bottom or in a sidebar or in an image or some other odd place
  • Are in the same language as your site

Bad Links

  • Are on link farm, spammy sites, foreign languages, scary looking sites
  • Are on pages that do not appear like any visitor would want to spend more than 3 seconds on the page. 
  • Do more harm than good
  • Keep your site from ranking well
You can get a short term benefit from low quality links. As soon as search engines realize they’ve been tricked, and reduce your rankings lower than when you started. It’s a punishment of sorts to prevent this type of activity.

For those of you thinking the more links the better, regardless of quality, please stop what you are doing! You could be causing irreparable damage to your site!

 

Think about it. If all it took to gain an edge was to gain a whole heap of low quality links, you’d be dominating your industry. In fact everyone would be dominating their industry – how could that be possible?

 

Search engines are billion dollar industries. They earn thousands per customer per year because users value the results that appear when they type words in the search bar.  A search engine is not going to compromise the value they provide to it’s customers and preference a particular site simply because Joe in Colorado though he could buy 100 low quality links.

 

The reason guest post links are valuable is because, when done well, an in-content link in fresh and useful content fits in perfectly with the search engines philosophy of how the internet should work –  providing USEFUL and RELEVANT content. 

 

The more useful content that exists, the more chances the search engines can serve up relevant results. Since our algorithm is already built on treating links as an important ranking factor, let’s help those sites that are actually contributing to the useful and informative content that’s out there on the web. Its a win win.

 

Before you pull the trigger on more low quality links, ask yourself 

     – would anyone want to visit the page where my link comes from?

     – is this a page search engines would want to show in results to help inform their customers? 

 

Google can predict with accuracy all sort of things, including the day you will die… yikes! So surely they are smart enough to determine a link in low quality content, and rank your site accordingly!

 

I’ll leave you with an image I found online that neatly summarizes the whole idea around quality vs quantity. Good day!